...and I have mostly negative feelings about this. I love MMA and think that UFC has the best promotions in that game but there is a reason for this. UFC has dramatically more influence than their nearest competitors and they have the unofficial position of "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em." The other MMA promotions that exist out there such as ONE and Bellator are kind of, whether or not they want to admit it, a test-run to see if UFC wants you, or a place for ex-UFC fighters to get sent out to pasture. It is extremely rare that we see the best Bellator fighters stay in Bellator, if they don't move to UFC it is normally because UFC doesn't want them.
ONE Championship is a bit of a different story because they don't focus entirely on MMA. They have more of a mixed schedule and sometimes I find that interesting that there will be MMA, boxing, Muay Thai, and Jiu Jitsu matches all on the same card. It isn't for everyone!
So when Dana White started talking about Zuffa (the company that owns UFC) getting involved in boxing I was mostly thinking to myself "oh crap, they are going to get in there and make that a monopoly as well."
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I think Dana White is an extremely intelligent man, I also think that he does have a genuine interest in combat sports. However, I think that Dana is mostly beholden to his own pocketbook and the pockets of the people who own the company and will do anything in order to maximum the financial benefits. If this includes screwing over other promotions, eliminating the competition by unfair business practices, or even screwing over the people inside of his own organization, I believe that he would be more than willing to squash anyone or anything that gets in his way.
In the past couple of years Dana has taken a bit of flack from various people involved in combat sports about the poor payouts that a majority of fighters in UFC receive and while he has done a great job of avoiding the topic, if you dig into it a bit you can see that a lot of the people scrutinizing the pay, even numb-nuts like Jake Paul, they kind of have a point.
The top people at UFC make bank, but the people just outside of the championship picture, especially outside of the top-10, barely make a living. I regularly see the "pay stubs" of people on the undercards of major events that pull in tens of millions of dollars for the organization and notice that many of them make not millions, not hundreds of thousands, but tens of thousands of dollars even with a victory. $30,000 might seem like a crazy amount of money for a person to only fight for at most, 15 minutes, but when you consider the extreme amount of expenses that a fighter must endure to get to that point they likely aren't even breaking even.
My concern with Zuffa and Dana White getting involved with boxing is that they have clearly turned MMA into a money-making sport that makes a TON of money for the promotion and gives just enough to the actual competitors to keep them from quitting. For every main card, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar payout that you see, there are hundreds of fighters that are getting paid less than you would get paid if you were the assistant manager at a McDonalds. This is by design even though Dana and the rest of Zuffa would never admit to it.
If Dana had the ability to do this to boxing as well you better believe that he would definitely do it. It remains to be seen if any of this is actually going to happen because Dana has done nothing official other than say things like this when asked about it in interviews.
"we've been kicking the whole boxing thing around for a long time. You've never heard me commit and say 'I'm in.' Well, I'm in."
He also has not discussed if Zuffa would be interested in "real boxing" promotion or if they would get involved in the clown-world of boxing like Jake Paul and Mike Tyson or doing.
I suppose if Dana got involved in the clown world boxing I wouldn't have much of a problem with that but I hope he stays far away from actual boxing. The good news is that "real boxing" has a ton of history, a ton of money, and a ton of very powerful people involved in it and they aren't just going to lie down and let Dana have it. The coming months will be a real "tell" for if these rumors result in anything because at the moment UFC is kind of lacking for star-power. Is Zuffa looking to branch out a bit? I reckon we will know by the end of the year. I'm rooting against Zuffa in this one though.
This would be really bad for boxing and it would damage the sport even more so than how it is being run now. Boxers would earn less and rankings would be manipulated resulting in a farce with Dana making more money.
I would like to believe that boxing is entrenched enough that even someone as powerful as Dana and Zuffa would face a lot of blowback if they so much as tried to enter the market. I find it very ballsy of them to even entertain this notion seeing as how they have been bogged down in anti-trust lawsuits for years as far as MMA is concerned.
I would hope they get rejected on what they have done in the past.
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