Dana White spoke to the media following UFC On FOX Sports 1 last night in Boston and you can watch the full scrum in the video and read our full keynotes from it below.
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– White says that a potential fight between Nick Diaz and Lyoto Machida was “a bad idea” and won’t be happening. He says there’s “something else going on” with Diaz, but he doesn’t elaborate on exactly what that means.
– He’s not sure what’ll come next for Chael Sonnen, it’s too early to tell.
– The UFC will finally return to Ireland in the third quarter of 2014.
– White believes Uriah Hall is “too nice” to be a fighter. He suggests he’s not mentally in the right place to compete effectively in the sport.
– Sweden’s Reza Madadi was sentenced to 18 months in prison this week for robbery and White says he will probably now be cut from the UFC.
– The UFC president continues to be delighted with their partnership with FOX, saying things couldn’t be going better.
– Boxing legend Oscar DeLa Hoya had an interview promoting his upcoming Golden Boy Promotions show during the UFC show last night, and White says we can expect more of this kind of cross-promotion on FOX Sports 1, including White making a similar appearance on the boxing show.
However, while White is comfortable with that, he wouldn’t be interested in doing a full co-promotion UFC event with boxing. He doesn’t feel it’s a good idea to mix combat sports together in one event.
– Dana feels Cole Miller should have been awarded the decision against Manny Gamburyan, believing he won the first two rounds.
– He thought the end of the first round of that fight was “very weird” when an elbow appeared to badly hurt Gamburyan. For one thing he didn’t think Miller should have showed as much concern for his opponent – he feels he didn’t do anything wrong and should just have gone back to his corner and let the doctor’s deal with it. He also feels that the fight should have been stopped due to the distress Gamburyan appeared to be in.
– White feels Johnson Vs Lauzon ended up being one of the most lopsided fights he’s ever seen. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought that it was just horrible matchmaking due to the difference between the two fighters on the night.
– From what he heard, White believes that Mike Pyle would get the better of Matt Brown in the gym, but it didn’t turn out that way last night.
– White agrees that it feels like the UFC’s debut on FOX Sports 1 was a home-run and everyone will go happy with what they saw.
– He heard a rumor that Wanderlei Silva may have bet $100,000 on ‘Shogun’ beaten Sonnen, something that a Brazilian journalist confirms the fighter had said he was going to do. White jokes that Silva might have jumped off his roof tonight after Sonnen’s victory. On the bright side he quips that Silva will now probably be looking for a fight since he’s now broke!
– White says there’s a whole bunch of fighters he needs to figure out match-ups for, including Diaz, Machida and Dan Henderson.
– There’s a good chance that Rory MacDonald Vs Robbie Lawler will happen.
– Dana doesn’t believe it was wrong to sign Alistair Overeem, but he won’t be drawn on whether he’ll remain with the UFC after two KO losses in a row.
– Getting caught in a guillotine choke is a lot different from getting beaten up or KO’d so White doesn’t feel that ‘Shogun’s’ loss means that he should be thinking about retirement.
– White is happy with Ronda Rousey’s attitude to doing movies. He says she approaches the UFC way in advance and asks if it’s ok for her to do them. Then they sit down and take a look if it’s possible. He’s much happier with that than someone just taking a movie without any consideration for how it might affect the UFC’s schedule.
– There were more bonuses paid out than normal tonight and that was purely down to the high quality finishes we saw from a number of different fighters who all more than earned their extra cash.
– Steven Siler didn’t get one of the bonuses despite a quick finish against Mike Brown, but he will get some kind of a bonus.
– He felt Joe Lauzon looked terrible tonight and just didn’t seem himself. On the other hand he felt Michael Johnson looked “awesome”.
– The UFC are working to sort out a new edition of TUF in China and are heading for talks in Russia in the next week (he won’t be speaking to M-1 Global / Fedor though!). They also have a lot of things planned for Australia, saying it’s an important market for them.
– White says the digital side of the business isn’t where they would like it to be. It’s something they are looking to fix – things like allowing fans more access to their vast fight library which includes various other promotions as well like Strikeforce, WEC, Elite XC, etc.
– Despite his loss to Urijah Faber, Dana felt that Iuri Alcantara still fought well.
– Apparently the UFC’s content is doing really well on FOX Deportes. They are even showing classic UFC fights from the pre-Zuffa era. However, White isn’t overly keen to show those events on FOX Sports, saying that they’ve already got a heap of content they can offer up, and ideally he’d prefer that people were watching fights from the modern era with fighters who are still competing to help raise their profile.
– White’s a big fan of Brian Stann, saying he excel’s at everything he does. He will appear on more UFC shows. Having said that, suggestions that Stann could form part of a three-main commentary team for UFC live shows isn’t something that appeals to the UFC president, saying that he preferes a two-man booth better.
– Normally it would have been someone like Kenny Florian or Stann who would be have provided color commentary on last night’s show, but since it was in Boston, Joe Rogan’s hometown, it seemed right to have him there for the launch night.
– White likes the new camera’s / angles that FOX were using tonight. Apparently the floor cam actually sits outside the cage, yet somehow has technology that allows it to blur out the cage so you don’t see it. Weird! He admits it has a completely different feel to the other cameras and is a little jarring at first, but he seems happy with it and expects it to be something that continues for future broadcasts on FOX.
– There’s no problem with Vitor Belfort fighting in the U.S despite his TRT usage according to White.
– According to Dana, Brazil is a market where the fans want to see other Brazilian fighters beating up people, but not each other. He’s not sure whether they could host a fight with two foreigners in the main event and it be a success over there.
– Conor McGregor’s not ready to headline an event, though White admits that he’s popular enough to carry a show in Dublin. He’s only 2-0 though in the UFC so not ready for main event status anywhere.
– In the not too distant future White indicates that there could be UFC events that only take place for local markets. He says for sure that’s going to happen in China.
– White asks the reporters for an update on the extremely violent incident involving former UFC fighter Maiquel Falcao and Bellator prospect Kaue Mena who were beaten up by a gang of youths in Brazil about six weeks ago. White describes the video footage as one of the most vicious things he’s ever seen. Sadly Mena is still in a coma after taking the brunt of the attack, being punched and kicked in the head multiple times after being knocked out. Falcao is ok though.
– The Culinary Union’s attempts to sabotage the UFC’s trip to Boston on a political level only helped create awareness about the show according to White and turned out to be a great promotional tool.
– The UFC have talked to the likes of Nike, Reebok and Adidas about branding on things like the fighter’s gloves, but they’ve never been able to reach a deal as of yet.
