Morning Report: Dana White on Zuffa Boxing and future of the sport: ‘I don’t know if it can be fixed’

For years, Dana White has wanted to get back involved with the sport of boxing, and after the success of the crossover fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr., the UFC President began working on doing just that. By last August, White was saying that he planned to launch Zuffa Boxing by October, but October came and went and no grand plans were unveiled. And there’s a reason for that: White may be giving up on it.

Speaking with Kevin Iole recently, White gave an update on the state of Zuffa Boxing, saying that the sport may be beyond his ability to do anything.

“I hate speaking negatively about the sport of boxing, other than the fact that it’s a mess – we all knows it’s a mess – and that it needs to be fixed, if it can be fixed,” White said. “I told you guys that I would have a press conference last October and announce all these things, but as I dove into this thing and started to look into the sport of boxing, the economics of boxing, that sport’s a mess. It’s a mess and it’s in big trouble. I don’t know. I don’t know if it can be fixed.”

White did not elaborate on what exactly the hang-ups are but he has previously lamented “the internal politics” of boxing and it’s safe to say that is still the major impediment for White. Boxers, particularly well-known boxers (the kind White would need to make a push into the sport) in general receive higher compensation than UFC fighters when considered as a percentage of revenue. That’s a pretty tough barrier to overcome for White to break into the business.

And apparently he’s also against using one of the things that could be considered a major advantage to him: the prevalence of the UFC name. Other fight organizations like Bellator MMA have begun hosting events with multiple fighting disciplines (usually MMA and kickboxing) on one fight card but White says he steadfastly refuses to do the same with UFC events.

“I believe that when you put on a UFC event or a boxing event, all the focus and attention should be on that one event,” White said. “You start with the main event and then it trickles down into the card. There are some great fights that are lined up like, if you don’t know now you know. There’s a couple of fights in there that people might not actually know about that you focus on. And the same thing for a boxing match. When you go to an event, any event, you have to be focused on what’s happening on that card and excited about it. . . You can’t mix and mash all those things together. It just doesn’t work, in my opinion.”

And though the idea of structuring fight cards to expose fans to new fighters they may not know about is a cornerstone of the UFC, White believes that doesn’t carry over into cross-sport pollination.

“The other thing is, you bring out a certain group of fans for each thing too,” White concluded. “There was a different group of people for Fury-Wilder than would be at Khabib vs. Tony. . . You’re gonna bring out different groups of people for different events. Like when we do PPVs, it’s not all the same buyers. For different fights, it’s different buyers. You have that general group, the hardcore fans that are gonna buy almost everything, and then different types of fights are gonna bring in different people.”

All in all, it seems like the man who was convinced he would be the one to “save” boxing from itself is now throwing in the towel.

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FIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTS

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks for reading and see y’all tomorrow.

EXIT POLL

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