Dana, here we go. I was going to say another big fight week, but you've done thousands of these, like hundreds of thousands of these. This is normal for you. But is it different because it's a big boxing fight week?
We've done a few of them, but this is a big one. It's different in that I have two fights on the same night in two different states, but other than that, it's the big fight vibe. And what I love is, you know, I've been saying Conor Benn is probably the most professional athlete that I've ever worked with in every sense of the word, versus Ryan Garcia, a kid who has unbelievable knockout power and ducks and dodges nobody. This kid has fought everybody. He's a gamer and, you know, he's basically saying, "I'm going to knock you out in less than five rounds." And I don't get caught up in the talk. I just look at the styles of this fight. It is absolutely impossible for this fight not to be incredible.
I love your enthusiasm. It kind of answers my next question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I've been following you for years. I've been a big MMA fan, UFC fan for years, and you've always had this love, this connection with boxing. Now that you are knee-deep in it, is it still the same kind of love as it was outside of it?
It's been fun. You know, I had very low expectations getting into this business because the business is just so broken and messed up, from being on the outside for so long. You know, like a lot of the fights that weren't made that should happen or should have happened, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I truly believed it was the fighters. But now that I'm in this thing and you talk to the fighters, these guys all want to fight each other. I mean, they want to fight the best. So, that is incredibly refreshing to me. Yeah. And it's been fun and it's been exciting.
What do you think's been the reasoning for those fights not happening? Managers, broadcasters, promoters?
Here's what it hasn't been: the fighters.
Yeah. And now we're seeing—I look behind you, Garcia-Benn—we're seeing two big names. Even the co-main event, we're seeing fighters that are running towards each other. That's the difference now.
When you think about all the things that made us love the sport of boxing when we were younger, the best fought the best. And you know the two guys that made boxing what it is today: Muhammad Ali and then Mike Tyson. I was a little kid during the end of the Ali era, but I was, you know, a young teenager during the Mike Tyson era, and Mike Tyson brought so many people into the sport and made them love the sport. But you also had Hagler, Hearns, and Leonard and all those guys, Duran during that era, and all the great heavyweights—Evander Holyfield, who doesn't get enough credit, I have to mention him. Evander Holyfield was also one of my favorites to watch fight. All those guys contributed to the growth of boxing when boxing was pulling massive numbers on pay-per-view.
And now when you look at the United States, the younger demo doesn't care about boxing here. There used to be the Olympic box-offs used to be on network television, and you cared who was coming out of the Olympics for America or England or wherever it might be. The last guy was Floyd Mayweather that anybody knew or cared about. So my goal over the next five, six years is to rebuild boxing in America. The UK has always been—I mean, realistically boxing is a UK sport right now.
I always used to say this when we bought the UFC. The three places that made sense to me were the United States, Mexico, and the UK, traditionally big boxing countries. What makes Ryan super unique—and when we talk about it, I see people talking online, "This is stupid. Why would they say that about how many social media followers he has?" You know why that's really important? It means that the young demographic that does not watch boxing watches Ryan Garcia.
It's a fact. And a few years ago, like my sons didn't watch boxing growing up. They watched UFC. And I talked to my son who went to school in San Diego a couple years ago. I'm like, "What are you guys up to tonight?" "We're all watching the Ryan Garcia fight on TV," you know. And I said, "Damn, that's interesting."
Yeah. He's moved the needle. Compare the UFC to boxing. Compare the differences.
Well, think about this: the way that I built the UFC was based on everything that I loved about boxing and everything that I hated about boxing. So, if it worked like it worked for the UFC, imagine how it's going to work for boxing.
Do you like the challenge of it?
I love it. I love the challenge of everything. That's what, you know, people are like, "Why are you still doing this? What motivates you?" What motivates me is the fact that we got this fight done, arguably the biggest weekend in boxing, and I'm doing two fights in two different states on the same night. Both are going to be sold out. You know, this is the type of stuff that I love to do. I always look at, you know, my competition is the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, and to an extent soccer. I mean, we're all competing for dates, right? There's certain things you want to stay away from on certain nights, and you want your product to be highlighted, but we're also fighting over rights.
The way that I look at everything is the NFL is playing tonight in Australia, right? Are Australians really going to get into the NFL? It'd be cool to go to a game—"Oh, it's coming here, we'll go to a game"—but would they consistently go to a game? No. Cricket's never going to work here. Okay? I've been trying to figure cricket out for a long time. Soccer just did really well here, so they're trying. Fighting works everywhere.
I say this all the time: I don't care what color you are, what country you come from, what language you speak. We're all human beings, and fighting is in our DNA. We get it and we like it. A couple weeks ago, I was in Philly, and I put on a fight with a Russian Muslim and an Irish kid. Sold out, broke the arena record, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Now, that never happened in boxing. In boxing, you either did a fight in Vegas or Atlantic City, right? If you went to New York, you better have a Puerto Rican. If you went to LA, you better have a Mexican. You know, there were certain, I guess, guidelines and rules back then or you didn't make money. I broke the mold on all that. Broke the mold on all that. I'm going to build boxing back into what it used to be over the next five years.
Which in the '80s and '90s was competing with everything.
Competing with everything. You mentioned out there, and I saw it as well, a clip where you said Conor is the most disciplined person you've seen in years, disciplined ever. Can you compare this Conor to young Conor McGregor when he came through? I always think of young Conor as super disciplined as well.
Yeah, it's hard to compare guys like that. People always ask me who's the next Conor McGregor. There isn't another Conor McGregor. Conor McGregor was a very unique individual at a unique time in the history of the UFC. There will be other superstars; there will never be another Conor McGregor. Think about this: tell me something in the history of the world where trillions of dollars in revenue have been generated, yet at the end of the day there's nothing there, right? That's been boxing. Now, I'm going to turn boxing into a business. And when you create a business or build a business or invest in a business, you have to have people that you can invest in. Who can you build a business around? Everything that I have seen from Conor Benn, he's a guy you can build a business around: disciplined, hardworking, gets the business side and the boxing side, works hard on both ends. Yeah, he's one of the most unique fighters I've ever met.
