Dana White teases use of Artificial Intelligence in UFC rankings over Jon Jones debate

Over the past few months, the UFC President has been embroiled in a bitter debate with MMA media and the wider MMA community over Jon Jones’ place in the pound-for-pound rankings – ‘Bones’ currently sits in third place behind Alex Pereira and Islam Makhachev.

During last night’s episode of Dana White’s Contender Series, the promotion ran a 90-second hype video that was focused entirely on declaring that Jones was unequivocally the GOAT and P4P best fighter in the world.

Whilst the broadcast of the rather unexpected hype video has certainly not gone over well with fans, Dana White doubled down on his side of the debate at the post-event press conference.

“Whaaaat?” Dana White mouthed sarcastically as he was asked about the promo, claiming with a wry smile that “I was in the back, I didn’t even see it air – I didn’t even know that they aired that tonight.

“Did you guys read them? Did you guys read the stats? Well, he [Jones] recently just beat the Number 1 heavyweight in the world, so I hope you guys read that stat.”

As per the official UFC rankings page, the place and placement of fighters on those lists are determined by a panel of experts from the world of MMA media from 22 different outlets: not the promotion or White.

It was at this point when Dana White hinted that there could be a time when the UFC rankings aren’t determined by selected members of the MMA media, but by artificial intelligence.

“Do you know what’s f****** great about technology? We’re not far away from AI actually doing these rankings!

“It’ll be a great f***** day when AI starts doing this s***,” laughed the UFC President, adding that “I’m really excited about that” one day being implemented.

Unfortunately, artificial intelligence might not necessarily be on Dana White’s side with this one, with popular social media personality AFeldmanMMA sharing a screenshot of a ChatGPT response when asked about Jones on the pound-for-pound rankings.

Dana White slams sports betting and the pirating of illegally streamed UFC content

The full post-event press conference with White is around 18 minutes in length and is well worth a listen-through in full if you have time.

During the press conference, White would also make two interesting comments regarding both the explosion of sports betting, of which the UFC benefits greatly, and the rampant use of illegal streaming sites to pirate UFC content.

“Sports betting is f***** brutal,” he stated, adding how “I don’t do it – I stopped doing it a long time ago.

“‘Do you know how much more fun if you bet’ – No it’s not more fun, it actually makes the game miserable but yeah, if you actually like sports betting, this is actually one where underdogs really do win.”

A reminder that the UFC’s partnership with DraftKings Sportsbook is reported to be worth around $350 million across five years, which is allegedly the biggest deal in the gambling and betting sector across all of sports in the Americas.

Secondly, the UFC President commented on the surge of illegal streaming, following the TKO Group President blaming ESPN’s “aggressive” PPV price rises for the rampant use of piracy, and Turki Alalshikh stating that he’d like to make boxing PPV prices $20 in order to combat piracy.

“Trust me, we know exactly how to combat piracy, you know we won’t tell you extensively what we do every event, but we got after piracy hard…

“You saw a few years ago that we started prosecuting people, that’s how you combat piracy – start f****** prosecuting people for stealing, there you go.”

There you go indeed.

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