DFW wants back in Vancouver, no TUF predictions
ARIEL HELWANI: Here’s the thing. We’ve traveled a very long road to get to this point, UFC 115. So I…
ARIEL HELWANI: Here’s the thing. We’ve traveled a very long road to get to this point, UFC 115. So I have a lot of questions about how we got here and I wanted to start at UFC 97 in Montreal, that was Chuck Liddell’s last fight in the Octagon. Why’s he still fighting?
DANA WHITE: Well, my big beef with Chuck Liddell was him changing his lifestyle, you know, and I didn’t know if he was willing to change his lifestyle and do the things he needed to do to still compete and you know, again I don’t want to sound condescending to him, but I’m proud of what he’s done. And the shape that he’s in, he hasn’t looked like this, he didn’t look like this when he 22 years old. He’s in phenomenal shape. He’s been taking this serious. He’s been dieting. He’s been doing all the right things and you know he’s claiming that he’s changed some of the things in his training regiment, too.
ARIEL HELWANI: Did you have to sort of make a deal with him and say, ‘OK, you need to do this, this, this, and this and then I will let you fight again’?
DANA WHITE: No, you know, you got to understand, too, aside from the business side, this guy’s a friend of mine so I sat down and said, ‘What are you doing? Do you just don’t want to this? Because I don’t want to you to.’ You know and I said many times, we can make money off Chuck Liddell, we can put on Chuck Liddell fight and make money. I don’t want make that kind of money, that’s not the kind of money I want to make. I want to put on fights that I know guys are taking it serious and want to become world champions and the guys I know that aren’t going to get hurt, you know what I mean? Because if you don’t take this sport serious, you can get hurt in this sport. And he has more than proved to me that he wants to stick around and be a part of it and be a professional athlete.
ARIEL HELWANI: More to that point, you’ve obviously been a long-time boxing fan, right? And we’ve seen guys in boxing stick around a little too long and you said he’s your friend and you care about him, perhaps a little more than some of the other fighters because you do have that relationship. Does that come into play that you don’t want to see him actually get hurt and suffer some consequences later on?
DANA WHITE: No, absolutely not. That’s why, listen, in this sport done the right way if you take this sport serious, you train hard, you stay in great shape, you take care of your body, and then you go through the pre-fight medicals that we put you through, the doctors that we have on hand for the fight and you get treated properly after the fight? This is an absolutely 100% safe sport. So, I just, I want guys that are going to be in it, especially when you start to get to that certain age you know I want to know that you want to be here and that you’re going to take this thing serious.
ARIEL HELWANI: You caught a lot of flack for the way you handled the situation on Twitter after the news broke that Rich had replaced Tito. Do you regret the way you handled it?
DANA WHITE: I’d do it exactly the same again. Don’t ask me [expletive] about The Ultimate Fighter. I can’t tell you. And I will lie to you.
ARIEL HELWANI: A lot of Canadian fans are worried that this is the last time the UFC will come to Vancouver because of all the issues that you’ve had to face. Is that in fact true?
DANA WHITE: It’s so crazy. If that was the way, seriously now you know me, this isn’t a reality show. If you know me, if that was the way I felt I’d tell you that’s the way I felt. I’d say listen, it was tough to get in here, these guys made us jump through all these hoops, we’re never coming back here. It’s not the case. It’s been actually a great experience, all the people that we’ve worked with up here in Vancouver from the mayor on up and down has been fantastic, so listen… I understand that there’s going to be, you know, sometimes we’re going to have to do things for different places to make people feel comfortable about the sport. But I know every time we go somewhere, when we roll out of town on Sunday, we leave a positive experience behind. I know that. So, I never sweat it.
ARIEL HELWANI: The insurance rate, how high was it?
DANA WHITE: It was high
ARIEL HELWANI: Can you say how much it was?
DANA WHITE: It’s a big number.
ARIEL HELWANI: Higher than usual, right?
DANA WHITE: Not even in the same universe. Yeah.
ARIEL HELWANI: Would that deter you from coming back?
DANA WHITE: No, because I don’t think it’s going to happen to us next time we come.
ARIEL HELWANI: Rumors online you have signed Jake Shields. Is that true?
DANA WHITE: It’s not true. We have not signed Jake Shields, yet.