A stunning development has occurred in combat sports as UFC CEO Dana White included the upcoming September 21st Dubois-Joshua event in his promo for tomorrow’s UFC Fight Pass event. White, who certainly has had plenty of negative things to say about boxing in the past, now appears to have changed his tune on the sport given his recent promotional video on social media.
During a clip where he was promoting the upcoming UFC Fight Pass: Callum-Runowski event, Dana White threw in a brief mention of the upcoming Riyadh Season-sponsored September 21st card.
Prior to this promo, White had made plenty of unsavory comments surrounding boxing, attributing it to being one of the most dangerous sports after revealing he had “black spots all over my brain” after a career in boxing during his youth. More importantly, White spoke on the boxing economic model, referring to it as a “mess” and surmising boxing would face difficulties surviving as a sport.
As such, the very mention of the Dubois-Joshua card seems uncharacteristic given White’s previous statements. His brief promo of the September 21st event can be attributed to the partnership struck earlier this year between the UFC and Riyadh Season, with the latest event to signal the cooperation between the two parties having occurred just recently on September 14th as UFC 306 was branded under the Riyadh Season-based moniker of “Riyadh Season Noche UFC”.
An unpublicized part of this partnership could entail White actively promoting the sport of boxing where able, which explains the mention of the September 21st Joshua-Dubois card.
It also further serves to illustrate General Entertainment Authority (GEA) chairman Turki Alalshikh’s efforts in boosting Saudi Arabia’s profile across all sports, with Riyadh Season used as the primary tool to influence the combat sports genre.
The upcoming months will certainly be interesting as there will likely be more such promo’s made with influential figures in boxing promoting mixed martial arts (MMA) and vice-versa, which might lead to a conducive and amicable relationship between the two sports where they do necessarily overlap and compete against each other, but instead find ways for both niches to benefit financially and competitively.
