Speaker 1: But it is my great pleasure to welcome to the
show this week the one and only Dana White. You
know him as the UFC, the top dog at the UFC,
and now Dana, you're coming into boxing. I'll just explain
what's going on. You know, your your parent company, TKO,
made a deal with Turkey al Chic to bring your
forces together to create this so called boxing league that
you're going to be the front man for. Similar I
guess what you do with UFC and and try to
try to make your bones and boxing like you've done
on other combat sports. So first of all, welcome and
congratulations on your deal.
Speaker 2: Thanks buddy, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my pleasure. So that got finalized and as has
been announced to UFC. Alright, I guess it's TKO really.
You get a ten million dollar fee from the Saudi's
to run their promotion an annual and annual, an annual feed,
to put this on and to work the magic that
you have done in the MMA space. And so you
have talked Dana for many years about becoming involved in
boxing promotion. And so my first question that is why
is right now the right time for this? Because you
have talked about it a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've looked into it a lot and and
sort of played with it. And then literally every time
I got on the phone with a boxing guy, I
would literally say, why the hell am I doing this?
Speaker 2: This is insane?
Speaker 3: You know, why would I put myself through this? And
everything in life, and definitely everything in my life has
come down to timing. And you know, I know a
lot of people are going to talk about money and money.
I got money, I could go out and raise money.
I had raised the money at one time, and everything
I do, everything by gut, and it just didn't feel
right to me. About a year and a half ago,
Nick conn made the introduction to me in Turkey, and
you know, I'm a weird dude and like I like
to stay in my own little space, my own little bubble,
and do my thing.
Speaker 2: I wasn't interested in any of this stuff. But over
the last year.
Speaker 3: And a half he and I have created a relationship
to the point where not only do I like him,
I trust him.
Speaker 2: I've done business with him, and he and I are
very aligned in our outlook on boxing, our thoughts for
the future.
Speaker 3: And this was the right time, the right place, and
the right people to do it with.
Speaker 1: Well, I will give my listeners a brief disclosure. Nick
Cohn represented me as an agent for fifteen years through
my career at ESPN, So just to get that out there.
Nobody can accuse me of not being honest about that.
I got to tell the people the real truth.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, but which I don't think
it has a bearing on what we're talking about or understood,
you know, you as a as a reporter or a journalist.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just Nick con is the one who
made the introduction. He used to be with CIA, then
he ended up with WWE, then we did the acquisition
of WWE.
Speaker 2: And you know, Nick is.
Speaker 3: A big, big big boxing fans.
Speaker 2: Has always had his and sort of in the uh you.
Speaker 1: Know, in the boxing business as I as I used
to joke around with Nick. I think that's why you
put up with me for so long, because I was
a boxing guy and he liked boxing. So there you go.
But you know, I understand how you're talking about how
this uh the introduction was made, But how did it
come about from the standpoint like let's do a deal?
Was it you saying to Turkey, Hey, let's do something
him saying to you, Hey, what do you think maybe
we should do some business on the boxing side of things.
Obviously you had worked together on MMA events with UFC,
and I just wondered, did it, like, how did that
come about in terms of who who was the one
that like asked for the first date?
Speaker 3: I guess you're You're you're the you're the you're the
only guy that's asked me that after doing one hundred.
Speaker 2: And fifty seven and that's that's. Ah.
Speaker 3: So Turkey wanted to hire me to come, uh run the.
Speaker 1: Boxing You don't like that's the ring stuff, the read
season stuff, the business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, basically what I'm gonna do now. Yeah, We're
going to do it through TKO.
Speaker 3: I'm not leaving the UFC or you know the things
that I'm working on here now.
Speaker 2: So we brought the whole thing into TKO.
Speaker 1: And so that was your sort of I guess I
don't want to come work for you and then leave UFC,
but we can still do business by doing it in
this manner, and he was open to that.
Speaker 3: It worked out that, you know, he and I both
like each other, trust each other and feel like we
are aligned h and what we want to do in
the sport, and we just ended up getting a deal done.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you have, as you mentioned, TKO, the parent
company of UFC now the parent company of WWE. You
also obviously have Power Slab. And it feels like, when
I look at it from the outside, I see, well,
you've got those particular things I just mentioned, but that
boxing was sort of the one missing element, let's say,
of the combat sports portfolio, and it made sense.
Speaker 2: It was not Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: What people are looking at as far as oh, does
this round out TKO and all? This has nothing to
do with the TKO side of it. I only do
things that I like to do with people that I
like to do with it do it with.
Speaker 5: Right and you know, power Slap for me, I saw it,
there was a gut thing and I wanted to do it,
so I went out and did it. And now the
same thing with boxing.
Speaker 3: I liked it. It's like if I like something, you know,
I'll I'll talk to Ari and I'm like, I want
to do this, can we do it? We end up
figuring out how to get it done.
Speaker 1: So one thing I'm interested in I've seen in a
lot of the particulars that have been put out. I
had obviously got the press release, and I've seen some
of the comments that have been made, some of the
things that have been said, Why are you referring just
to as a league. When I think of a league,
I think of like a team and they're going out
to play the other team. You know, because if you
think of like baseball, or you think of NFL or NBA.
But it seems like the word league is being used
to describe what I of you as a promotion.
Speaker 2: The word league.
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I hate the word league. Okay, so
we're on the same page with that.
Speaker 2: It's the boxing promotion.
Speaker 1: There we go, okay, promotion. The only thing is I
thought I was missing something. You know, I know you're not.
Speaker 3: You're You're absolutely right. I couldn't agree with you more.
But but but here's the difference. Uh, Skiff, you're in
the car. I got the great skipper Kelviro.
Speaker 2: The car will be skip.
Speaker 4: When when did when did boxing start?
Speaker 2: First place?
Speaker 3: Sixteen eighty one was the first boxing match?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Now think about this, Think about any brand, business, sport,
anything that has created trillions of dollars in revenue, been
around for hundreds.
Speaker 5: Of years, right, yeah, and at the end of the day,
there's nothing there, literally nothing.
Speaker 2: So I guess you could look at us as a.
Speaker 3: League because we're gonna build a business, right, We're actually
gonna build a business with boxing, which has never.
Speaker 2: Been done before. It's never even been attempted before.
Speaker 3: People say that it has because this guy raised money
and that guy raised money, but there was no no
plan to really build a league. All anybody's ever done
with the sport is take from it, take money, take money,
take money.
Speaker 2: Nobody's ever reinvested back in the sport.
Speaker 3: The only one who has ever invested in the sport
of boxect you shake Turkey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, understood, I get that. I mean it's ever invested.
Speaker 3: So we are going to build a business in where
we build this brand, which you know I'm looking at
at TKO being the name of it.
Speaker 2: You know, we're still kind of playing with some things.
There's a lot of things.
Speaker 3: That need to be worked out still as far as
the business goes. But we are building a business. We
are building a brand, so I could see where you know,
I know, Turkey called it a league.
Speaker 2: I even called it a league in the video. Today.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, it's it's you know,
if you call the NFL a league, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then the UFC. I guess you could call the
league whatever. You know, it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's complicated.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like that was actually that. It
was like the next question I had in my mind
is that I sort of looked at the announcement of
the league, so to speak, as somewhat audacious from the
standpoint that you make the deal with Turkey. Yet the league,
as you say, has no name yet, as you just mentioned,
to my knowledge, no broadcast deal in place yet, although
maybe you do and you haven't told anybody about it.
To my knowledge, you don't have fighters under contract just
yet in terms of the boxers, and no specific set
date other than in the press release saying first event
in twenty twenty six. So there's a lot of unanswered questions.
But it seems to me that the force of the
Dana White personality in Turkey al chic makes people sit
up and say, oh, this is legit, this has got
to be the real deal.
Speaker 2: It's legit, it's the real deal.
