Is the UFC considering a move into the world of boxing? It doesn’t sound like any firm plans have been laid out, but president Dana White admitted it’s something that could happen in the future.
“I could see bringing boxing under our umbrella and trying to see what we could do with that,” White said on a new episode of The Unnamed Podvideocast. “I could see doing that.”
White set off a lot of speculation leading up to the Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing event when he turned up for press events wearing a Zuffa Boxing shirt (Zuffa was the parent company of the UFC up until it was sold to WME-Endeavor last summer). Was this just a new entity that existed on paper for the MayMac fight? Or was the promotion considering an attempt to run boxing events under the UFC model?
White started out in the world of boxing before moving into mixed martial arts and has always had a soft spot for the sweet science, which he believes is being run into the ground by greedy promoters.
“One of the things boxing did and continues to do is absolutely kill itself,” he said. “They never care about the future. Every boxing event is like a going out of business sale. They’re trying to get every dime out of you and stuff it in their pocket and they don’t put any money back into it.”
With the UFC’s television deal with FOX ending in 2018, there’s a lot of things up in the air right now. Whether the UFC expands and begins running their own boxing shows probably depends on them having the right broadcast partner to work with. But given some worrisome trends surrounding UFC pay-per-view sales and ratings, maybe the promotion should concentrate on their own sport instead of expending time and energy dabbling in boxing.
