Zuffa Boxing appears to be over before ever having a chance to get off the ground.

Dana White has once again made the media rounds to play down previous boasts of coming into rescue boxing. The longtime president of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) discussed during a recent interview with The Sports Network’s Aaron Bronsteter the extreme unlikelihood of his yet-to-launch boxing company making inroads in the near future.

The polarizing figure has long discussed his plans to branch off into boxing, with his name linked to several rumors over the past couple of years. The latest suggested his company’s involvement in an all-female boxing card which would have taken place this weekend, with pound-for-pound entrants Claressa Shields and Amanda Serrano both to have participated in separate bouts on a planned December 11 show in Las Vegas.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic was blamed for the show never seeing the light of day, although the matter cut much deeper. Few if any of those issues had to do with Zuffa Boxing, although White denies any official involvement in that or any other show beyond exploratory phase.

“Never did I say that I was doing anything but I’ve been looking and kicking the tires of boxing for the last couple of  years,” White admitted. “The reason you’ve never seen me do anything is because that’s how screwed up and broken it is. That’s what a mess it is.

“It’s gonna require so much time, money, and the whole thing needs to be rebuilt and restructured. There’s always gonna be fights that’ll pop up that’ll make money, you know, but when you’re in a situation where, you know, this [Floyd] Mayweather [exhibition fight versus Logan Paul next February] does more buys than [Tyson] Fury versus [Deontay] Wilder or, you know, some of these legitimate big fights, it’s pretty scary.”

UFC has been among the few operations to have run throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic with minimal interruption. The company was unable to push through with a card in April that was to have featured unbeaten pound-for-pound star Khabib Nurmagomedov but has otherwise not missed a beat since returning full throttle on May 9 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Efforts to launch Zuffa Boxing, however, have proven far more difficult.

The company was formed in November 2017, shortly after White’s involvement in the widely successful pay-per-view venture between Floyd Mayweather and UFC’s Conor McGregor, who was making his boxing debut in August 2017. Mayweather—one of the best boxers in history—won by 10th round knockout atop the second highest grossing event in combat sports history.

Soon thereafter, White informed the Los Angeles Times that he was “100 percent entering boxing.” He continued to tease the media for the better part of the next two years, even setting aside office space in his Las Vegas headquarters, only to never fill it up with any boxing activity or even any boxers at all.

“I peeked under the hood a lot there for the last year,” White previously told BT Sport of his still desired plan to enter the sport, although finally understanding the uphill battle. “Looked at different things and I said, ‘I don’t know man, I don’t know if this is fixable.’

"Funny enough, since the pandemic I’ve been looking at other options too. And we’ll probably have something to announce here soon. When it’s time, I’ll let you know, I’m not ready yet.”

Perhaps 2021 will be the year when we finally see some activity come out of the war room—or the year when the dream dies for good.

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox