Matchroom Boxing chief Eddie Hearn has said that Dana White might have a tough time adapting to the architecture of boxing promotion if he ever opted to expand his combat sports empire.
For years, White toyed with the idea of launching Zuffa Boxing — an enterprise designed, in theory at least, to bring some of the tools from the UFC’s promotional machine into a new combat sport. However, faced with some of the realities of the potential endeavour White subsequently withdrew his interest and channeled his energies into his Power Slap organisation.
But should he attempt to dabble in boxing again, Eddie Hearn says that White would run into issues because of boxing’s more fractured model.
“I think where he’d struggle is the lack of control,” Hearn said of White to Give Me Sport.
“the reason their business is so successful, and I’m very envious of it, is fighters sign a central contract. And it’s not just a case of you do as you’re told, but you are told who you are fighting and the day, and ‘we’ll see you there’. No arguments, no re-negotiations. You know what the number says in your contract? Good luck. Not, ‘oh, I’m not fighting him’. Or ‘you’d have to speak to my advisor’, or ‘I want to share at a gate’, or ‘I want this’.
“Sometimes that probably comes with a Conor McGregor, or a big superstar,” Hearn explained, but I’m very envious of the fact that he could just say, ‘alright, you versus you. That’s the fight. See you there’, and then just go out and announce it. And I think he’d struggled to come to terms with that lack of control that you have in boxing.”
But Hearn, ever conscious of a potential opportunity, did leave the door open for a potential collaboration between two of combat sport’s most successful characters.
“I think if he was to do something in boxing, I think his preference would be to do it with us, if he was going to do it with anybody,” Hearn said.