Speaker 3: And yes that you know we're in the part is
way ahead of the horse situation here. Right now we're announcing,
you know that, what we're doing, but there's still a
lot of work that needs to be done. Nick CON's
flying out the Vegas next week. He and I are
going to sit down and basically start building the infrastructure.
Speaker 2: I've already got the space.
Speaker 3: We're already ripping the space apart and starting to build
and figure out how many offices we're going to need
and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So there is no broadcaster in place yet, that is
what you're saying. No, no fighters on our contract yet, right,
So if.
Speaker 2: You wanted to ask me how many fights are you.
Speaker 3: Going to do a year, It's going to depend on, uh,
on who we do a deal with, what they're looking for.
Speaker 2: You know, I say this all the time.
Speaker 3: If you call Kevin Ka, who used to be the
uh you know, the head of Spike TV.
Speaker 2: If you call Eric Shanks from Fox you know, yep.
Speaker 3: If you call Chub Pataro, ask any of these guys
who the best sports partner uh they've ever been in
business with.
Speaker 2: I'm a good fucking partner, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So we will go in, we will cut a deal
with somebody and we will basically build this thing around
what they need for programming.
Speaker 1: Are you looking to do multiple deals, because I mean
there's plenty of professional sports outfits that have broadcast partners
that are more than one. NFL has a bunch of
NBA as a bunch, Major League Baseball has lots of
local They obviously just you know, are finishing with the ESPN,
but they also have bad Fox. Are you trying to
do multiple deals? Are you looking to have one home
that's going.
Speaker 3: To depend on how this whole thing plays out. What's
fascinating right now that's happening in the world.
Speaker 2: How are you? Then?
Speaker 1: I am fifty four years old.
Speaker 3: So we're the same age exactly when you and I
grew up Channel three, Channel.
Speaker 1: Five L Where I was it was six, ten and thirteen,
But I hear you same thing.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: Then in high school we had like thirty three channels
on cable satellite hit And then when you think of
the peak of linear television when ESPN was, you know,
getting seven bucks a sub and all this other stuff, right,
it was massive.
Speaker 2: Now you know, it's also linear starting to go away.
Speaker 3: We're heading into you know, the world is becoming a
much smaller place because of streaming.
Speaker 2: And I think there's going to.
Speaker 3: Be a channel three, Channel five, Channel Light and Channel
thirteen again globally. And the question is who's it going
to be? Is it going to be Amazon, YouTube, Disney?
You know, list goes on and on of who the
players are going to be. But what's fascinating right now?
And you look and you've got the NFL, college football, NBA,
college basketball, you got the NHL, the Major League Baseball,
the NBA, you got UFC, WWE and tennis. And the
list goes on and on of all these sports. Power
slap all these sports that are looking for rights deals
right now, right And I was just saying the other day,
it's going to be interesting because even the majors, unless sure,
the fucking NFL and college football, NBA's numbers are dropping drastically.
Speaker 2: You know, the.
Speaker 3: Major League Baseball just went back and ESPN turned them down.
Not only they turn them down the deal, they cut
their fucking what their deal was.
Speaker 1: In half, well more than half. It was five fifty
a year to two hundred they offered, right, So.
Speaker 2: It's going to get fascinating here. I just announced.
Speaker 3: So when I announced this on Friday, they embargo the
story on power Slap. I always go out and figure
out how to build shit without the help of any
You don't believe in my fucking thing, beautiful, no problem.
I'll go out and figure it out myself. That's what
I do, because then you get into the combat sports thing.
Top rank just lost their deal, right, Top rank lost
their deal.
Speaker 2: You got Eddie.
Speaker 3: Hearn, you got you know, these bare knuckle boxing guys
that are running around looking for everybody's looking for a
TV deal, everybody's.
Speaker 2: Looking for money.
Speaker 3: I always try to figure out how do I take
my thing to the next level and figure it out
on my own without our first part. Think about this,
Top Rank had ninety million dollars, right, My first Spike
deal was thirty five million bucks.
Speaker 1: Did pretty well of.
Speaker 3: Thirty five million dollars, you know. Then from there we
went to Fox.
