Dana White denied today that money had anything to do with the situation with Conor McGregor and UFC 200, but also admitted that the McGregor vs. Nate Diaz fight could still be saved and said he believed McGregor would fight for the UFC again within the next year.
White appeared this afternoon on the Colin Cowherd show on FS 1 and said, “It’s not a money issue. That’s false. That’s the problem with the Internet. Never ever was this about money. Conor makes a lot of money and he’s very happy with the money he makes.”
He said McGregor has never come back after agreeing to a deal and looked for more money.
White claimed the entire issue is that McGregor refused to come to Las Vegas this weekend for promotional purposes. White said they were going to shoot the television commercial and have press conferences in three cities, starting in Las Vegas, and then he’d be able to return to Iceland and train for the fight, noting it’s not like they were asking him three weeks before the fight to break camp.
White claimed that in a conversation with McGregor’s manager, he was asked to move this to May and White said that they were spending $10 million promoting the show and the money is in motion.
“It never got combative,” said White. “I was talking to his manager. They were asking, `Let’s move all this to May.’ You can’t move it. This stuff is in motion.”
“I’m not mad, even a little bit,” said White to Cowherd, who said that White didn’t appear to be mad yesterday when they were together. “You were with me yesterday, did I seem mad? It’s UFC 200. It’s a massive fight. Believe me, when Conor went out, ten other people called asking to come in.”
“Obviously Conor made a decision and made a choice to not want to fight on this card. And that’s how he gets paid. That’s on him. The show will go on.”
White said that McGregor does have to clear up the retirement talk, noting that if McGregor says he’s retired, then the UFC 200 fight with Jose Aldo vs. Frankie Edgar would be for the featherweight title and not, as it stands right now, the interim title.
Over a year after officially signing with the UFC, it appears as if CM Punk may finally have a date, location and potential opponent for his first professional MMA fight: July 9th in Las Vegas at UFC 200.
The potential opponent is Mickey Gall, a 1-0 welterweight from New Jersey who is currently ranked at #63 on the list of northeastern United States welterweights on Tapology.com. At 5-11 and 23 years old, he will make his UFC debut at February 6th’s UFC 196 against Michael Jackson, who will be making his professional debut on the show. This clearly looks like a showcase fight for Gall, who has been told that should he win the fight, he’ll get the Punk match at UFC 200 in July.
Dana White appeared on TSN’s Off the Record with Michael Landsberg and confirmed all of this. He also confirmed that Ronda Rousey will not be fighting at UFC 200 but did speculate on who he’d like to see on the card. Landsberg brought up the possibility of GSP-Lawler and White said that would be awesome and also speculated that Anderson Silva could be a possible opponent for GSP, should he return.
The Gall-Jackson fight will be on the Fight Pass prelims of UFC 196. White also confirmed that Punk will be in attendance at the fight.
Gall has been speculated as Punk’s potential opponent for the last week or so after being featured on Dana White’s Looking for a Fight YouTube series. He trains with the Gracie New Jersey Academy and fought in front of White at a regional show at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia (the former ECW Arena in another pro wrestling tie-in).
Fielding questions from fans and media at the UFC 193 Q&A in Sydney, Australia, Dana White spoke about Nick Diaz’s 5-year suspension and what his initial thoughts were.
Submission Radio was on hand for the event and have the clip for you below!
“We’ve been here (Australia). When this thing went down, we’ve been here. And many people who know me and know the sport, I’ve been a very reactionary person in the past. I’m a little older and a little wiser now. I don’t just react, I have to know all the facts. I don’t know all the facts, you know. When you hear this – because it’s so jarring when you hear this. It’s like, wait a minute, this guy was suspended for five years and got a 150,000 dollar fine for marijuana? So you can completely take that out of context too, but that’s his third offense. It’s his third offense, and let’s all be honest here, Nick Diaz doesn’t exactly play by the rules. You know, listen, everybody would love to hang out and smoke weed all day and not play by the rules. It sounds awesome. It’s sounds like, you know, it sounds like the great thing to do (laughs). But in reality, you can’t do that, and especially when you’re dealing with the government. Nick was also in a situation where Nick hadn’t paid his taxes in a long time, you know. You can’t do that either. So it has to be more than ‘hey the guy smoked weed and…’ – I don’t know all the facts yet. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. When I get home, I will hear all the facts. I promise you, you will hear from me soon on the Nick Diaz situation. I have to figure out all the facts first.”
