Boxing should bow to UFC's Dana White
By Bernard Fernandez
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Sports Writer
Dana White isn't King of the World - not yet, anyway - but the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship wields a monarch's power over his particular domain. White doesn't even own the largest chunk of Zuffa LLC, the Las Vegas-based parent company of UFC (brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta do), but he has been ceded nearly absolute control to run the operation as he sees fit. That makes White the foremost mover and shaker in mixed martial arts, a burgeoning enterprise in which UFC controls roughly 90 percent of the global market.
And make no mistake, White isn't hesitant to exercise his authority swiftly and emphatically.
At the conclusion of UFC 101 at the Wachovia Center, UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, who is widely considered to be the best MMA fighter on the planet, acknowledged his future likely will include much more time at light-heavyweight. Even so, Silva stressed, he would never consent to sharing the Octagon with the UFC's reigning 205-pound titlist, fellow Brazilian Lyoto Machida.
"Lyoto's my friend. He's my brother," Silva said. "There's no way that fight will happen. I'd have a problem with it."
To which White, standing a few feet away at the podium, responded, "The fights that everybody wants to see, especially the super fights, I will make. Obviously, [Silva and Machida] are friends. But this has nothing to do with friendship. It's always about who's best. It's about competing against somebody else.
"I'll make that fight. I promise you, I'll make that fight."
Normally, I'm not a proponent of monopolies and monopolists. Having more players is supposed to improve the game, right? But there are exceptions to every rule, as UFC is proving in relation to the disjointed state of boxing, its more traditional combat-sport cousin.
White, a onetime amateur boxer, came up with his master plan for the UFC's galloping success by extrapolating all the blunders he saw boxing was making in its unintentional campaign to self-destruct.
"That's how this company was built," White said a few days before UFC 101. "We were built on all the things that boxing did wrong. We used that as a blueprint for what not to do."
A harsh assessment perhaps, but spot-on. Boxing as presently constituted is its own worst enemy, a hodgepodge of too many sanctioning bodies, too many weight classes, too many champions, too many promoters and too many internecine rivalries.
Think not? Hey, the people who run the WBC don't get along with the people who run the IBF, who don't get along with the people who run the WBA, who don't get along with the people at the WBO. On the promotional front, Don King chafes at working with Bob Arum who has little use for Richard Schaefer and . . .
Well, you get the idea. Boxing's many fiefdoms are in stark contrast to the UFC's relatively peaceful kingdom that is overseen by a ruler who represents the quintessential American success story. What else can you say of a guy who not so very long ago was a bellhop in a Boston hotel before he came up with a better idea and became a multimillionaire?
To tell the truth, White's iron fist isn't always encased in a velvet glove. He can be loud, opinionated and profane. If he were a doctor, patients might complain about his bedside manner. But most no doubt would accept a bit of brusqueness if they were assured the treatment would be a success.
My preferred analogy, maybe because I've always been fond of "The Adventures of Robin Hood," the great 1938 flick starring Errol Flynn, is that boxing has too many Prince Johns and no wise King Richard the Lionheart. England was a mess after Richard went off to fight the Crusades, but upon his return the men of Sherwood Forest stopped bucking the evil regime of Prince John and his minions, knelt in homage and pledged fealty to their true liege.
Try to imagine what Dana the Lionheart could implement in boxing were he given the same big stick he has in UFC. The Prince Johns who oversee the alphabet organizations would be banished to a deserted atoll in the Pacific Ocean. There would be fewer champions and those who did hold title belts would for the most part be undisputed and hailed as such. If people demanded to see a particular matchup, the shaved-head dude on the throne would mandate that it happen at the earliest possible date.
White already has exercised such authority for the betterment of his subjects. When UFC fans grumbled after he announced a main-event pairing of Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson for UFC 103 on Sept. 19 in Dallas, the king of MMA did a quick about-face and substituted Vitor Belfort for Henderson. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, boxing devotees wait . . . and wait . . . and wait for the really good stuff that happens along only occasionally.
"I like boxing," White reiterated. "But boxing is doing it again with the next Floyd Mayweather fight. Nobody wants to see [Mayweather fight Juan Manuel Marquez]. Fans do not want to see that fight, but that's what they're going to have crammed down their throats.
"Why don't they do Mayweather-[Manny] Pacquiao? That's the fight everybody wants to see."
If we all lived in Dana White's world, Mayweather-Pacquiao is what we would get. We'd get Silva-Machida, too, and brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko squaring off for boxing's undisputed heavyweight championship, no matter what their mom requested.
Boxing, in fact, already appears to be responding to the UFC business model, although none of the principals would ever admit to it. Showtime has announced plans for a six-man super-middleweight tournament, and 30 or so promoters recently met in New York to discuss forming some sort of coalition that would help break some of the old logjams. My guess is that none of this happens without the UFC ratcheting up the pressure.
Let's just hope that enough time remains to make things right.
"To be honest, I think the problem with boxing now is that it's too late," White said. "It's too late to fix it. For someone to come in and throw the kind of money at boxing you'd have to throw at it, I just don't see anybody out there willing to do that, especially in these hard economic times."
By Bernard Fernandez
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Sports Writer
Dana White isn't King of the World - not yet, anyway - but the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship wields a monarch's power over his particular domain. White doesn't even own the largest chunk of Zuffa LLC, the Las Vegas-based parent company of UFC (brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta do), but he has been ceded nearly absolute control to run the operation as he sees fit. That makes White the foremost mover and shaker in mixed martial arts, a burgeoning enterprise in which UFC controls roughly 90 percent of the global market.
And make no mistake, White isn't hesitant to exercise his authority swiftly and emphatically.
At the conclusion of UFC 101 at the Wachovia Center, UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, who is widely considered to be the best MMA fighter on the planet, acknowledged his future likely will include much more time at light-heavyweight. Even so, Silva stressed, he would never consent to sharing the Octagon with the UFC's reigning 205-pound titlist, fellow Brazilian Lyoto Machida.
"Lyoto's my friend. He's my brother," Silva said. "There's no way that fight will happen. I'd have a problem with it."
To which White, standing a few feet away at the podium, responded, "The fights that everybody wants to see, especially the super fights, I will make. Obviously, [Silva and Machida] are friends. But this has nothing to do with friendship. It's always about who's best. It's about competing against somebody else.
"I'll make that fight. I promise you, I'll make that fight."
Normally, I'm not a proponent of monopolies and monopolists. Having more players is supposed to improve the game, right? But there are exceptions to every rule, as UFC is proving in relation to the disjointed state of boxing, its more traditional combat-sport cousin.
White, a onetime amateur boxer, came up with his master plan for the UFC's galloping success by extrapolating all the blunders he saw boxing was making in its unintentional campaign to self-destruct.
"That's how this company was built," White said a few days before UFC 101. "We were built on all the things that boxing did wrong. We used that as a blueprint for what not to do."
A harsh assessment perhaps, but spot-on. Boxing as presently constituted is its own worst enemy, a hodgepodge of too many sanctioning bodies, too many weight classes, too many champions, too many promoters and too many internecine rivalries.
Think not? Hey, the people who run the WBC don't get along with the people who run the IBF, who don't get along with the people who run the WBA, who don't get along with the people at the WBO. On the promotional front, Don King chafes at working with Bob Arum who has little use for Richard Schaefer and . . .
Well, you get the idea. Boxing's many fiefdoms are in stark contrast to the UFC's relatively peaceful kingdom that is overseen by a ruler who represents the quintessential American success story. What else can you say of a guy who not so very long ago was a bellhop in a Boston hotel before he came up with a better idea and became a multimillionaire?
To tell the truth, White's iron fist isn't always encased in a velvet glove. He can be loud, opinionated and profane. If he were a doctor, patients might complain about his bedside manner. But most no doubt would accept a bit of brusqueness if they were assured the treatment would be a success.
My preferred analogy, maybe because I've always been fond of "The Adventures of Robin Hood," the great 1938 flick starring Errol Flynn, is that boxing has too many Prince Johns and no wise King Richard the Lionheart. England was a mess after Richard went off to fight the Crusades, but upon his return the men of Sherwood Forest stopped bucking the evil regime of Prince John and his minions, knelt in homage and pledged fealty to their true liege.
Try to imagine what Dana the Lionheart could implement in boxing were he given the same big stick he has in UFC. The Prince Johns who oversee the alphabet organizations would be banished to a deserted atoll in the Pacific Ocean. There would be fewer champions and those who did hold title belts would for the most part be undisputed and hailed as such. If people demanded to see a particular matchup, the shaved-head dude on the throne would mandate that it happen at the earliest possible date.
White already has exercised such authority for the betterment of his subjects. When UFC fans grumbled after he announced a main-event pairing of Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson for UFC 103 on Sept. 19 in Dallas, the king of MMA did a quick about-face and substituted Vitor Belfort for Henderson. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, boxing devotees wait . . . and wait . . . and wait for the really good stuff that happens along only occasionally.
"I like boxing," White reiterated. "But boxing is doing it again with the next Floyd Mayweather fight. Nobody wants to see [Mayweather fight Juan Manuel Marquez]. Fans do not want to see that fight, but that's what they're going to have crammed down their throats.
"Why don't they do Mayweather-[Manny] Pacquiao? That's the fight everybody wants to see."
If we all lived in Dana White's world, Mayweather-Pacquiao is what we would get. We'd get Silva-Machida, too, and brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko squaring off for boxing's undisputed heavyweight championship, no matter what their mom requested.
Boxing, in fact, already appears to be responding to the UFC business model, although none of the principals would ever admit to it. Showtime has announced plans for a six-man super-middleweight tournament, and 30 or so promoters recently met in New York to discuss forming some sort of coalition that would help break some of the old logjams. My guess is that none of this happens without the UFC ratcheting up the pressure.
Let's just hope that enough time remains to make things right.
"To be honest, I think the problem with boxing now is that it's too late," White said. "It's too late to fix it. For someone to come in and throw the kind of money at boxing you'd have to throw at it, I just don't see anybody out there willing to do that, especially in these hard economic times."
Comment