Speaker 2: Our Fox deal was like one hundred and ten, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We had less money and just a little bit more
money than Top Rank did.
Speaker 2: And look at what we built.
Speaker 1: You went to a billion at ESPN. Yeah, so we're
in the ballpark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eight and change.
Speaker 1: Still pretty dark.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: So now you mentioned in in the press announcement that
the first event of this would be twenty twenty six. Now,
I hear rumors all the time, Dan, I'm listening to
the people. I'm talking to people every day in the
boxing space. May not follow UFC Ultra closely or anything
like that, but in boxing, I got a lot of
people that talk to me about a lot of different things.
Twenty twenty six may be the case, but I know
there's a mega event that's supposed to take place in
Las Vegas in September between Kenel Alvarez and Karence Crawford.
Kenel Alvarez just announced and Turkey and Hidt did a
four fight agreement that's going to commence with the fight
that will take place in Saudi Arabia coming up in May.
But that fight in September is supposed to be back
here in the United States. Boy, wouldn't it be make
a lot of sense that Canelo does not have a promoter,
specifically that Dana White, and this new league that doesn't
have a name yet, it starts at the very top
of the sport and promotes the biggest fight in North
America that you could possibly make right now, one of
the biggest fights in the world period is that on deck?
Speaker 2: That would be amazing, That would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Does that come up? I can't imagine that. It's not.
He's got the number one star on the sport. And
like I said, when all the people were talking about
Dana White coming into boxing, I was like, Okay, bring
it on. You know, I'm all for a competition. But
I can tell you one thing, even though I don't
know you, well, I've followed you. Dana White's not coming
into boxing to do four round plimentary fights and be
call it a day. He's going to do it. He's
going to try to do it at the absolute peak
level of the sport.
Speaker 3: Well, what I do is but what I do is
I come in and build things that people think can't
be done. I take niche sports and blow them up
and turn them into monsters.
Speaker 2: That's what I do. That's my passion, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at what I did with
the UFC, why the fuck would I get involved in
power slap?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Why would I? Why would I do that? You know why?
Speaker 3: Because I believe in it. I think it can be big,
and you know nobody else does. I mean, that's that's
basically what I do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I also believe that the sport of boxing is absolutely
broken and has to be fixed. It has to be
rebuilt from the ground up. And that's pretty much what
I'm good at.
Speaker 1: So are you going to be promoting Crawford and Canelo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not some guy that has to walk can
and and do you know I'll leave forman you know,
because you know it's it's a big ego play.
Speaker 2: It's the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: No, I'm thinking. I'm thinking that's the way to make
the splash. Though you can do all that stuff, but
you make the splash at the highest level.
Speaker 2: Listen, we made a splash today.
Speaker 3: I mean the announcement that we're going to do it
is a splash. But I'll say this to you, anything
is possible. Anything is possible.
Speaker 1: So one of the things in terms of boxing, you
check it it's broken. You know that it's that people
haven't invested in it through the years. That you're looking
to change that sort of concept the way things are done.
So I guess the question is what do you think
is the biggest thing that you can do in boxing
to make it better than all the things that you've
kind of ragged on it about over the years.
Speaker 2: What's the thing You just answered your own question.
Speaker 3: Literally, all the things that I have ragged on over
the years is exactly.
Speaker 1: What I know. But but there's got to be priorities.
Though you can't do everything at once.
Speaker 3: You can though you can. So here's here's how you
build a business. Right in the comments point everybody focuses
on all this other goofy shit. Number one is go
out and find the best up and coming talent that
you can find. Number two, put on the best fights
that you can possibly put on, from the first fight
of the night to.
Speaker 2: The last fight of the night.
Speaker 3: Make sure that the live in house production is off
the charts right, and that everybody who shows up that
has a good experience, and the people that are watching
at home have to have that same experience too on television.
