The war between Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn and UFC / Zuffa Boxing head Dana White continues, and Hearn believes the boxing side of things is distracting White and parent company TKO from running the UFC properly.
Hearn made an appearance on the Ariel Helwani show on Tuesday and discussed White and TKO’s continued insistence on being a part of the upcoming Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua fight. As Hearn has said many times before, Joshua has a signed contract that says White and TKO are not allowed
to be promoters. White is saying if that contract is so clear, why don’t you just sue?
Past Joshua vs. Fury, Hearn doesn’t understand why White is spending so much time on boxing when he clearly doesn’t have a deep knowledge of the current slate of fighters out there.
“You’re already getting criticized in your press that you’re either reading off scripts, you’re being told what to say, or you’re losing your rag with reporters,” Hearn said. “I just speak [boxing] because I know it. And you see the difference when he does a boxing presser versus a UFC presser. Like, you could literally say to him, ‘Right, Dana, name me six middleweights that your guys could find.’ He wouldn’t even know. It’s a huge weakness.”
“Because when you’re in front of people, it doesn’t matter when you’re hiding behind this huge multi-billion dollar corporation and UFC and WWE and whatever. When you strip it back, there’s no substance behind it.”
It’s clear what the goal is with Zuffa Boxing: to create another monopsony power like the UFC or WWE. And the promotion is off to a good start: they have Paramount paying them for broadcast rights, they have Turki Alalshikh and the Saudis paying the big purses and TKO promoter fees. They even have the Muhammad Ali Boxing Revival Act working its way through the U.S. Senate that would restructure boxing in America to use the UFC model.
But Eddie Hearn believes TKO and White are taking their eyes off the real golden goose that is the UFC, and that could cost them as a new batch of would-be competitors emerge.
“Can you believe the depths that they are going to for Zuffa boxing?” Hearn asked. “When you look at the size of the UFC business, the revenue that it’s driving, the profit of the company. And you’ve just basically gone, ‘I will leave that, and we’ll concentrate on Zuffa boxing.’ Dana White’s going to all these UFC events all Zuffa branded up. You know? It’s like, what happened to the UFC?”
“That product is under threat right now,” he declared. “Big threat. Not just in terms of its lack of stars, but in terms of competition. Like, you got people out there who are ready to take it on. You gotta be ready and have the energy to fight. But the arrogance says, ‘I don’t know. It’s the UFC. It’s fine. It’s absolutely fine. We’ll be fine.’ And maybe it will be. But I don’t know.”
It’ll take more than one event (like MVP MMA) or some promising press (like Ki MMA) to make the UFC sweat. But there’s no denying that Dana White is distracted at best and disinterested at worst when it comes to TKO’s MMA product. Will it cost him? It certainly seems to be weakening the product, but that hasn’t affected TKO’s bottom line yet. So as far as they’re concerned, why should they worry?
