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Dana White is adamant Jon Jones is the best of the best in UFC, but all is not what it seems.
There's something wonderful about a promotion, no matter what kind it is.
As a Manchester United fan it isn't something I've had the pleasure of enjoying too much in football.
That said, the second ever football match I attended saw Bury FC earn promotion and win the then Division 2 title. They would soon be above Manchester City in the English football pyramid, how times change.
A year ago my dear friend was celebrating his team's promotion from the same third tier of football as Ipswich rose back from League One to the Championship, four years after their relegation.
Little did we know that the Tractor Boys would repeat the trick and end up back in the Premier League after 22 years outside of England's top division.
All season I had to remind him that it was too early to get ahead of himself or too early to write off Ipswich chances, depending on their form. The Championship has a funny way of catching you unawares and springing the most surprising result.
Not too dissimilar to life as a whole I suppose.
For over eight years I did a job I loved, was relatively good at and poured my blood, sweat and tears into. I was willing to go above and beyond, I was passionate about it, its what I wanted to do in life and even took on some management responsibilities when no others would.
Unlike Ipswich, I didn't even get one promotion. Heck, I didn't even get into the playoffs, a top half finish would have been nice.
It wasn't even because there were better teams than me, the whole league was ringfenced, like the MLS or the Rugby Premiership.
In February I got a new job, in a new industry, doing something I barely cared about and only partially knew what I was doing.
Last week I essentially got a promotion. It's funny how that works ey.
Boxing couldn't have gone the best part of a decade without promotion, the sport feeds on it like no other sport. If there were no adverts for Premier League games, people would still tune in, but boxing pay per views need a hook.
Last weekend Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren provided one in a promoter vs promoter 5 vs 5.
Let's be honest, no one really cared about the premise, or at least they shouldn't have. Cheering on one promoter over the other was never really something any real sports fan should have been buying into. You may have preferred one stable's set of boxers over the others, that's something completely different.
But the main thing here is that we got the event and thus the fights that previously would have been impossible.
Both Hearn and Warren have their flaws and no matter what you think of either man, they were both at fault for the lack of fights between their fighters over the years.
Fortunately money talks, in boxing more than in sport and life in general. And many millions of pounds have got them around the table together.
It's all thanks to ‘his excellency’ (please read that with the tone of disdain and sarcasm it deserves).
Saudi Arabia's Royal adviser Turki Alalshikh is the man in question. You'll have heard the boxers bootlicking their way through the bouts and interviews by referring to him and thanking him for supplying them with generational wealth. That's how sportswashing works kids.
And Alalshikh’s money has worked particularly well in boxing because the sport has had a huge problem getting the biggest fights on in recent years, especially in the heavyweight division.
We've had a little look at what might have been if it weren't for the stupid politics and in fighting of promoters and tv broadcasters, because the Saudis have been able to throw as much money as possible at it.
And you know what boxing without the stupid politics looks quite like, UFC.
The rise of MMA's biggest promotion in recent years, coupled with boxing's amazing ability to do stupid things like promote dead boxers up the rankings or make a star out of Jake Paul, yes each example as abhorrent as the other, has put some pressure on the sweet science as the animalistic combat sport of choice.
UFC is to its sport as Google is to Web searching. We know there are others but it's barely worth mentioning them.
MMA is basically UFC at this point, even though someone will always remind you that isn't the case if you dare mess it up in an article.
Dana White and his company having 90% of the world's best at the sport signed up generally means making the biggest fights is easier and more likely than in boxing.
There are plenty of reasons that the UFC model works, no more so with the low number of titles meaning that there is a definitive champion. Sod's law I say this at the one point in modern history when the heavyweight division in boxing is actually clearer than the one in UFC, but usually there are about 6 world champions in any one boxing division and just the one in any UFC weight class.
However, the way White runs his promotion/sport hybrid means that the fighters are paid worse than the top boxers.
Fighter pay in UFC equates to around 20% of the organisation revenue. In comparison those in America's sports, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB earn around the 48-50% mark.
In England's Premier League, some teams’ wages to turnover is around 90%, which is admittedly ridiculous.
But relatively speaking UFC fighters just aren't earning enough. It's why more and more of them have moved into boxing, even for one off fights. Jake Paul's even weighed in on it, and managed to be right, you know you've fucked up when he’s on the correct side of an argument and you aren't.
White claims it'll never change and if you don't like it, then tough. That's easy for the billionaire who is making more and more off of the fighters who put their lives on the line for him.
At the end of the day, for him it's all about earning that paper.
That's why this week he was pushing Jon Jones as not only the greatest UFC star of all time but the current pound-for-pound number one.
It was on the back of Islam Makhachev defeating Dustin Poirier, leading to many crowning the Russian as the best around right now.
Not for the head of the ‘sport’ though, White was very strong in basically suggesting you had no right to be anywhere near UFC if you didn't consider Jones as the current P4P top dog. That's despite the fact that he's not fought in 15 months and only once in the past four years. In the same time Makhachev has won eight fights, running through most of his division.
From a promoter’s point of view it makes sense, there are plenty of occasions over the years Eddie Hearn would have told you Anthony Joshua was the best heavyweight boxer on the planet, even when it wasn't the case. No doubt Bob Arum would make an argument for his man Naoya Inoue to be boxing's pound-for-pound number one right now. He wouldn't be too far from being correct but the point is Aram would have a vested interest.
Current WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman would be less likely to be trumpeting Inoue, Terence Crawford or Oleksandr Usyk. They all hold titles for his governing body and talking one or them up over the others is relatively pointless.
That's the position White should be in, but whilst he chases the paper, and blurs the lines between promoter and sports administrator, that's not the case.
Of course talking up Mackhachev will earn him plenty of money, the Lightweight champ is still a UFC fighter after all, but making controversy and headlines around Jones is far better for him.
‘Bones’ is the biggest name in the sport outside of Conor McGregor. He is scheduled to return to the Octagon later this year and the anticipation is already high. Billing it as the return of the greatest ever and greatest current star is certainly a draw many can't resist.
But it's all very disingenuous when it comes to White trying to be the proprietor of a sport. It turns the whole thing a bit WWE, where you can tell everyone whatever narrative you want and it basically becomes true. Of course the ppv model of boxing and UFC means those lines with sports entertainment often cross but even more so now that parent company TKO owns both the MMA and wrestling promotions.
There is no problem with White insisting that Jones is the best in the world but he shouldn't be trying to silence those who correctly question that claim, especially when their reasons are far more even handed than his own.
White said that no one else can be considered whilst the heavyweight champion is active, he isn't. The promoter claimed that Jones moved up in weight and beat the best heavyweight in the world, he defeated Cyrill Gane for the interim belt while Francis Ngannou was still champion. The bald fraud also suggested that Jones’ historical record of never having lost also made him unquestionably the P4P, that too is a lie. The former light heavyweight champion has one loss, he was disqualified in that only defeat. The fact it wasn't a ‘conclusive’ loss and that Jones was winning at the time is irrelevant. By the laws that White puts in place it's an L on the record.
There are questions about Jones’ legitimacy as the greatest ever anyway, due to his positive drugs tests, but White essentially questioning the integrity of his own rules is walking on thin ice.
His argument that anyone who is any where near deciding an opinion based ranking shouldn't be if they don't consider Jones to be number one is also paper thin.
Especially when Makhachev is currently officially UFC’s pounds for pound champion…