What happened to Dana White's The Ultimate Surfer show?

As many MMA fans will be aware, Dana White and the UFC host a show called The Ultimate Fighter, which is a combination of reality TV and combat sports. The winners of the show are entered into the UFC as a reward and the show also acts as a promotional platform for the fighters.

However, White recently attempted to convert this business model into the world of surfing. The UFC president was one of the executive producers of the show The Ultimate Surfer and spent 10 years working on the concept, but in March 2022, Deadline.com exclusively announced that the show had been canceled.

ABC canceled the contest after just one season, seemingly due to a lack of public interest in the show. The official Twitter account for The Ultimate Surfer has less than 1000 followers and the viewing numbers were also lacking.

In the first episode, the show only managed to pull in under 1.5 million viewers. The contest ran for just eight episodes and promised the winners of the show a potential spot in the WSL World Tour.

The WSL World Tour is one of the largest surfing contests in the world, with a total prize pool of $607,800 in prize money for each male event. The women's contests have a slightly smaller prize pool, offering $420,800 in total for the female competitors.

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Why did Dana White launch The Ultimate Surfer show?

Dana White obviously has a major passion for MMA, given the countless years he's put into the UFC. However, the UFC president also loves surfing, that is why White was an executive producer of The Ultimate Surfer.

As mentioned above, the show has now been canceled by ABC, but before the contest was cut, White spoke to Barstool Sports about his love of the sport that eventually led to the launch of the show:

"Yeah, I love surfing. I surfed when I was younger and you know I was like 19-20 years old. And what I really tried to do, as my kids were growing up, I got them into it. Every Christmas we used to go to Fiji and, you know, my kids would surf all through Christmas."

Watch White speak about The Ultimate Surfer here:

Dana White added that he was hoping that his kids would fall in love with the sport, but sadly, they never matched White's passion for surfing. The UFC president went on to say that he had been working on the concept of The Ultimate Surfer for over 10 years, so it's a shame that the contest has been canceled so quickly.