Following last night’s highly entertaining UFC 160 event Dana White spoke to the media about the big talking points emerging from the show.
Read our keynotes below and scroll down to watch the full media scrum for yourselves.
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– White believes that Cain Velasquez is the best heavyweight in the world, though he was impressed with Junior Dos Santos as well.
– He thinks the Antonio Silva stoppage was fair.
– The UFC has four options in mind to potentially headline UFC On FOX Sports 1 and one of them is a lightweight title fight between Ben Henderson and TJ Grant.
– Dana has finally spoken to GSP about his next fight. It looks like it’s going to be Johny Hendricks as expected. White says GSP is 100% convinced that Chris Weidman will beat Anderson Silva anyway which would rule out any chance of a superfight for the time being.
– White indicates that it’s possible that Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson could fight yet. They’ve said to him they want to fight and he admits that people don’t seem too enthusiastic about Lyoto Machida getting the title shot right now, but nothing’s been decided for sure yet.
– Both Jones and Gustafsson are in Russia at the moment, but White says that’s because they are doing a seminar – it’s not related to the UFC.
– He says that Mike Tyson loved the fights and the weigh-ins the day before.
– Regarding Khabib Nurmagomedov pushing his opponent at the weigh-ins, White doesn’t seem to bothered by it, saying that as long as a scuffle doesn’t break out then it’s to be expected.
– Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar will both be inducted into the UFC hall of fame at the Expo together in July.
White says he’s over his annoyance with Bonnar’s positive steroid test, but he hasn’t spoken to him yet.
– He thought the prelims were just ok, but the main card was great.
– White jokes that when Tyson said that TJ Grant should win the KO bonus instead of Junior Dos Santos, he didn’t dare argue with him!
– Now that Forrest Griffin’s retired Dana and Lorenzo plan to speak to him next week to figure out what his role will be in the company.
Griffin was called in to give his retirement speech at literally just a few hours notice last night. The reason for that was White said he’s been dealing with some behind-the-scenes problems this week (which he won’t divulge) that took up all of his time and so he simply forgot to let Griffin know what was happening until the last minute.
– BJ Penn and Rick Franklin won’t say ‘yes’ to retiring just yet according to White. He’d like to see Penn hang up his gloves, but he doesn’t think Franklin needs to just yet.
When asked to explain that given Penn’s never been KO’d, he says the problem is that ‘The Prodigy’ is too tough for his own good and has taken a lot of big shots over his career that would have knocked out lesser fighters.
– Donald Cerrone is interested in fighting Josh Thompson next and White likes the sound of that, though he points out that matchmaker Joe Silva might have other plans for them.
– Dana never expected TJ Grant would knock out Gray Maynard. He thinks he’s earned his title shot.
– He admits that a lot of the fighters that he’s been around since taking over the company have started retiring recently, but he says the strangest one for him was still when chuck Liddell finally hung up his gloves given their close relationship.
– White reminisces about the times he used to throw parties in Las Vegas after the fights, but he jokes that those days are over and now that he’s old he just wants to get back home as quickly as possible after events.
– He says it’s remarkable how much Fuel TV has come along since the UFC arrived on the channel.
– Talking about his own potential retirement from the UFC, White says he still has things he wants to do and feels he’s the best person to do them so it’s not time yet, but perhaps in 7 or 8 years it could be a possibility.
– White feels bad that Shane Carwin had to retire due to his injuries. The fighter left him a really nice message and he did the same in return, saying he couldn’t be a classier, nicer guy.
– Brazil is a no-brainer for a stadium show, but at the moment they don’t have one planned.
– They are working on another TUF: Smashes style season at the moment, but he doesn’t say which countries will be involved.
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