Dana White, of course, thinks Jon Jones is the pound-for-pound number 1 fighter in the UFC. Even though ‘Bones’ has fought just once in the past one and a half and that too against a 42-year-old Stipe Miocic way past their prime, who suffered a vicious knockout in his last fight.

But, the UFC head honcho is insistent and feels that the UFC rankings are trash, mostly because of this. Of course, there are also other issues with the recent rankings, such as Max Holloway being ranked much lower than Justin Gaethje on the lightweight rankings despite having beaten him at UFC 300, the UFC CEO’s frustration mostly seems to be stemming from Jones’ position. And to fix the rankings, he has a bright idea.

Dana White is desperate to integrate Mark Zuckerberg’s AI to fix UFC rankings

Dana White has enlisted the help of Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help him fix the official UFC rankings. Apparently, the UFC CEO is in talks with the tech titan to help design an AI that would take the subjectivity out of the athlete rankings, and thus (hopefully) lead to more accurate listings.

“I could go on and on and on but I won’t. We literally had meetings this week to work on it. I actually talked to Mark Zuckerberg, too, about AI. So yeah. I’m totally going to fix the rankings. We’re going to make a lot of strong moves here coming into 2025,” Dana White told ‘TNT Sports’ in a recent interview.

Just recently, after the latest P4P rankings came out after UFC 309, and Jon Jones was still ranked #2, behind Islam Makhachev on it, the UFC CEO was predictably incensed. He posted the rankings on his Instagram Story and pleaded with Zuckerberg to help him fix the rankings with Meta’s AI.

“I have to get rid of these CLOWNS!! @zuck [Mark Zuckerberg] Let’s get this AI deal done ASAP!!!!!” White wrote. But it seems like Zuckerberg and Meta’s AI will have a very niche role in the UFC and be limited to only rankings since the promotion has signed with another company to be its official AI partner. Let’s find out who they are!

Dana White signed a deal with IBM, despite talks with Mark Zuckerberg

The UFC has recently signed a deal with computer giant IBM last week to develop what is being called a ‘UFC Insight Engine’ which would help provide better analytics and insights to fans regarding individual fighters, matchups, and even project results of fights. The UFC’s existing data, of course, will be fed to IBM’s large language models, which the promotion hopes will ‘revolutionize’ the entire sports analytics industry.

“This partnership with IBM is one of the most significant milestones for UFC and a game changer for how fans will experience our sport… Together, we’re pioneering a product to revolutionize analytics and information in live sports,” the UFC press release said.

In addition, it seems the UFC is also looking to leverage IBM’s Watson AI to help provide it with insights into how to streamline and make improvements to intra-organizational decision-making, including event operations. This has become relevant as the disagreements and debates over the officiating process in the promotion have been the talk of the town.

What do you think about Dana White’s AI-related decisions for the UFC? Will they help the MMA juggernaut solve their long existing issues? Tell us in the comment section below!