The one pathway for UFC, boxing, and Saudi Arabia to get married

For the first time, Zuffa Boxing might actually happen.

Dana White’s true passion has always been boxing. It’s the sport where he has always wanted to be a major player. Don’t be fooled.

He became larger than life in Mixed Martial Arts. Now he’s in a position to turn that monopolistic success into leverage for an entry into boxing.

Yes, Dana White celebrates “King” Callum Walsh the way Bob Baffert celebrates a prized horse in the Kentucky Derby. If you know the history of Dana White, none of this should be a surprise to you at all.

If you lived through the insufferable hype of the “UFC is king, boxing is dead” era of commentary on ESPN in the 2010s, Pardon This Interruption.

Then Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor changed everything for the mainstream narrative of boxing globally.

UFC allowing McGregor to take the fight demonstrated the new thinking of Endeavor ownership. Grab the cash.

Let the wayward face of MMA grab his cash in order to kill any sort of fighter leverage over UFC pay. It’s a move that Lorenzo Fertitta resisted when he ran the show because he understood the ramifications.

He knew that mixed martial artists would likely lose in the boxing ring and that would undo more than a decade’s work establishing that MMA was the superior fighting sport.

Zuffa had worked for more than a decade to establish MMA as the premiere combat sport in the world.

Endeavor didn’t care. They had a completely different business model in mind. Volume. Television. Hollywood. Government contracts.

Meanwhile, Endeavor’s new ownership of UFC changed a lot of Dana’s calculations. He was no longer the boss. He answered to Ari Emanuel. And despite his huge financial success, Dana’s thirst to conquer boxing has never diminished.

Because of his wealth and Endeavor-linked connections, Dana White has an opportunity to get into the fight business that he truly loves — boxing.

Oscar de la Hoya is a caricature of himself. Bob Arum is aging out, albeit gracefully (by his terms). Al Haymon has an occasional fight or two left in him but he remains mercurial.

That leaves the field wide open for Dana White to utilize Endeavor’s massive resources and grab a leading position in the sport which still has strong global appeal.

The problem for Dana White’s long-awaited entry into boxing has always been money. Boxing is expensive. Boxing’s economic model violates every principle he ever learned in UFC. You don’t go from a business model that pays under 20% of revenue to fighters to a business model that pays top dollar for heavyweight championship fights. Ask Francis Ngannou.

Boxing only works for Dana White if someone else is footing the bill.

Luckily for him, there happens to be a major world government financing big fights in boxing right now. A world government whose representative recently sponsored the UFC 306 event at The Sphere.

UFC Zuffa Boxing works if the financier is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Who says dreams can’t come true?

Well, there are two hurdles in the way towards making Zuffa Boxing a reality as a promotional force in boxing. However…

If these two hurdles are cleared by both Endeavor and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we might not only have a pathway for Dana White to gain a foothold in boxing but also a method for the Kingdom to permanently establish a global monopoly in a sport they so desperately want to achieve.