Dana White says the new boxing company that he and Turki Alalshikh have created will mean there will no longer be other champions outside their league. He’s assuming that the four sanctioning bodies [IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO] will stop functioning but that sounds like he’s dreaming.
One Champion Illusion
Those sanctioning bodies and their promoters will still be putting on fights outside of this new league. White & Turki’s boxing league sounds an ambitious endeavor meant with good intentions, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to work.
I’m surprised Turki can’t see through what Dana is saying and figure it out for himself that his league won’t create just one entity that controls the entire sport. It’s going to fragment it more than it already is. What White did with the UFC won’t work for boxing. It can’t. The sport is different, and it’s a waste of time.
Dana says they’re going to follow the UFC model by building the company slowly, and have the fighters competing against ONLY the best. You can do that in the UFC because fights end quickly with submission holds or fast knockouts due to the small gloves. The fighters don’t take terrible punishment in the UFC the way they do in boxing when they’re facing “The best.”
In boxing, it’s impossible to have the best fighters facing each other repeatedly. That doesn’t work. The fighters will get worn out fast because they take repeated headshots for 12 rounds, unlike in the UFC.
A ‘Meat Grinder’?
Putting the best against the best will lead to a bunch of shot fighters and constant need for replacements. If you’re a fighter, do you really want to enter that meat grinder and be washed up within a year or two? That’s like going to war and getting chewed up. That’s not a good deal for a fighter. If you’re a fighter, you’re better off not joining the new league and having a long career with one of the established promotional companies.
“We’re going to build from the ground up and restructure the whole sport of boxing,” said Dana White to ESPN about him and Turki Alalshikh creating a new boxing league. “We want to find the young upcoming talent and build them up to find who the best in each weight class [for their new boxing league].
“There won’t be six different champions in each weight class, there will be one [within White & Turki’s company but there WILL still be four sanctioning bodies outside of their company]. You will know who the best heavyweight is, and the best light heavyweight [for their company].
“If you ask the fans, ‘Who’s the champion at this weight? Who’s the champion at this weight or that weight,’ people will actually know,” said White.
What Dana White fails to say is that the four sanctioning bodies will still operate outside of his new boxing league. He’s naive if he thinks the sanctioning bodies will go out of business.
They will still have their champions, and the promoters will still work with them. What Whyte and Turki are doing is just creating more fragmentation, which will confuse fans even more.
The only way fans will recognize their fighters as champions is if the four sanctioning bodies cease to exist. Other than that, this is just another promotional company operating in isolation. That’s what we’ve been seeing for years.
