On a recent appearance, Lalit Modi made it clear he has ambitions beyond cricket, outlining a vision that directly challenges the current structure of mixed martial arts promotions. When asked which league he would want to own outside of cricket, he did not hesitate.
“I would create a global MMA league,”
he said during an interview with The Overlap Cricket. The natural follow-up centered on Dana White, the longtime UFC president.
Modi did not hold back in his assessment.
“He does it in America. Doesn’t know how to do it today. It should be intercity. It should be intercity. It’s not individual.”
Despite acknowledging the scale of the UFC brand, Modi suggested its current structure leaves significant potential unrealized.
“He doesn’t know how to do it. It’s brand’s worth billions,”
he said, framing his critique around what he views as an outdated model.
When pressed on whether he intends to directly compete with White, Modi remained noncommittal.
“I don’t know. Let’s see.”
He later expanded on how he views combat sports as an entertainment product, emphasizing their global appeal.
“Fight sports, I think it’s very interesting. Movies are made on it, video games are made on it, gladiators in the ring. People love fights and if you were to make it very dynamic with the world’s best fighters in a different setting altogether, it needs to be intercity.”
Central to his idea is shifting away from individual competition toward a team-based structure.
“This is the only individual sport left and you know life of an individual goes up and goes down but the life of a team remains and now you need to build it into a team.”
Modi also argued that the current system fails to properly reward athletes across disciplines.
“It’s not Dana White’s. It is a whole amount of great athletes who persevere through their career to build themselves but are not recognized and there’s no income from it today.”
He pointed to a wide range of untapped talent across multiple combat styles that could be brought together under a new format.
“I think that if I looked at every sport genre, you have such tremendous athletes in the kung fu, judo, that whole sphere of fight. But if they were all put together in a different format somewhere, whether sumo, it has to be a very dynamic change, not what they’re doing in the cage fighting in the US.”
For Modi, the appeal lies in transforming the presentation into something more accessible and commercially viable.
“If you were to make it very sexy, very dynamic, very child-friendly and interesting to watch, there is a play there. It could change lives like cricket has. If you sat here 15 years ago and we talked about cricket, there was no career in cricket, there was no money in cricket. Today it’s life-changing.”
When asked if combat sports represent the biggest opportunity outside cricket, his answer was definitive.
“Only sport I see it for. Only sport I see it for.”
He also confirmed that his ideas are not purely theoretical.
“It’s the oldest sport in the world. Fight sport is the oldest sport. I’m working on something too.”
