Teddy Atlas is all in on seeing Dana White enter the world of boxing.
After years of watching the biggest fighters avoid each other like the plague, fight fans have seen a slew of long-awaited clashes finally come to fruition. Last weekend, 98,000 people packed into Wembley Stadium to see Anthony Joshua challenge Daniel Dubois for the IBF heavyweight championship. Earlier this year, we finally got to see Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk go toe-to-toe in Riyadh—a fight the two icons will run back this December and in just a few short weeks, we’ll get a light heavyweight title fight between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
All of that has been courtesy of Turki Alalshikh, the Chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia. Armed with a bottomless pit of money, Alalshikh has put together the fights that fans have been waiting years to see.
Having had a similar effect in mixed martial arts over the years—delivering the biggest fights month after month—UFC CEO Dana White is finally ready to throw his hat into the boxing ring and Atlas is excited to see it happen.
Dana White officially declared he’s entering boxing with big news coming soon 🤯 pic.twitter.com/EAR9xRw8XK
— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) September 19, 2024
“I say come on in, come on in! We need you,” Atlas declared when asked by Submission Radio about White’s comments.
Atlas went on to explain his reasoning, suggesting that White’s participation in the sport will only help fan the flames that Alalshikh has kickstarted.
“Turki Alalshikh has helped boxing tremendously by making fights the promoters couldn’t make,” Atlas said. “They didn’t want to make [the fights] because they didn’t own both sides, they didn’t control both sides. So the fans suffered, didn’t get the fights they wanted. The sport suffered! This sport was getting less and less relevant.”
“This sport is the longest sport in the history of sports. They find drawings of guys throwing punches on caves two thousand years ago. This sport shouldn’t be irrelevant. But it was becoming that because of the promoters with the networks, with their sugar daddies, they were just making the fights to keep their guys undefeated, to make it to the next big fight. Non-competitive fights, and once in a while they’d throw you a bone. It wasn’t enough, the fans were bothered.”
“Come on in! We need you!”@TeddyAtlasReal reacts to @danawhite’s plans to enter boxing!
🎥: https://t.co/Pgx3P5RHpS pic.twitter.com/SVfaECHHxW
— Submission Radio (@SubmissionRadio) September 22, 2024
Boxing Needs a ‘Dictator’ Like Dana White
Atlas is confident that the recent shift in boxing can continue heading in the right direction by having a “dictator” like Dana White running things.
“He’s been doing that forever over at the UFC. Yeah I know it’s one guy in charge. ‘Oh but Teddy, he’s the dictator…’ Listen, if a dictator ain’t chopping heads off and he’s getting things done, sometimes maybe we can learn a little something. Maybe at least it gives us direction, it gives us rules, we could use rules in this world right now, we could use direction in this world right now.”
Watch the full episode below:
