Taken from a national teleconference last Thursday -
"We’ve been at the tipping point for a while now," White said of the recent mainstream breakthrough.
"We finally got to the point where we couldn’t be denied anymore. We’ve been kicking boxing’s ass and wrestling for the last year and a half. We’re selling out venues. We’re breaking records everywhere we go. It’s to the point now where we can’t be denied anymore. We were at that tipping point and here we are."
He addressed the boxing vs. UFC debate. "Boxing has a lot of problems. It’s more than just one problem. They’ve got a ton of problems. The thing with boxing is it’s all about the money. It’s all about money. At the end of the day, every decision that gets made, everything that they do, it’s all about money. I don’t talk about money. People always want to know how much are you making? How much are they making? How much is this and how much is that? Who gives a shit? Who really gives a damn at the end of the day, what the financials are, how much is everybody making? I want to talk about the next fight. Who does everybody want to see fight? Why do we want to see them fight? The big problem with sports today is everybody talks about fucking money. You’ll never hear me talk about money. Ever. It’s not because we’re trying to hide everything. It’s just that’s not what we’re about."
Dana talked about the early days running the group.
"Originally, me and my partners, the way we got into it is we started taking Jiu-Jitsu, and I was a boxing guy. I thought the UFC was shit. I thought it was everything that the rest of the world thought it was. Then we started to meet some of these fighters, and these guys weren’t just a bunch of gorillas that rolled in off of bar stools. These guys were educated guys. They were great athletes. When we started to do Jiu-Jitsu we started to realize what an incredible athlete you had to be to be good at that sport.
When we went to the first UFC event, there was a small little event outside of New Orleans. We started looking around and watched some of the matches. We were like, this really is an incredible sport. Imagine if they did this and imagine if they did that. Then it ended up we owned the company not too long after that and we started implementing all the things we thought could make the sport great. We started putting these incredible athletes out in front and telling there stories.
You know Vince McMahon and the WWE, he creates a guy and he builds a persona for him and gives him a name. They go out and act a certain way. These guys (in the UFC) have their own different personas and they are interesting and real. In boxing, you always hear the same old story: 'I came from the mean streets of such and such. If it wasn’t for boxing, I’d be dead or in jail.’ These guys in the UFC, I mean, Chuck Liddell is an accounting major from Cal Poly. Matt Hughes graduated from college. Randy Couture and they all have these great stories that are real. It’s refreshing in the fight game to deal with people that are in the UFC."
Regarding oversaturation, he said:
"The thing about Spike TV is we’ll take some of our big caliber fights that should be pay-per-view, because I believe in giving big fights to people for free. It’s not that greedy boxing model where every great fight has to be on pay-per-view and I’ll put a bunch of shitty fights on ESPN or Fox Sports Net. High quality, high caliber, big-time fights for free on Spike TV. I don’t worry about it at all. Is there too much football on TV? Is there too much baseball on TV? Are they too main stream? This is a sport. It’s a great sport with great athletes and I think anytime you can put together a great fight between two guys that people want to see, they are going to tune in.”
He also ripped apart boxing:
“Pretty much every UFC fight is damn exciting. The difference is we showcase nine fights that night, not just one. Let me tell everybody on this call something and go off on a rant for a second. I always talk about how much trouble boxing is in. Boxing is in trouble for one reason, and one reason only -- Greed. They are all greedy. Everybody in it is greedy. Bob Arum and Don King have absolutely destroyed that sport, stuck their hands in there, ripped the life out of it and stuck it in their pockets. OK, and Bob Arum can call me 500 fucking times tomorrow and I’ll say the same thing. That’s the reason boxing is in trouble. Oscar De La Hoya had the opportunity. I’m sure a lot of people thought Floyd Mayweather was going to beat Oscar De La Hoya. There were people wishing and hoping Oscar De La Hoya would win, but reality tells you Floyd is going to win this fight.
Now, Bob Arum and Don King weren’t promoters of this event, Oscar De La Hoya was and, apparently, his career after boxing is going to be a fight promoter. Now, he has Winky Wright, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and a bunch of other talented guys that he has fighting under his promotion. We got a lot of press the week of the De La Hoya fight because everybody was saying could this be the fight that saves boxing. Hell no, it couldn’t be the fight that saves boxing because Oscar did the same thing that Bob and Don did. All he wanted to do was shove the money in his pocket. He should have stacked the card with Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright on the undercard. The promotion for that fight should have been, ‘Boxing’s not dead. Golden Boy Promotions is going to bring it back and we’re going to go head-to-head with the UFC. We’ve stacked this card and put all these guys on the card.’ But they won’t do it because they are too fucking greedy.
It’s never going to change and it’s never going to end. They could have built storylines underneath with all these fights, and let’s say half the people came back for the next fight. They just did 2 million buys. Maybe, they could have done 1 million or half a million or 750,000 with these other fights. This is what I’m talking about, about these boxing guys. They don’t think about the future. It’s how much money can I make right here, right now. Anyway, sorry guys."
Linear Mode
