One of Dana White’s biggest pet peeves surrounding boxing is its pacing.
The UFC CEO has been rather critical of the boxing model over the years, and now is his opportunity to finally fix his concerns when he co-promotes Saturday’s “Fight of the Century” between Canelo Alvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs) and undefeated Terence Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) for the undisputed super middleweight title at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
White finds the dragged-out process between boxing fights frustrating.
“I like when the night moves fast,” White told Ring Magazine. “Right now, when you watch a boxing event, they’ll have one fight, then there’s a podcast. Then there’s another fight, and there’s a podcast, and the night gets dragged out. It’s bad enough for the people at home watching on TV. The people that are live, it has to be insane.
“I haven’t been to a fight in years. The last fight that I went to was at MGM and it was Tyson Fury and (Deontay) Wilder. It was the worst experience that I’ve ever had at any event. Great fight – and I’ve been to like, small, sh*tty shows that were way better run than that one was.”
But what was so bad about it?
“It was just completely disorganized, not enough security, couldn’t even get in,” White said. “People were sitting in my seats when I got to my seats, and there was nobody there to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t your seat.’ Just everything about the night was horrendous, except the fight.
“So, my thing is, all the talk is done, right? You’ve had all this promotion leading up to the event. You don’t need to run on for 45 minutes talking about the fight. All the talk is over. All the predictions, the back-and-forth – we’ve been doing this now for months. People want to see the fight that night. Let’s go: Boom, boom, boom. Let’s get through the night, and make it quick, and keep that energy up.”