And then the other thing that I do is I
sell holy shit moments, right, That's what I do for
a living.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I have to have three or four holy shit moments
a night to make the people that paid for tickets
and people that watch it on TV to feel like
they got their money's worth. We have gotten the UFC
brand to a place where I'll put on I'll say
I'm coming to a town, tickets will sell out before
I even announce the main event. I also have gotten,
you know, to a place with my fan base where
they know that if something falls off the card, people
don't start returning their tickets. They know I'm gonna put
something else on there. It's either as good or better
than the first fight we had. So I have a
really good relationship with my consumer and that's what boxing
doesn't have, and that's what.
Speaker 2: I need to build.
Speaker 1: So what do you think then are the differences? You
obviously have vast experience promoting MMA through your UFC affiliations, obviously,
but what are the what do you think is the
biggest difference then that you're going to need to do
maybe a little differently to promote the boxing it is.
You know, they're similar, but they are different sports. They
do have somewhat different fan bases. What are you looking
at in that respect?
Speaker 3: You need to build a good product. As long as
you build a good product, you know what I mean,
it's gonna I'll give you an example, like the difference
between UFC and other sports.
Speaker 2: Like I'm an MBA fan, I'm a Celtics fan, Right,
I shouldn't say I'm an MBA fan. I'm a Celtics fan.
Now when I when when when the.
Speaker 3: Games are on TV, you got to watch the last
six minutes of the game, right, Other than that.
Speaker 1: That goes with pretty much any basketball game.
Speaker 2: I guess it's true.
Speaker 3: And it's not a great work on TV in my opinion,
it's slow and boring and da da. But when you
go live, it's awesome. I love live basketball now. The
NFL is incredible on television. I don't like the NFL
so much live. I don't like being at the sitting
in the traffic and getting to the stadium.
Speaker 1: Well, we agree on both of those factors. I feel
the same way about the NBA and the NFL. What
you're saying, right, and the.
Speaker 3: Game looks different live than it does on TV. The
NFL is probably one of the most perfect products you'll
ever see on television.
Speaker 2: It's so good on fucking TV, right, yep.
Speaker 3: Now, boxing is bad live and bad on fucking TV.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily agree with that, but I hear what
you're saying. There's definitely things that can improve.
Speaker 3: The UFC is exactly opposite. Well, I'll give you an example.
My son who's been going to UFC his whole life.
He just went to the Tank Davis fight the other night.
He asked me to buy him tickets, so I bought
them tickets to the fight. He said the live experience
was terrible. He said it was completely fucking unorganized eyes
and it's just.
Speaker 2: He couldn't say enough bad things about it.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, when you watch it on TV, you fucking sit
there all night waiting for a fucking these guys will
put on a fight and then do a podcast, then
another fight will fucking come on and they do. You know,
you blow your whole evening sitting there waiting for them.
Speaker 1: I have to I will say this though, in terms
of what happened on Saturday with the Tank fight. And
I've been a critic of exactly what you said many times.
The PBC folks that ran that Tank Davis show, they
finally got it figured out because they actually was only
a few minutes between fights. They actually ran them in
pretty quick. They didn't have anthems and a lot of nonsense.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: They didn't even do some in ring interviews after some
of the pay per view fights. So that was actually
better than it's been, believe it or not.
Speaker 2: Apparently they didn't even do replays.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a whole different story. The one thing I
was thinking about, But it's not.
Speaker 3: It's part of the story, Dan, if you're not an
avid UFC watcher, right, But what happens is when something
happens I poke low blow, uh, you know, knock out,
the fucking re play plays during the fight. While the
fight's still happening, we do the replay. We have multiple
camera I.
Speaker 1: Am a fucking well, Dana. They did have They had
the replay, they just were not able to apparently to
transmit it in time from the truck to the replay.
Officially had to look at the official replay. But that's
a whole different matter.
Speaker 2: But it's not.
Speaker 3: It's all part of the fucking problem. It's all part
of the problem. There's no money going into the fucking
production the way that it should be. Our production is second.
