Boxing is set to undergo a major change after one of the biggest promoters in the world joined forces with the most influential man in the sport.
Having already dipped his toe into boxing via promoting Callum Walsh, UFC president Dana White is now set to jump right into the deep end.
White recently announced a partnership between TKO and Turki Alalshikh which could impact the entire landscape of the sport in the coming years.
We still don’t know exactly what their plans are for the rest of the year but we do know that White and Alalshikh aren’t looking to follow what the other promoters do.
They want to change the game and that means disrupting a lot of the current structures and traditions that are currently in place.
Teddy Atlas believes that Dana White and Turki Alalshikh will try to replicate the UFC in boxing
On a recent episode of his podcast, THE FIGHT, boxing commentator and analyst Teddy Atlas gave his reaction to the formation of what is currently being referred to as TKO boxing.
The former trainer spoke about the formula that Dana White put in place which allowed him to grow the UFC, and mixed martial arts as a whole, into a mainstream sport.
Atlas admits that whilst there are negatives of this structure that should be raised, the UFC has built their brand by doing something that boxing failed to do for many years.
Putting the best against the best on a consistent basis is what fight fans have come to expect from the UFC and that’s the same reputation that Turki Alalshikh has gained in boxing.
With that in mind, Atlas believes that the two powers combining is a shot of adrenaline for the sport because they will try to replicate that model.
“I think that something needed to be done to make the sport healthy again, or healthier. I’m not going to use the word that the sport was broken, I’m just saying that it was starting to move and had been moving in the wrong direction of importance.
“Something had to be injected into it to move the needle the other way and now, Turki Alalshikh is teaming up with TKO, with Dana White and they’re going to use the formula. Why is he teaming up with Dana White? Because he saw what Dana White built with the UFC. He saw the results of what that brand became and he saw how he did it and he figured why not team up with a guy who’s done it already?”
Dana White wants to make big changes in boxing
Dana White’s approach to boxing isn’t simply to always put on the best fights that they can to keep the fans engaged.
He wants to go much further than that by trying to fix some of the things that he sees as broken in the sport.
One of the biggest negatives that has been held against boxing for some time is the amount of belts there are which when combined with how many weight classes exist, can make it difficult to follow or know which fighter is truly the best.
White plans on streamlining this to be more like the UFC with less weight classes and one title in each division but in order to implement that, it’s going to require some drastic changes that aren’t going to go down well with each party.