Dana White isn’t a fan of boxing salaries.
For the longest time, the UFC promoter wanted to start Zuffa boxing, but it never came off the ground. According to White, he says fighter pay and what boxers demand were a big reason why the promotion didn’t happen.
“There’s always gonna be head butting,” White said on The Pivot Podcast when asked about UFC fighter pay (via MMAFighting). “Do you make enough money? Do you? I want to meet that guy that goes, ‘Oh, I’m good. I make plenty of money. I don’t need another dime.’ You’re never going to meet that guy. It’s never going to happen. Everybody wants more money. And one of the big problems with boxing too, is that all those f****** guys are overpaid, and every time they put on a fight, it’s a going-out-of-business sale. We’re just trying to get as much f****** money as we can from you guys, and then we’re out of here. We’ll see you in three years.
“You can’t build a league like that,” White continued. “You can’t build a sport. You can’t have 750 fighters under contract, making money, feeding their families every year, with that kind of mentality. It doesn’t work. You have to run a business.”
The top boxers make a lot more money than the top UFC fighters. Tyson Fury made nearly $30 million for his last fight while Canelo Alvarez will pocket roughly $40 million for his upcoming fight where UFC fighters don’t get anywhere near that.
Yet, Dana White says the UFC has a great business model where the big money goes to the champions and big stars. According to the UFC boss, he says everyone wants to be paid more than what they make regardless of the industry.
So, White has a simple message for anyone telling him how to run the UFC and that is to run your own promotion if they don’t like fighter pay.
“Here’s what I always say: if you don’t like what I’m doing, you don’t like the way I’m doing it, go out and raise some money, I did, and start your own and pay them whatever you want to pay them,” White said.
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