Dana White’s head must be spinning after a night of upsets at UFC 196 in Las Vegas, and you can watch what he had to say after the event was over and read our keynotes below.
—
– Dana White describes it as “a crazy night” and says you know you’ve had an exciting show when even the major celebrities in attendance who’re used to going to big occasions are standing around shell-shocked afterwards wondering what the hell just happened!
– If the co-main event event fight between Holly Holm had gone to a decision it’s interesting to note that the judges had marked the second round as 10-8 in Tate’s favor, but White disagrees with that and feels it wasn’t one-sided enough for that to be the case.
– White says he’d thought all along that this was a dangerous fight for Holm and had mentioned that if Tate got on top then it was going to be a long night for ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’, and that’s how it turned out.
– He says that Tate wanted the title so bad that when she took Holm’s back and sunk in the rear-naked choke in the final round, “she wasn’t letting go for anything.”
– Reflecting on Holm’s decision to take this fight in the first place, White wonders whether it was her or her manager that came up with the idea. He says Holm could have just waited for the money-spinning Ronda Rousey rematch, but she’s “not surrounded by business geniuses.” Nonethless, he gives her respect for putting it all on the line and fighting.
– According to White, Ronda Rousey didn’t know the result of the fight when he texted her about it. When she found out that Tate had won, White claims that she said something along the lines of, “back to work for me.”
– Moving on to the main event, White praises Conor McGregor for “making fighting so fun.” He says he fought like a gunslinger and was looking for the finish from the start even though he was fighting two weight classes higher than normal against a man in Nate Diaz who’s never been knocked out.
– White suggests that McGregor was running out of steam in the second round, noting that fighting someone who’s bigger than you while you’re also carrying more weight than normal and going all out for a finish, that, “It’s tiring.”
– The UFC president is non-commital about where they’ll go from here, but he hints that McGregor’s next fight could be a defence of his featherweight title.
