Dana White: Strikeforce business model doesn’t make sense
Dana White: You know, I don’t ever sit around say, ‘Oh, Japanese MMA is done, it’s over, it’s blown up.’ The…
Dana White: You know, I don’t ever sit around say, ‘Oh, Japanese MMA is done, it’s over, it’s blown up.’ The world is in a really weird place right now, you know, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, a lot of people are struggling and… you know, I think the bottom fell out on Japan when PRIDE went away. I mean, when PRIDE didn’t work, it definitely upset the balance over there and I think it’s great right now that we get to see guys that people have heard about for so long in Japan finally fighting in the UFC.
Ariel Helwani: Is the time now for the UFC to return to Japan?
DFW: Uh, we’ll find out, you know, we’re talking about going there this year, so we’ll see how it all plays out.
Part of the problem is and, you know, you see all these guys on the Internet that always have this great advice and, you know, they know how to do shit better than anybody else, but the reality is that if you don’t have guys locked up to contracts to fight with you, how the hell are you going to get them to fight? You have other people offering them more money. When Japanese MMA was strong and, you know, you’re talking a year ago when there was still some money floating around and you got Strikeforce making an offer over here for X amount and the guys in Japan will beat them every time. Those guys are never going to come over here and fight. That’s why you have these big gaps and you can’t efficiently run your business. It would be like, first of all, it’s almost like, you know, when certain guys don’t want to fight each other. The thing about having a powerful league like the UFC is we make fights that people want to see and the fans, you know, bitch about, you know, how the business is run some times. We’re able to put the fights we want to see because of how we run our business.
Now, imagine if in baseball the Yankees said, ‘we don’t want to play the fucking Red Sox.’ You know what I mean, ‘we don’t want to play them.’ The Green Bay, these guys both make it and Green Bay’s like, ‘yeah, we don’t want to play Pittsburgh, we hate Pittsburgh’ or ‘they’re offering me more money to do something somewhere else. We just don’t want to do this.’ I mean, it makes no sense, right? The way that this thing is done makes sense. The way that they run their business doesn’t.
AH: If you’re not doing anything next Saturday night, will you watch Fedor fight?
DFW: Uh…. yeah, I guess so.
AH: Are you interested at all is the question after his loss?
DFW: Here’s the thing with me is that, for instance, last Saturday I watched the boxing match (Alexander/Bradley) on HBO and it was horrendous. I mean, I can’t even believe they’re showing the replays.
I’m the type of person I would yank all the fucking replays and wouldn’t even replay that fight. And then the problem with that fight is, it’s not ‘live’ live all the over the (USA), you know, so you got to wait till 10 o’clock. I’m doing other shit, that’s why I didn’t watch it, but I did watch the replay last night. So, I will end up seeing the Fedor fight, for sure.