UFC President Dana White has opened up a bit more in the deal that will see boxing revolutionized potentially as a sport.
It will see he and Turki Alalshikh as well as other major players look to start a UFC type league of boxing.
Speaking to MMA Weekly YouTube Dana White said:
“It’s a good question. I would say yes, that Sheikh Turki and Saudi Arabia are the dominant players in boxing right now. Basically, I’m going to run and manage the business for them. This is not an easy business to be in. I mean, you guys have seen over the many years that I’ve been doing this—a lot of people try to get into this sport, into the fight business. The fight business looks like a very fun business to be in until you actually start spending some money, getting in here, and doing it. I think Sheikh Turki and his crew found out pretty quickly that it’s a lot tougher than it seems. They came to me and wanted to work out a deal where we run the business.”
He added:
“Yeah, yeah, listen, I’m trying to get him to pump the brakes a little bit. We don’t just lay it all out there, you know? With the—this whole press tour we did on Monday was to announce the deal. But I’ll tell you what’s fascinating about him: he’s a visionary when it comes to the sport. He wants to do a lot of one-on-one type events, you know, like the Sphere—‘one-of-one’ type events. Those are very expensive, so we’ve got a lot of work to do. I didn’t want to talk about a lot of the stuff we’re planning on doing because we have to build some infrastructure first. We’ve got to figure it out and get a rights deal. We’re out shopping for a rights deal right now. There’s a lot of work to do before we start announcing big things.”
Basically this whole thing has come in for some good and negative feedback from various quarters.
It cannot be denied that Turki Alalshikh and others have not transformed the sport for the better in the last twelve months.
But what is being proposed here is on another level, this year and next, and is so big that it can only be viewed as a net positive, for boxing.
Fans want to see the best fight the best and essentially what they are trying to do is do more of making that happen, more regularly than is happening now — which by the way — is happening a lot now more than ever recently.
