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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President, Dana White, is the busiest man in mixed martial arts (MMA), so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that someone intimately familiar with the “sweet science” will be brought on to run ZUFFA Boxing.
That’s according to a report from The Athletic Boxing.
White is currently building office space in Las Vegas for his mystery new hire (who may be this guy), though follow-up reports have the promotion’s launch targeted for October. As of this writing, no fighter signings or future events have been announced.
“I’m going to break the model and rebuild it,” White told MMA Junkie. “The model is broken, we all know it. The model is broken, it needs to be fixed, and we’ll see if I’m the guy to do it. Everybody wants to work with us. Everybody wants to be a part of it, everybody was more excited and open minded than I expected, and I’m feeling pretty optimistic.”
Let’s hope it has a better start than “The Fighters.”
White is hoping to revolutionize the boxing industry, much the same way he did with MMA more than 20 years ago. But unlike cage fighting, boxing already has established players operating in the space, like Top Rank, Golden Boy, Mayweather Promotions, Queensbury Promotions, and many more.
Boxing also has several preexisting broadcast deals with the likes of Showtime and DAZN.
What White and his new boxing guru can do to fix the “broken” system remains to be seen, but it certainly won’t happen overnight. I just hope that during this transitional phase, some of the problems in MMA (like this) don’t get overlooked or swept under the carpet.