Read on for the keynotes from Dana White’s UFC 170 pre-fight media scrum yesterday.
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– White feels that Daniel Cormier is genuinely angry and embarrassed by Pat Cummins claiming that he made him cry in wrestling training years ago which is why he shoved him at the fighter staredown yesterday.
He doesn’t like it when the fighters get physical like that pre-fight and he’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again at the weigh-ins.
– White notes that while Ronda Rousey absolutely hated Miesha Tate she’s actually been very nice and respectful to her other opponents like Sara McMann and Liz Carmouche.
– He laughs at the fact that Rousey is apparently worried about the UFC 170 PPV buys and has told her to relax and let him worry about that.
He believes she’s the hardest worker he’s ever seen in the sport. He credits her for handling all the pressure so well as other fighters would have cracked.
– He claims he won’t be upset if Rousey retires while she’s still in her prime. He intends to keep her busy this year though as he’s planning for her to fight three times in 2014.
– He’s convinced that woman’s MMA is here to stay and with people like Rousey proving that there’s money to be made here that’ll encourage other talented sporting stars to follow suit.
– White is impressed by Sara McMann’s physicality, saying she’s got huge arms and hands for her size.
– He says that Rousey sends him her striking training footage and she’s been knocking out her partners.
– Reporter Karyn Bryant was a driving force behind the UFC’s doing quite a bit for ‘Black History Month’.
– White “can’t imagine” what Cat Zingano is going through after having a terrible run of bad luck and misfortune that’s say her suffering major injuries, missing out on the opportunity to coach on TUF and compete for the title, and then having to deal with the death of her husband.
– He has no problems with Gilbert Melendez and isn’t ruling the UFC out of coming to an agreement with him.
– Dana is sticking by his story with regards to how Julianna Pena’s injury happened given that he heard the story directly from Pena only minutes after it happened. He calls the whole situation “disgusting.”
– White would like to see TRT exemptions “go away” believing that it would make everything “easy and fair.”
– He resists taking a pop at Nate Quarry who recently criticized the UFC for the way they treat fighters, saying that he loves all the guys from the first season of TUF 1 and feels he has had a good relationship with Quarry. White thinks that part of the problem with Quarry was that he fought at a time when the UFC was still growing and didn’t have a lot of money to throw around.
– White is puzzled why the Gilbert Melendez situation is getting such a negative reaction. He says that people have been complaining in the past that the UFC is a monopoly, and now that Bellator are able to compete with them for fighters signatures people are complaining about that too. He thinks it’s good that Melendez is able to “test the waters.”
If Melendez does sign for Bellator he doesn’t think he’ll ever return to the UFC. Not because the UFC wouldn’t be interested in picking him up at a later date, but rather because the kind of deals that Bellator’s owner Viacom has fighters sign is almost impossible to get out of.
– He shuts down talk of a potential Matt Hughes Vs Matt Serra fight – it won’t be happening.
– White’s impressed with how much Rousey is already earning as an actress – he’s never seen a fighter make that transition so quickly and successfully.
– He can’t believe the fuss that’s already being made about an off-hand remark he made recently about the possibility of them having official UFC uniforms for the fighters. A lot of people from the media to the fighters themselves are already complaining that will affect sponsorship opportunities, but White stresses that a deal hasn’t even been done yet, might not even happen, and you can’t bitch about something until you understand how it would work.
– Continuing on the sponsorship theme, White isn’t concerned with fighters making less money from that when they are competing on the UFC Fight Pass service. He says it’s not his problem and that they are contractually paid an amount to fight and anything else they make beyond that is their business.
– There’s been a huge amount of decisions in the last couple of UFC events, but White’s not interesting in hearing people’s theories on why that might be, he says it just happens sometimes.
Speaking specifically about ‘UFC Fight Night 36’ he claims you’re not a fight fan if you didn’t enjoy Machida Vs Mousasi, and he also enjoyed Jacare Vs Carmont too.
– He’s not ruling out Machida either fighting for the title or competing in a No.1 contender bout with ‘Jacare’.
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