Dana White has been asked about signing Jake Paul again, and the answer has not changed. Speaking on Plan Bri Uncut, the UFC and Zuffa Boxing boss was posed the idea of Paul appearing on one of his cards. His answer is what you would expect.
“No, that’s not what I do, there’s obviously a market for that, but that’s not what I do. I put the best fighters in the world against each other, from the minute they get into the sport, all the way up to world champions, the best fight the best. There’s always gonna be a place for the Paul brother type fights, but that’s not what I do.”
– Dana White
White was more complimentary about Paul’s December fight with Anthony Joshua, which he had not expected to be made.
“When you go in there and box a guy like AJ, this isn’t a joke, this isn’t a game. I mean, that guy can literally kill you. It was a ballsy move getting in there with Joshua,” he said.
Joshua stopped Paul in the sixth round at Kaseya Center in Miami on December 19, dropping him four times before the finish. Paul was hospitalized with a jaw broken in two places and posted an X-ray afterward. The card streamed on Netflix.
White and Paul have traded shots publicly for years, with White a longtime critic of Paul’s boxing career and openly opposed to the 2024 fight with Mike Tyson. Zuffa Boxing has expanded through 2026, adding Shakur Stevenson on an exclusive deal and taking events overseas. White is currently promoting Ryan Garcia against Conor Benn on September 12.
Dana White Is Drawing A Line That His Own Card Complicates
Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
The stated principle is coherent, and White has been consistent about it for two decades. Build fighters from their debut, match them against each other on merit, and let the results sort the order. Paul’s business runs on the opposite logic, which is picking opponents for name value and controlling the terms. Those are different products, and refusing to blend them is a defensible position rather than a grudge.
The complication is the card he is promoting in three weeks. Ryan Garcia against Conor Benn is a fight between two men who have both been through doping cases, sold largely on their popularity, and it is not obvious how the best-fight-the-best standard produced it. White also faced a year of criticism that UFC matchmaking let contenders avoid each other. The principle is real. The situation is selective.