Dana White has reiterated his desire to see one world champion per weight class following the announcement that his influential Zuffa Boxing outfit had teamed up with UK broadcast giants Sky Sports.
The partnership, which is a “multi-year” agreement, will see Sky broadcast all Zuffa Boxing cards with at least five per year being staged in the UK. Sky Sports have long been the biggest broadcast platform for boxing in the UK having previously worked alongside Frank Warren, Eddie Hearn and Ben Shalom. The link-up with Sky, alongside White’s blue-sky thinking, will undoubtedly boost Zuffa’s profile, and White’s ideas, further.
“You’d have one champion in every weight class and you’d be in a situation where people can rattle off who all the champions are in each weight class again,” said White, who trained boxers before making his name when he bought, and soon transformed, the UFC in 2001.
However, White walks into a dense and overgrown landscape, one long used to multiple belts in every division and four sanctioning bodies – WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO – owning the rankings market. It’s a mess that White admits can’t be cleared up overnight.
“Everything right now is a work in progress for us getting into this,” White told Sky Sports. “When you have a guy like Jai Opetaia, this guy has dreams and goals and things he wanted to achieve. When we sign these kids we’re going to figure out how they can still achieve and accomplish all the things they want to do inside Zuffa Boxing. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be challenging but that’s the plan right now. It’s all a work in progress.”
Opetaia, of course, is now in a well-publicized battle regarding his IBF cruiserweight title after he opted to fight for the inaugural Zuffa belt earlier this month. White is keen to focus on established stars like Opetaia while building strong foundations for the future.
“We're going to do everything from kids you've never heard of to the biggest fights that you can possibly make in the sport and everything in between,” he said.
“Me personally I do a show we call Dana White's Contender Series where we take the best unsigned talent for UFC, that's my favourite thing to do. I like that better than the big blockbuster fights. For me I am a true fight fan to the core. I love finding up-and-coming talent, building them up and seeing if they can become world champions.
“I love everything about the sport. We want to make obviously the biggest fights that we can possibly make, that we can do at Wembley and all the different great arenas around the UK. But I also love seeing the up-and-coming kids' fights.”
