Life has come full circle for Dana White with the announcement of the TKO Boxing venture with the Saudis. The UFC CEO fell in love with boxing at a young age, and once even dreamed of being a professional boxer. Until he saw the type of long-term damage that sports can do to people. After that, he briefly became a boxercise instructor. Moreover, the head honcho even planned to set up a boxing gym before fate took him to Las Vegas where he became an MMA manager, and finally the leader of the UFC. Talk about a journey!

However, like many old-school boxing fans, the Boston native grew increasingly disgusted with boxing, to the point that White learned from the mistakes of the sweet science and vowed to not repeat them in the UFC. Chief among them, of course, is the trend of pugilists wanting to preserve their undefeated status and avoid tough fights. On top of that, the utter commercialization and the way too many divisions and titles exist in the sport have also plagued its development for a long time.

So now that the UFC CEO has come back with his unofficially named TKO Boxing League, will he be the one to correct these mistakes, especially the way too-many-champions part? Well that is the question ‘TNT Sport’s Adam Catterall asked him in an interview last week. “Can we get to that point in the world of boxing where people will understand when you point at one person that’s the heavyweight champion or that’s the light heavyweight champion?” the Journo asked.

To which Dana White answered with a resounding yes. “Yeah, and the truth is when you look at boxing, and you look at all the different sanctioning organizations, right, and each one has a champion. Those are the top three or top five guys in the world, you know. One is the champ and the other guys are one, two, or three or whatever it is,” White said.

“And that’s the truth in the UFC. Not only can you say who the champion is. But you could probably crack off the top three guys in each division. And, yes, that’s what boxing needs to get back to. And that’s obviously my plan. I mean the model is, it’s not rocket science here. The model is the UFC model,” the Las Vegas resident declared.

The ‘UFC model’, of course, means that TKO Boxing will sign boxers to an exclusive contract. And these boxers will fight other TKO Boxing boxers with the matchmaking being in the hands of the promotion. There will, of course, be a bunch of different weight classes. Not as many as boxing which currently has 17 of them. Moreover, White plans to install them with proper rankings and one undisputed title on offer. But given the UFC’s track record, there is one question everyone wants the answer to about TKO Boxing. What about fighter pay?

UFC vet explains why Dana White’s TKO boxing is in the right direction for fighter pay

The UFC pays fighters around 20% of the promotion’s revenue. On the either hand, this figure is nearly 50% in almost every other major American sports league like the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Not to mention new fighters get only $12k guaranteed, and another $12k if they win when starting in the promotion. But don’t boxers get paid massively well? Like many times what do MMA fighters make? So won’t fighter pay be an issue? Well, the top boxers make much more than top UFC stars. But most boxers, especially those fresh into the sport get paid horribly, as UFC vet Josh Thomson pointed out.

“What it is that it is for younger fighters. These are for fighters coming up that are never gonna see money trying to box on the undercard of a Mayweather fight. Those fighters are gonna make $1000 and $1000, $800 and $800….That’s what this whole misconception is about that boxers get paid all the time! No, they do not,” Thomson told co-host and legendary MMA referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy on their ‘Weighing In’ podcast.

So Thomson feels that TKO Boxing would help young up-and-coming boxers a lot more than the status quo. A leaked fighter pay document from TKO Holding shows that even the lowest-tier fighters in TKO will make $20k. The highest-tier boxers in the promotions i.e. the reigning champions will make $750k per defense, which is exponentially less than what the big boxing stars make at the moment. But for up-and-coming boxers, who are lucky to get mid-four figures at the moment, this would be a significant improvement.

But why would TKO boxing even agree to pay boxers so much when the current market rate is much lower for those starting out? Isn’t Dana White famously stingy? Well, the good news for everyone is that TKO Holdings won’t put up any money for the boxing venture. Instead, the Saudis will be financing the whole thing, and they have deep pockets indeed. What do you think about Dana White’s revelations about implementing the ‘UFC model’ in boxing?