Dana White on Zuffa Boxing and the UK: ‘I’m all in on this. It’s rolling faster than I’d anticipated’ | Boxing News

Dana White is looking to bring about a new era in the sport with the founding of Zuffa Boxing.

Promoter White, who also runs mixed martial arts powerhouse UFC, has agreed a multi-year deal with Sky Sports to broadcast their events, including at least five fight cards a year on UK soil.

“We’re very excited. Sky Sports is the reason in my opinion that boxing has stayed alive over the last several years,” White said. “It’s a big deal for us.

“This isn’t just another television deal for us, it’s a big deal especially when you look at what we want to do with the business.”

His ambitions for British boxing are extensive. White said: “I always tell people if you’ve never seen a fight live in the UK you have to go and experience it, it’s incredible. I credit the UK for keeping boxing alive in the last 10, 15 years whatever it is and Sky too.

“We’re doing a minimum of five [UK shows] but I believe we’re going to do a lot more than that. This thing’s been rolling faster than I’d anticipated.”

White wants to be a revitalising force for the sport. “A lot of young people haven’t seen boxing, not even on television let alone live. Our goal is to introduce a lot of young people over the next couple of years to the sport. It’s a great sport, it’s fun and when you match-make it right and you have the best fighting the best, boxing’s a great sport,” he told Sky Sports.

He does plan to implement a different model with their shows and promises to be bold when it comes to matchmaking.

“Boxing hasn’t had a middle class for a very long time. When you think about the UFC fights, we’ll do the main event, co-main event and build a card. Fans are just as excited about the fights that are in the middle as they are about the co-main and the main, which hasn’t happened in boxing in a long time,” White said.

“We want to do fights that stylistically match up right, and the best fighting the best,” he continued.

“Everybody doesn’t have to be undefeated to have a fanbase. In boxing what happens is when a guy loses one fight, everybody loses interest in him, including promoters, which won’t happen a couple of years into this with us.

“It’s been fun talking to a lot of the fighters and seeing how excited guys are to sign with us and seeing some change in the sport.”

Zuffa is introducing their own title belts but his vision is still taking shape. It remains “a work in progress”.

White said: “We did the Canelo-Crawford fight, we broke all the stadium records. We can do a fight that big and then we’ve been doing fights at the Apex. We can do everything in between that. So it’s all a work in progress, there is no ‘this is all we’re doing’.

“I said I don’t want to work with the sanctioning organisations but Jai Opetaia wanted to unify. All of these guys that are in boxing right now have dreams and goals and things that they wanted to accomplish in the sport.

“When they come to Zuffa Boxing we want to help them accomplish what they want to do while being with us too. So not every case is going to be exactly the same and we will figure out how to make it work.”

White’s own commitment is serious and long term. “Everything in life is about timing and everything right now has aligned for this to happen and I’ve built a really good team around me. I’m excited about this, I’m all in on this and I’ve actually been having fun,” he said.

“This thing’s going to be two years ahead of where I expected to be at the end of ’26 and now four fights in who knows? It’s moving much quicker than I had anticipated. I don’t ever underestimate anybody. Where we sit right now, I have really high expectations going into ’27.

“Looking down the barrel of what we have going on in ’26 and into ’27, it’s incredible.”