Dana White’s love-hate relationship with boxing continues. As does his hatred of any subject related to the abysmal fighter pay in the UF and the comparative analysis with boxing.
With the way the UFC head honcho talks about the sport, it’s hard to believe that it was his first love. In fact, he wanted to become a professional boxer at one point but had to pursue other avenues.
In a recent interview, he went on a tear, calling out the sport for creating unrealistic standards when it comes to fighter pay.
Since fans have always accused him of paying his fighters peanuts despite raking in billions in revenue each year. It’s one of the reasons, UFC fighters seek boxing matches towards the end of their careers. Even building a decent hype and lacing up those bigger gloves for an exhibition would allow them to make more than they did in their entire UFC careers.
So, White has never truly been a big believer in how boxers take the lion’s share of the money made from their fights and has claimed that that’s not how businesses were grown.
So, when Kevin Iole asked the UFC president how MMA fighters earn more when they transition to boxing and stated example of Francis Ngannou, a fighter who refused to renew his UFC contract over fighter pay issues, White seemed infuriated.
“That’s the bullsh*t publicly that people believe, but that’s not the truth… boxing don’t work…It is the most f***ed up business, and all these sound bites are all so full of sh*t that it makes everybody f***ing believe that that sh*t is true, when it’s not.”
White believes that the boxing model simply does not work, even though the boxers do make considerably more than what UFC fighters make.
He then went on to talk about how Turki Alalshikh is keeping boxing afloat but even he is getting tired of it.
White goes off on Boxing’s business model
The UFC president has called out the boxing business model to be nothing but a loss making machine and claimed it is doomed.
He then spoke about Turki Alalshikh had revived the sport with his Saudi money but claimed that even the Saudi empire was getting tired of it.
“Every f*cking guy that tries to do the boxing thing, they end up losing s*hitloads of f*cking money. The model doesn’t work. Unlimited amount of money pops up and that’s what makes these fights happen.”
Dana White on boxing: Unlimited amount of money pops up and that what makes these fights happen. And even guys with that kind of money get fucking tired of the bullshit.
Watch Kevin Iole’s full interview here:https://t.co/P44PYLX4r6 pic.twitter.com/5QSXBZqpYT
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) October 1, 2024
Although it is true that Alalshikh has revived the sport of boxing, his other claims do not have much evidence to back up.
If the sport really was a loss making machine, most boxing promotions would have filed for bankruptcy and the fighters wouldn’t be making millions per fight. So, at this point, it just seems to be in line with how White chooses to deal with topics that he has disagreements on with the rest of the world.
Case in point, the Jon Jones and the pound for pound debate. Having fought only once in the last 4 years, Jones doesn’t belong anywhere near the top of that list bit White has not only publicly disagreed to this every time he’s uttered a word in the last year, he has done so extremely aggressively as well, calling people who disagree with him ‘bums’.
