Following last night’s entertaining UFC 172 event in Baltimore, Dana White spoke to the media about the big talking points emerging from the show.
Read our keynotes from the conversation below and scroll down to watch the full media scrum for yourselves.
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– White admits he didn’t expect that performance from Jon Jones last night. He’d wondered how he’d bounce back after the tough fight with Gustafsson, but instead of playing it safe like he expected, he put himself at risk and beat Glover Teixeira at his own game, up close and personal.
– He doesn’t know how the fans don’t like Jones after the war he was in with Gustafsson.
– They’ll have to wait and see how Jones is after the fight and make sure he’s not got any injuries before deciding when the rematch with Gustafsson can take place.
– White gives Teixeira props for his chin and the way he fought. He got pretty banged up in the fight, so he’ll need time off now to recover. He thinks he’ll get “one of the big guys” when he returns though.
– After defeating the No.4 ranked contender at 205lbs, Anthony Johnson is going to get another big fight next.
– White says his interactions with Jon Jones a few years ago was like dealing with a kid. He says it reminds him of how things were with Robbie Lawler back when he was first in the UFC as a youngster years ago.
– He reckons that the rematch between Jones and Gustafsson will be huge and could potentially fill a 50-60,000 seater stadium if they do it in Europe (Sweden). If it did take place there they’d do it at 4am local time so that it’d air at the usual PPV time back in North America.
As for whether Jones would agree to fight Gustafsson in his own back yard, White says he’ll agree to whatever they decide.
– Vitor Belfort has TRT issues with the Nevada State Athletic Commission that he has to resolve before he can get back to fighting again. White thinks it’s going to take time to figure it all out.
– White says he brought Andrei Arlovski back to the UFC because he likes him and he’s on a winning streak. The window on his career is running out and so he requested to come back and so White agreed. White admits he hasn’t seen Arlovski’s recent fights.
He also says that the fact that Arlovski was beaten by Anthony Johnson not so long ago bothered him, but he feels better about it now that he saw how ‘Rumble’ handled Phil Davis.
– He didn’t feel Jessamyn Duke did enough to win the fight and should have let her hands go more.
– There’ll be a press conference in Mexico this coming week. White says they have all sorts of things happening in that region.
– Apparently Nate Diaz wants to fight again, so they are trying to arrange something. No word from Nick Diaz though, and White says he has enough money now that he doesn’t need to return right away.
– Looking back at the recent flurry of UFC events, White says he felt Jon Jones stood out, and he also singles out Fabrico Werdum, saying that he hadn’t seen the fight with Travis Browne ending up that way at all. Donald Cerrone gets a mention too, and while it wasn’t a barnburner, he also felt the way Tim Kennedy dominated Michael Bisping was impressive.
– White says there’s an big new outdoor stadium in Sweden that could potentially play host to the Jones Vs Gustafsson rematch, or an indoor one instead. He’s not sure whether holding the event in Europe would affect the PPV numbers, but says they have analysts that look into that sort of thing.
