A grand premiere: Dana White goes big in his debut as a boxing promoter

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Dana White has looked into and spoken about promoting boxing in an attempt to help revive the sport’s popularity for more than a decade.

He’s experienced numerous starts and stops in the process, but tonight at Allegiant Stadium is when the 56-year-old UFC president’s vision for the combat sport he grew up watching finally gets under way. White called it “surreal and incredible” that his debut as a boxing promoter comes with a fight he says will produce the third-largest gate in the sport's history, Terence Crawford moving up to challenge Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for the undisputed super middleweight title.

“Everything in life is about timing, and the timing just always seems to work out for me,” White said in a wing of his office at UFC headquarters earlier this week. “The timing was right for boxing because of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and Turki Alalshikh.”

Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and an adviser to the Saudi royal court, has become boxing’s biggest power broker over the last couple years. The Saudis have spent billions on boxing, per Sports Business Journal, and booked several major bouts as part of their “Riyadh Season” cultural festival staged in the country’s capital.

But Alalshikh had a bigger venue in mind for a fight the size of Canelo vs. Crawford. He was determined to fill the 65,000-seat home of the Raiders, and partnered with White to ensure it would happen despite reservations from the latter.  

White has historically been a critic of what he calls, “stadium shows,” and he largely has stuck to his preference for slightly more intimate environments like arenas.

“Turki Alalshikh wanted this so bad,” White said. “You couldn’t talk him out of it. I tried. Believe me.”

Canelo vs. Crawford, which will air on Netflix free to subscribers, is akin to the grand opening of a more permanent partnership between Alalshikh, White and WWE President Nick Khan. The trio announced plans earlier this year to launch a global boxing league aimed at developing new talent in 2026.

Truth be told, White is more excited for that venture than tonight's blockbuster bout.

“I say it all the time about the UFC: ‘(Dana White’s) Contender Series’ is my favorite thing to do,” White said. “I absolutely love that show. I love watching it. I love being a part of it. I think it’s brilliant and it’s the greatest show on TV. I’m going to do the same thing for boxing.”

Those plans are being put together in the background for now while most of the front-line energy is reserved for Canelo vs. Crawford.

White has grown to feel better about staging the fight at Allegiant. He’s let his team handle most of the details while he’s hunkered down to focus on ensuring the fight-night fan experience is up to his standards.

“There are people coming from across the world, and I want everybody to walk out of that stadium happy,” White said. “You saw what we did last year at the Sphere. It was an incredible event, and I want this to feel like that.”  

Calling back to almost exactly a year ago with the UFC’s 2024 Noche event, where White also announced a sponsorship from the Saudis after spending more than $20 million on production costs, makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

White and Canelo were indirectly feuding back then, as the former lashed out at MGM Resorts and T-Mobile Arena for allowing the latter to book a fight on the same night as the Sphere spectacular.

It wasn’t the first time the UFC and Canelo went head-to-head with a long history of big mixed martial arts cards competing for attention and pay-per-view dollars with the Mexican superstar.   

But White has pointed out that his frustration has never been toward Canelo himself. Canelo has echoed the sentiment as he, White and Crawford have paraded across to town to promote today's fight.

“You make it look like we are competing but no, I’m not,” Canelo said. “I always liked Dana White, and I respect all the UFC fighters. I think, with this, we can show people if we are together, we can do big things.”  

White said both of tonight's main-event fighters have helped make his first foray into boxing seamless. Crawford, an Omaha, Neb. native, is more closely aligned with the mixed martial arts world considering he grew up wrestling and has occasionally trained at the local UFC Performance Institute.

“Crawford’s moving up in weight class when he could just as easily cruise in his division, make money and play out the rest of his career,” White said. “But he wants to challenge himself against Canelo, one of the all-time greats. You have to love it. You have to respect it.”

White’s fingerprints are all over the card for those looking closely enough. His team produced the “Embedded” series typically used ahead of UFC title fights to document the fighters’ build-up to their bout.

Undefeated Irish light middleweight prospect Callum Walsh, whom White took under his wing and began advising last year, faces Mexican royalty Fernando Vargas Jr. in the evening’s co-main event.

Two of White’s longest-running gripes with major boxing events are their lack of appealing preliminary cards and poor execution of pacing in between in bouts. He’s addressed both criticisms for tonight's fight card and will follow the same tact going forward.   

Toeing into boxing has been a long time coming for the UFC boss and, now that he’s doing it, he wants to do it right.

“There’s a lot of passion,” White said. “When you look at what these guys are doing and how aggressive they are and see how passionate Turki Alalshikh is about boxing, it’s amazing. I love it, and I couldn’t be aligned with better people.”