Speaker 1: To none, and you're bringing that to this TKO project.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things I was thinking about though, when
I was asking about the differences between promoting and then
they in boxing. Yes, their things in terms of the
arena experience and as you just mentioned, the pacing. I
also think about on the business side, of things like
for example, uh, you know, like the boxing promoters, they
are bound by the Federal Muhammad ali Ak and so
they have certain things they have to do on the
business side of things that will make it different if
you're promoting boxing compared to and then a win is
not covered by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will be too, but none of these guys
think outside the box. The bigger problem with with boxing
promotion iss Nobody wants to spend the money, right, Nobody
wants to spend the money.
Speaker 2: You have to spend the money to be invested in
the business.
Speaker 1: Boxing is such a worldwide sport UFC, I mean, and
then you guys kind of created it. Not to say
it didn't exist before UFC came along, but you've obviously
changed it into you know, to become what it would
it became boxing. There's there's big time promotions that happen
all around the world in their own countries that they
do other things. I mean, you know, I don't know
if can you not are you looking to roll up
all these different places around the world to do this.
I mean a lot of great fighters and champions come
from all places in South America, Asia, throughout Europe, and
you know in in the former Soviet countries, et cetera.
I mean, is this going to be American focused or
is this like all over.
Speaker 2: The post global. Yeah, it's going to be global.
Speaker 1: You're gonna do events globally and.
Speaker 3: And yes, we'll do events globally and and understand this,
I'm not here beating my chest like I'm the fucking
big you know. Oh, I'm gonna come in and I'm
gonna fucking fit. I'm gonna blame it. This is going
to be a very humble beginning. I'm gonna I'm gonna
start from the ground up try to rebuild this business.
Speaker 2: And uh yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1: Don't don't take a sense, but I've never really heard
the words Dana White and humble in the same sentence.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I'm going to be very humble in the
way that we build a sport. You know, I'm not
coming in crash bang boom. I want all the big
events and i want to be you know, I'm going
to come in and I'm going to build this thing.
Think when we bought the UFC, right they were going bankrupt.
We bought those three letters in old wooden Octagon and
we had twelve contracts right, and look at what we built.
Speaker 1: How many do you have? How many contracts in UFC
right now?
Speaker 2: Over one thousand?
Speaker 1: Wow? Okay, So if you're doing I heard some of
the comments, you know, earlier in the day when you
guys were doing some the video for example, in some
of the other interviews and stuffs that you were specifically
talking about, like, you know, we don't need like the letters.
I took that to mean the sanctioning bodies. You know,
we don't need five belts, four belts, three belts whatever.
Are you looking to dislodge the anting bodies from their
position or do you want to work with them in
some capacity or do you want to create your own belt.
Speaker 2: I'm going to create our own belt.
Speaker 1: But that is against the Mahamad Ali for reformat though,
you know that right?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we got to figure that out.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not interested in working with sanctioning bodies. I
have no interest in it whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So Turkey has been working with the sanctioning bodies as
he's doing these big read cards and the Ring magazine cards.
How do you square that circle?
Speaker 2: He will continue to, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Just not with TKO's project, you know, not with.
Speaker 3: The thing that I'm working on. I'm working on not
working with them, okay, and doing less less weight classes,
you know, not three fucking weight classes in one weight class.
Speaker 1: You're not looking at You're not looking to change the
number of pounds that the tradition has been for one
hundred years of Like the featherweight divisions are are twenty
six pounds right, exactly? Okay, exactly?
Speaker 3: Now stay the same, ten rounds, twelve rounds, all that stuff,
stay the same. I'm just I want the best guys
that I have in the organization, fighting the best till
they get up. When when when guys get up into
the top five, there's no question to the top five
best guys are in the weight class.
Speaker 1: And I figure the weight classes will continue to exist,
you just may not use all of them within the
content confines of this promotion. Okay. So the other question then,
is this Turkey.
Speaker 2: Here's the other thing.
Speaker 3: These sanctioning organizations will exist too, because guess what, Eddie
Hearn isn't going anywhere. Eddie Hearn's still going to.
Speaker 2: Be around, and and and all these other.
