UFC boss Dana White admits he’s still considering promoting boxing events

The MMA kingpin has long considered making the move to boxing, with the one fight he did co-promote between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather becoming one of the highest grossing in history

UFC President Dana White is still “kicking the tyres” on a possible move into boxing promotion.

The MMA kingpin has all but monopolised his sport over the years, and his one foray into the squared circle in 2017 saw Conor McGregor’s bout with Floyd Mayweather become one of the highest grossing in the sport’s history.

And while he has consistently teased a move into boxing, wearing a shirt emblazoned with the banner ‘Zuffa Boxing’ during the promotional tour for Mayweather vs McGregor, it has yet to happen.

There had been reports that White would promote a fight late last year between Claressa Shields and Marie-Eve Dicaire for the undisputed super welterweight title, but that event never materialised.

He has since said that the sport is in severe need of fixing, which is too big of an undertaking given his involvement with the UFC.

“I’m still kicking the tyres and looking around,” White told Teddy Atlas on his podcast The Fight . “It’s very complicated.

“The sport is such a mess, it’s literally a mess and to pull it off you have to actually get in there and clean it up.

“I’ve been working on this for years and I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.”

White has said that the issue with boxing promotion is that every major fight is seen as the last big money-making opportunity for promoters.

He likened it to a shop’s “going out of business sale”, and has previously had run-ins with top promoters including Bob Arum, Oscar De La Hoya and even Stephen Espinoza, with whom he worked on the Mayweather vs McGregor event.

“My goal has always been to build this sport [MMA] into the biggest sport in the world,” the UFC boss explained.

“You know, 15 years ago people thought I was nuts when I was saying that but look at what we’ve done, look at what we’re doing.

“But that’s never been the goal of boxing – every time they put on a fight it’s like a ‘going out of business’ sale, they’re asking how much money can they steal from everybody.

“Every time you turn off the TV you’re p***ed off that you stayed home on Saturday and watched the fight, you wished you did something else.

“You don’t even care if the fans are happy with the product, they don’t care because that guy isn’t going to fight for another year again anyway.

“Then everyone will forget how s****y this fight was and they’ll buy the next one.”

White also noted that the issues he saw within boxing when he was coming up as a fan were what inspired him to run the UFC how he does it in the modern day.

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The promotion reportedly sold over 8.1million pay-per-view units in 2021 over 12 events, averaging out at around 675,000 buys per event.

That would be considerably higher than most of boxing’s big shows during the year, with Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder 3 falling short and only Floyd Mayweather vs Logan Paul and Canelo Alvarez vs Caleb Plant beating their average number.

“Every week we put on fights with the best vs the best in the world,” White added.

“And many times the massive underdogs in this sport win, which makes the sport fun, exciting, you get these holy s*** moments and more importantly it’s very fun to bet on too.

“Without sounding like we’re smashing the sport of boxing – we all love it!

“All these problems are why we’ve been able to overcome boxing and beat boxing, I saw all this s***.

“I saw all the problems and I wanted to change everything they were doing wrong in boxing with the way that we ran the UFC.”