Dana White Talks Up The UFC’s Future

Dana White talked up the UFC’s relationship with Abu Dhabi, as the UFC heads to the capital for UFC 322 on Saturday. 

It has been 15 years since the UFC first held their event there, which will now host the UFC Heavyweight Championship of the world. Tom Aspinall makes his first defense of the belt against Ciryl Gane after Jon Jones vacated the title in June, allowing Tom to become the full champion. The fight is also the second event held in Abu Dhabi this year after Robert Whittaker lost to Reinier de Ridder in July. White was hopeful that the long-term relationship would continue. 

“A lot more of what we’ve done over the past several years – the relationship just continues to get stronger and better. Now we’ve got UFC Power Slap here, and you’ll probably see some boxing events, UFC BJJ, and who knows what else. So yeah, there’s a lot more coming,” White said 

White is also happy with the state of the UFC following their seven-year, $7.7 billion streaming deal with Paramount which begins in January 2026. The new deal with Paramount, which will see UFC events broadcast on Paramount+ and CBS, exceeds the $1.5 billion media rights ESPN deal signed in 2019.

White On The UFC

White revealed that the UFC’s success was due to avoiding the mistakes that have impacted boxing, primarily the inability to consistently put on the biggest fights. White’s recent entry into boxing, with Zuffa Boxing, aims to address that, although there is pushback amid proposed changes to the Muhammad Ali Act. White felt the UFC’s ability to secure bigger media rights deals showed the UFC was in a good place.

“We got the UFC to a place where people are buying tickets before we even announce the main event. So we started to build this relationship with the fanbase that they knew we were going to deliver no matter what happened. Boxing hasn’t done that in a long time.

“I saw a lot of things that I thought were wrong and broken with boxing at the time and I felt that if we kept building on delivering a good product [with UFC] every time — I’ve been saying for a long time, I feel like every time you watch a boxing event it’s like a going out of business sale. They’re trying to grab up as much money as they can. They don’t care if the live event is good or even if the television event is good. As long as they can bring in a ton of money, that’s all they did,” White said