UFC president Dana White recently did a massive interview with Jon Wertheim, executive editor and senior writer for Sports Illustrated, briefly excerpted below. It’s been a big year with the league being sold for the biggest price in sports history, Jon Jones suspended again, Conor McGregor winning a new belt and giving one up only to call for a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and Ronda Rousey losing twice.
One of several central differences between the UFC model and that used in boxing is the depth of the card. Boxing PPVs are centered on a single fight. By contrast, the Fight of the Night, and the Performance bonuses often go not to the main event, not to the co-main, but to the main card, the FS1 undercard, and even the UFC Fight Pass undercard. White explained why.
“The one thing I sell, what I’m selling you every Saturday night, there are ‘holy s***’ moments, where you jump off the couch with your friends, look at each other and go, ‘Holy s***, that just happened.’ Everybody is going crazy.
“You can’t bank on one fight doing that, especially a big fight where everything’s involved, all the stakes are so high and everything else. Boxing, that’s why you got the guys that run around in circles and actually don’t fight. They just want to win to get to the next payday. Whereas in this sport, everybody is making money. We put great fights on all the cards so you could have those moments.
White also discussed the biggest star ever in the sport, former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.
“Everything she told me she would do, she did,” said White. “She worked her ass off for this sport, for this company, for women. She worked herself to the bone. I’ve never had a fighter work [with publicity] the way she has. She’s made a lot of money. I know for her that doesn’t matter—her legacy means more to her than anything else. But you know what, sometimes we can’t have it all. But let’s be clear: she built this house. She really did.
“I care about her as a human being more than the fighter side. You read the bulls***, ‘Oh man, UFC’s in trouble, their golden goose….’ She’s not a f***king golden goose. She’s a human being. And she’s a very good f***ing friend of mine.”
“If she calls me today and says, ‘I’m done. I’m gonna wrap it and call it a career’ I’m gonna be like, ‘Awesome. That’s amazing. We’ll plan something.’ And if she calls me and says, ‘I want three more fights,’ she’s got it. She’ll make that decision on her own.”