Speaker 3: Guys that will still be you know, promoting the sport
of boxing are still going to be there and still
do everything I'm assuming.
Speaker 2: The way they always did.
Speaker 3: So that's and then as far as relationships go, there's
guys that I'm really cool. I love Eddie Hearn, I
respect Eddie Hearn, me and Eddie Hearn I'm assuming will
always be cool. And there's going to be guys that
I don't like.
Speaker 2: I don't like.
Speaker 3: Oscar Da Lakoya and Bob Aeron and you know these guys.
Speaker 1: So so that that was that was I was kind
of getting at. Turkey has been doing business with Queens
Queensberry and match Room, some top ranked Golden Boy even
working with all these promoters and bringing them together to
do the Mega cards. So Mike, my thought was, you know,
does Dana White and the New Project do you want
to reach out and you could you do co promotion
on a right fight with Eddie or are you looking
to do what you've done with the UFC where you
know you you haven't worked with you know, one Championship
or you know Bellatour when they were doing their thing
or PFL or what have you.
Speaker 3: Right now, that's a great question. As of right here,
right now, I'm going to live in my own little bubble.
Speaker 2: And do my own thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect the
other guys that are out there or just like the
other guys got that, that's all going to remain the same.
Speaker 1: So then I wonder this, and this actually was something
that popped in my mind immediately when I heard about this,
this potential project. There have been a lot of UFC
guys through the years that have wanted to try boxing
for whatever reason. You know, obviously Connor McGregor Floyd may
whether it being the number one example and the amount
of money and interest of that generator, but there's been others.
We saw it happen with France and Naganhu not that
long ago. But if TKO is running a boxing league,
a boxing promotion and you have your fighters under contract
with UFC, is it one of those things where if
they're under contract with you, seeing they come to your
folks at UFC and say, hey, I would like to
go try my head up boxing, that you could seamlessly
allow them to do that in some capacity because you're
still the promoter under the TKO banner, you know, the
the whatever.
Speaker 3: I definitely could, but I'm definitely not interested in doing
the the you know, the matches between discipline, so you know,
the boxer box and the MMA, guys will fight.
Speaker 1: Understood. I will wrap up with this because we've been
doing this for a bit. I wonder when you think
when you lay your head down at night and you
think about all the things that have to get done
on your launder list, of your your checklist of stuff
that you need to deal with, what is like the
number one thing that you that was like the reason
that you wanted to do this because you said yourself, Dana,
you've got You've got your own money, you can raise money.
You don't need this headache. Your busiest heck already with
UFC and with your other endeavors. But why why this?
And what is the first thing you got to do
when this all gets rolling?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I just felt like the timing and the Turkey relationship
and all this stuff was you know, I just felt
it and I do everything by gut.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 3: Number two, The first thing that needs to get done
is we need to build infrastructure. We need to build
the right team, you know for this project. I always
surround myself with really good.
Speaker 2: People, you know.
Speaker 1: And when you say team, what what roles are you speaking?
Was it like you know, an executive matchmaking?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I need I don't need executives, I need matchmaking.
We we we got the legal I need, uh operations,
people like my girl Amber that runs the show is
the fucking animal, you know what I mean? I need
people like those are the key people I need. I
need ops, I need, I need matchmaking, and uh.
Speaker 1: You need a talent scout to go sign some fighters, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we got a laundry list of guys. We
got over one hundred and fifty guys right now that
we're looking to sign. Okay, but that even the fighters
that are going to be signed are all going to
be determined by our steal and uh, you know what
they need, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't sound too concerned about getting a right skill
because the party.
Speaker 3: I just I just to the fucking right steal for
for power, slap for for insane money.
Speaker 2: I figured that stuff out. That's that's what I do.
Speaker 3: I mean, I will always figure out how to break
the business and how to distribute it to as many.
Speaker 2: People as possible.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how you shake things up.
I think it's gonna be very interesting. And I'll just
say this, I'll see you with the Canelo property, which
I think you're going to be promoting.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Dan.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dan, thanks a lot for doing this. Thank you
very much, good love and everything.