Dana White emphatically denied any interest in cross-over fights between UFC and Zuffa Boxing.
Zuffa Boxing is still in its infancy relative to the UFC, having launched with the Terence Crawford versus Canelo Alvarez fight last year. But it has dominated headlines with the $15 million signing of Conor Benn, sparking uproar between critics and UFC fighters alike.
One way many thought that issue could be remediated is by giving certain fighters the opportunity to box if they so choose, with the likes of Alex Pereira and Max Holloway making it clear they would if they could.
White was asked on Saturday following Fight Night in London whether that could be the case, and he was certain that it would not.
“No way in Hell,” he said. “The cross-over fights suck.”
He was asked if that extended to a fight on the scale of Pereira against Oleksandr Usyk, to which he simply repeated “No.”
“That’s not what we do,” he continued. “I want to see the best fighters in the world fight the best fighters in the world. I mean, I’d like to see Jai Opetaia fight Usyk… There’s other networks and other people that do that s***, it’s not what I do.”
Of course that’s not entirely true, since White backed Conor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017. But he alluded to that anyway: “I did it once… It was financially unbelievable, but how many times can you keep fooling people with that?”
White continued to say that the only attraction fights that pull big numbers are the ones involving Mike Tyson, and echoed that “It’s just not what I do.”
There has been a swathe of MMA fighters over the past half-decade to cross-over to boxing, mostly for the larger pay-day, including undefeated UFC Heavyweight Champion Francis Ngannou and innovator of the BMF moniker Nate Diaz. Though they had to leave UFC before stepping into the squared circle, and have yet to find any real success.
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