UFC CEO Dana White is wholly unthreatened by the merger between PFL and Most Valuable Promotions.
PFL and MVP announced on Thursday that the two companies have come together, with full brand integration targeted for Jan. 1. The likes of Jake Paul, Nakisa Badarian and John Martin have touted the collaboration as a landscape-shifting move.
It remains to be seen where the merged product will consistently air or stream in 2027, and the type of fight cards the MVP MMA promotion will be able assemble. There's optimism throughout the MMA community about the venture, but not on the side of the longtime UFC boss.
"I don't know anything about what they're doing," White told Oscar Willis of The Mac Life on Friday. "It probably makes sense when sh*t isn't
working for anybody, we should all get together. Let's take two organizations that don't sell tickets and nobody watches, and let's merge them together and make a bigger company that we won't sell tickets to and nobody will watch."
Although White admitted that quote comes with some sarcasm, but made it clear that it's not something he finds concerning. White has made it clear that he never compares the UFC to other MMA organizations, but rather puts it on the level of the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, as well as numerous other sporting or entertainment events.
White has said in the past that other promotions are needed to keep the entire MMA ecosystem in a healthy place, so in that vein, he had positive words.
"I've said this 100 times, and I'm just f*cking around (about the other comment), but I've said this 100 times: I don't look at any of those guys as our competition," White said. "We're in a whole other f*cking stratosphere now. I'm competing with all the majors. Those guys aren't my competition, so good luck to them all. I wish them all the best."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dana White unthreatened by MVP-PFL merger: 'Good luck to them'
