UFC President Dana White has continued to tease the possibility of a move into boxing - with a sub-company called Zuffa Boxing.
But White has been discussing this move since late 2017 - when the UFC teamed up with Showtime to put together the junior middleweight cross-sport fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor.
In a recent interview, White stated that he plans to unveil his boxing plans in the very near future.
In the opinion of White, the boxing business model is broken - and he believes that he's got the solution to fix the sport's issues.
One of the items he touches on, is boxing relying on top names - instead of holding smaller events to built up the much bigger shows.
“If you look at the way that it was in the 80s, 90s, even the early 2000s, you had [a few] guys that were [making money]. You had Floyd [Mayweather], you had [Manny] Pacquiao, [Oscar] Del La Hoya, maybe a couple other guys,” White said (via MMA Fighting). “But boxing as a whole, you’re talking about tons of fighters that weren’t making big money and weren’t in big fights. I think that the sport could be so much more.
“If you look at what [the UFC has] built over the last 20 years, and our events, and how many events we’re doing — we’re doing 42 events a year. Every time you go to one of our events, they’re either sold out or they break the record for ticket sales. This year we’re going to break the record for ticket sales, ever, in UFC history. There are more tickets being sold this year than ever before in the history of the company. We continue to put on these fights, people come and see them. They’re on TV, free, they’re on ESPN, which everybody has. And we’re still doing million-dollar gates on these things without the Mayweathers and those types of fights.
“You could build a business [like that] with boxing — build a real business. You’ve just got to break it and rebuild it.”