Following last night’s UFC On FOX 11 event Dana White spoke to reporters about some of the evening’s big talking points.
Read keynotes from his conversation below and scroll down to watch the full video for yourselves.
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– White believes Chas Kelly should have been disqualified after landing an illegal knee to Mirsad Bektic that left the fighter dazed on the mat. He feels the referee’s decision to allow him five minutes to recover and then continue was bad, and puts it down to the officials down in Florida not having much big event experience.
– Robert Bennett is the new Executive Director at the Nevada State Athletic Commission, taking over from Keith Keizer and he’s believed to not be overly familiar with MMA, but White isn’t too concerned about that, saying that he’s just excited for the change.
– Shaq convinced Dana White to hold an event in Florida and despite him being worried about it, he admits that it turned out to be a big success with a large turnout.
– White’s non-commital on Khabib Nurmagomedov’s chances of getting into title contention in the lightweight divison.
– White was excited by what Gina Carano had to say when they met, and he hopes that they can make a deal with her to set up a title fight with Ronda Rousey.
– Carano told him she’d have no problem cutting to 135lbs and said that when she used to fight for organizations like Strikeforce and Elite XC she wasn’t even training properly as woman’s MMA was still in it’s infancy and very disorganized.
– Like a lot of other people, White seems to have immediately taken to Carano, calling her, “one of the most charming human beings I’ve ever met,” and that she was “fascinating.”
– Carano’s technically currently still under an old Strikeforce contract which Zuffa owns, but they will scrap that and offer her a new, more lucrative deal.
– White admits that the woman’s side of the sport has become bigger, faster than he’d ever imagined. He puts it down to the woman being genuinely talented and putting on exciting fights.
– The UFC president hasn’t heard from Dominick Cruz and thinks that when he does return it’d be best if he had a warm up fight before fighting for the title, but if he really wanted to go straight into a shot at the title then he’d give him it.
– Rich Franklin is looking to take on a vice-president role at ONE FC and White gave him his blessing. Despite that, Franklin will still be under contract with the UFC and he doesn’t rule him out of potentially fighting again for the UFC.
He explains that Franklin has been putting all his energy and money into getting a juice business off the ground, but he still needs another source of income and so that’s why he’s looking to the ONE FC gig.
– Wanderlei Silva got hurt during the on-set brawl with Chael Sonnen during TUF Brazil 3 which is what caused the delay in the fight getting signed, but the fight between them in July is now official.
– The UK and Mexico TV markets have been a lot tougher to crack than he’d ever anticipated, but things are moving in the right direction at last.
– White’s not able to attend all the UFC’s shows now, particularly since some coming up are scheduled for the same day, but he’ll still be overseeing the ones he can’t be at from a mobile studio set-up.
– Puerto Rico is somewhere the UFC are targetting for an event in 2015.
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