Dana White: Reports of November UFC card in Brazil premature
UFC president Dana White on Thursday told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that despite reports earlier this week claiming the UFC had pinned…
UFC president Dana White on Thursday told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that despite reports earlier this week claiming the UFC had pinned down a November date for its first Brazilian event since 1998, the plans were far from concrete.
“It’s too early to tell,” White said. “We’re obviously interested in Brazil and bringing a fight down there, but we don’t know yet.”
“We’re spending money in Brazil right now,” White told MMAjunkie.com earlier this year. “We’re spending marketing money, PR money, and we’ve got people down there working for us.
“You get into these countries, and you have to go in there and cultivate the market. Look at how long we’ve been in the U.K. and how much money and effort and energy we’ve put into there, and we’re not on pay-per-view yet. It’s driving us crazy, but people don’t realize how much work we put into this thing – not only here in the U.S. and all the things we do here but all over the world. It’s a big job.”
Nevertheless, the company remains optimistic that it will touch down on Brazilian soil in 2011 – it’s just a little too early to say for sure.
“It looks like 2011,” UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta said in October. “We’ve been working on that now for about a year. We’re trying to figure our whether we do it in Rio (de Janeiro) or Sao Paulo.
