Dana White is holding firm on his decision to bar UFC fighters from competing in Zuffa Boxing.
Last week, retired UFC fighter Dustin Poirier revealed that he’d offered to box Nate Diaz under the promotion’s sister-company Zuffa but got turned down. That wasn’t just about a dismissal of Poirier vs. Diaz. It was a promotion-wide decision from management that they wouldn’t be mixing their martial arts. Not like that.
Asked at the UFC London post-fight press conference about that, White once again shut down the idea and laid out his reasoning.
“No way in hell,” he declared. “The crossover fights suck. No. That’s not what we do. It’s just not what we do. I want to see the best fighters in the world fight the best fighters in the world.”
“There’s other networks and other people that do that s–t,” he continued. “It’s not what I do. It’s just not what I do. I did it once. I did it once. I don’t know if it was amazing. It was financially unbelievable. But how many times can you keep fooling people with that?”
That ‘once’ was Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather, which is the second biggest boxing match in pay-per-view history.
“I run a business that every Saturday, basically, I put on fights, right? And we try to put on the best fights with the best fighters in the world. And you hope that the people that came to London, got hotel rooms, bought tickets, and spent all this money to come here, and the people who stayed home on a Saturday, got what they were hoping for. You hope you deliver.”
“What I hope to deliver on Saturdays is as many holy s—t moments as possible,” he concluded. “And you don’t get that from crossover fights.”
White challenged the assembled press to name him a crossover fight that was worth the price of admission.
“Tell me a crossover fight that you ever saw that you were like, ‘Wow, that was f–king unbelievable, and I feel like I just saw the best fight the best,’” he said. “So, if I took my biggest star in the UFC versus a big star in boxing, and they fight each other and it’s a lopsided, horrible fight that means nothing for either of them, what is the point and what’s the purpose? It’s just not what we do here.”
White has a point about matching up major UFC stars with boxing stars, but entire promotions have been built off of big MMA names competing with each other under different rulesets. Poirier vs. Diaz under boxing rules would be great. But that’s not what Zuffa Boxing is about, and we get it. Let Jake Paul’s MVP put together the crossover and freakshow fights. UFC should be about the best fighting the best, even if they forget that sometimes too.
