After at the moment’s preliminary announcement of a brand new boxing promotion firm that can create a boxing league, Dana White — who will run the corporate — speaks about their plans going ahead together with some excerpts from Alalshikh himself. Right here’s what they needed to say about rebuilding the game as we all know it.
White on his plans for brand spanking new boxing league
“There’s a whole lot of younger expertise on the market, up-and-coming expertise that individuals don’t learn about, and we’re going to stack playing cards from the primary struggle of the night time to the primary occasion which can be filled with good fights. You’re going to see a whole lot of guys who’re undefeated preventing their method as much as win the world title.
“My huge beef with boxing has all the time been no person has ever invested again into the game, but you’ve gotten all these promoters who take, take, take and by no means reinvest. No one within the historical past of the game has invested extra money into boxing in such a brief period of time as Turki has.
“Now that we’ve received the deal performed, what we do now’s begin to construct the infrastructure. We’ve received to construct a crew, then we have now to exit and get a rights deal. Whoever we find yourself doing a take care of we are able to construction this factor to regardless of the community wants. We will placed on as many fights as they need.
“After we began the UFC that they had like 12 contracts…We’re going to have Olympians, we’re going to have guys which can be already undefeated on the market and have established information, plus Turki has a whole lot of commitments for a number of the huge fights with a few of they guys which can be on the market proper now. There’s a whole lot of enjoyable, thrilling fights to make on the market, and you understand how I run reveals — the reside occasions will all change, it is going to be a lot better than something you’ve ever seen earlier than.
“You received’t have one struggle after which a podcast occurs, after which one other struggle occurs 45 minutes later and also you see 4 fights in six hours. All of that stuff goes to vary once we begin working the present”
Alalshikh on partnering with White to run the corporate
“Dana, he have very huge expertise, he have the machine of TKO and he’s bulldozer. He’ll go and clear the best way and we’re behind him. I give him yesterday the flag and the headache on the similar time, and I say to him ‘come on, clear the sphere.’”
Whyte on whether or not we would see a few of his UFC fighters crossover to boxing underneath this new endeavor
“No, by no means. I believe there are (UFC) guys that wish to field however I actually don’t wish to see any of that. I believe we’ll maintain the boxing guys in boxing and the MMA guys in MMA.
“What we care about is discovering the younger, up-and-coming expertise and constructing these fights as much as discover out who’s the very best is in every weight class, and there received’t be six completely different champions in every weight class. There will probably be one. You’ll know who the very best heavyweight is, the very best mild heavyweight is…folks will really know.”
Alalshikh on his imaginative and prescient for the course of the corporate
“We care about you, the younger era. Once I got here to boxing I had a whole lot of research, the common [age] of the followers turned 40+. The rationale, nobody wish to take the danger within the huge fights, as Dana mentioned, lengthy, lengthy occasion, completely different platform to see the occasion[s], no huge fights — for that, the younger era doesn’t care.
“Now we’re focusing rather a lot, on the similar time — additionally with UFC — [at] the identical time we would like video video games, we would like animation, we would like films, we would like a whole lot of issues, merchandise. Numerous issues will occur. And with the connection with TKO, they’ve the expertise, and the connection with [Dana White], this man constructed franchise from scratch. We’ll [succeed].”
White on the primary deliberate occasion they’ll maintain on September 12
“When it’s time to announce, we have now an enormous struggle — actually an enormous struggle that solely this man [Alalashikh] may make occur. This man is the one man that may make a struggle like this occur. We’ll announce it once we’re able to however [Alalshikh] has introduced boxing again, that is Day 1, we’re making our announcement and we’re going to begin constructing this sport again up from floor zero.”
