Below you’ll find two UFC 189 post-fight interviews with Dana White, includng our keynotes from the conversations, as he reacts to an amazing night of fights in Las Vegas.
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– White says the UFC were implementing a lot of new features last night including the Reebok deal, a new graphics package and live performances for the main event, and he felt they executed on it very well which helped lead him to the conclusion that this was, “without a doubt the best UFC ever.”
– He thinks this fight won’t shut up Conor McGregor’s critics for good – he believes people will always have a reason to question him, but those kind of debates are part of what’s fun about being a fight fan.
– The UFC president is relieved he didn’t take McGregor’s $3.2 million pre-fight bet that he’d win the fight.
– He feels that the fight could have been different if Mendes had a full fight camp, but equally he thinks that it may also have worked out better for McGregor if he’d had more time to train for competing against a wrestler.
– Of course his attention will now turn to an enormous title unification bout between McGregor and Jose Aldo, and he’s not sure where that fight will take place. He mentions they’d considered building an outdoor arena in Las Vegas, but says that the time of year wouldn’t work for that.
– White says he’s “not talking about Aldo any more”, because he claims everything he says gets twisted in the media, particularly it seems in Aldo’s native Brazil. The only thing he does say for sure is that, “Aldo will fight Connor” and that, “when we figure it out we’ll announce it.”
– He rules out the idea that Frankie Edgar could fight McGregor instead. “You wait for Aldo,” he says.
– White reveals that he had the thrilling co-main event battle between Robbie Lawler and Rory Macdonald even (2-2) going into the final round.
– He is full of praise for Rory MacDonald’s “incredible chin, massive heart, will, determination, guts…” toughing out the fight for as long as he did after breaking his nose in the first round.
He also marvels at the fact that Lawler ate so many head kicks yet still kept fighting. Overall he describes it as, “one of the sickest, most unbelievable wars I’ve ever seen in my life.”
– He jokes that while they could talk about the main card for hours, but sum up the largely underwhelming prelims in about four seconds.
– Finally, White says that the event is “trending very nicely” as far as the PPV buy rate goes.
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