Things didn’t quite go according to plan when UFC CEO Dana White made an appearance as a special guest at Wrestlemania 41 at the Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada last night.
If it wasn’t for the fact that these days both the UFC and WWE are owned by the same company and go under the ‘TKO Group Holdings’ banner, White probably wouldn’t have had anything to do with last nights show.
However, presumably in an attempt to bolster the synergy between the two companies, White was not only in attendance on Saturday night, but even narrated the intro to the show.
Apparently that didn’t buy him any goodwill from pro-wrestling fans however, as when he was introduced to the crowd during the event he was heavily booed by the over 60,000 fans in attendance.
Unfortunately for White, later on he was shown for a second time later on in the broadcast and got to relive the embarrassing experience as he was booed again.
No doubt by that point White was questioning how he ended up getting roped into getting involved in the event in any capacity anyway as he’s never appeared to have any interest in pro-wrestling, and when the two companies were first brought under the TKO umbrella he’d been keep to emphasize that they were still separate entities.
“I haven’t worked with them at all. I do what I do, and they do what they do,” White declared at the time.
Perhaps more damningly though was a response White gave back in 2015 to a pro-wrestling fan that was complaining on social media to him about the price of a UFC event featuring Ronda Rousey compared to WWE’s $9.99 network price at the time.
“I hear you bro, but fake sh*t should be 9.99,” White responded.
As such it’s hardly surprising that WWE fans weren’t exactly thrilled to see White on Saturday night, and were no doubt left as perplexed as MMA fans as to why anyone thought it would be a good idea to have him narrate the opening to their biggest event of the year.