Speaking at the UFC 193 fan Q&A in Sydney, Australia, Dana White squashed the latest rumors about the UFC planning Fedor Emelianenko vs. Anderson Silva at light heavyweight, which were started by Chael Sonnen. Submission Radio was on hand for the event and have the clip for you below! VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/G1ruu2aRBtM Quote:
“That’s completely false (laughs). You know, the Fedor thing has been this weird deal for a long time. We’ve obviously talked to Fedor many times and tried to get it done, and we’ll see how this thing plays out. But no, there’s absolutely no truth to that whatsoever. Sorry Chael.”
On this week’s Chad Dukes Wrestling Show ( Wednesdays at 7pm on CBS Radio’s 106.7 The Fan DC, Podcast available on iTunes & Play.it) we discussed the comments by UFC President Dana White on Dukes’ afternoon drive program, Chad Dukes Versus the World responding to his infamous “fake” comment regarding pro wrestling.
White offered the following clarification to his comments.
“Listen, try to do anything today without pissing people off. Try it. I mean anything you say people get mad, you just gotta not care and I don’t care. Anything you say on Twitter or Instagram or anywhere these days every week I have a different group mad at me so you know it’s always something, but it’s still the world we live in today. My Twitter and social media has beene xactly the same since the day I got on it and one of the things, you said it best, the more successful you become, the bigger something gets, the harder it is to be yourself and to really speak honestly because somebody ends up getting mad. You literally just have to get to the point where you just don’t care who gets mad and that’s how I am.”
“I’ve had my, you know, my battles with Vince [McMahon] behind the scenes with some stuff that we’ve worked on but I respect all the guys in the WWE in the wrestling profession. We have so many guys that are that are fans of the UFC and when they come to the events we take very good careof ’em, we treat ’em with respect, I have yet to meet a bad guy from the wrestling world. Everybody is really classy and everybody’s really cool. My wrestling thing was just a response to an idiot on social media that was talking smack so I kind of gave him a zinger back and the whole wrestling world went crazy on me. But it is what it is, to be honest with you I really don’t care.”
This has been a befuddling and somewhat obnoxious week for MMA, hasn’t it? We had Rampage Jackson debut in Bellator last Friday in front of nearly 800,000 viewers. We had the final build and execution of the UFC’s 20th anniversary show, a show that ended up with more animosity than celebration. We had Georges St. Pierre saying stuff, Dana White getting mad about that stuff, and a slew of vitriol against White for his comments about his welterweight champion’s right to hang ‘em up…if that’s what he’s doing.
But despite the amount of events, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as exhausted to be a UFC fan than last Wednesday when a great pair of heels in White and women’s champ Ronda Rousey did their thing on Fox Sports 1.
Let’s tackle White first.
I’m not going to fully rehash and reheat the criticism lobbed at White since his post-fight tirade about how St. Pierre owes fans, Johny Hendricks and the UFC a rematch. Our Dave Meltzer hit it on the head earlier this week when he said White’s frustration boiled over because he didn’t know what was going on, and couldn’t answer the questions he was going to get.
Regardless, White is a grown man, a successful multi-millionaire and someone who has been in situations before where he had no answers or didn’t want to give answers. He knows the game well enough to say, “I don’t know.” Instead, we got a tirade and then his blocking of questions directed to St. Pierre about what he said. On a night meant to tip a cap to two decades of accomplishments, White took a dump in the cap instead.
But instead of letting things slide, White was on this week’s UFC Tonight and kept on the offensive, saying GSP wasn’t retiring, would be back, and that he ‘made a big mistake’ in saying what he said. Perhaps, but he also had just been beat around by Hendricks for 25 minutes. Had he been a bit more clear-headed, we would likely know exactly what he meant.
White then railed against the critics who have told White that St. Pierre doesn’t owe him anything (which is true). White disagreed:
“When we talk about ‘GSP doesn’t owe you anything,’ You’re wrong. Here’s the reality. GSP took almost a year and a half off. And he’s had two fights since then, since he tore his ACL out. When you fight in this sport, there’s a small opportunity for people, and there’s a lineup of people who want a shot at the UFC 170-pound title. You can’t just say I’m going to put this on hold because you have personal problems. You can’t do that. No, you cannot. You can’t do that.”
Sure, he can. If he wants to take a year off, he relinquishes the title or you create an interim belt. You talk to him and figure it out. It’s also the manner in which White delivered his message that bothered me: aggressive, unrelenting, without any compassion. While he’s the president of a group that legally puts people in a cage to fight, there are times to back down and at least acknowledge that his champ may be going through something.
This week was the time for White to back off, but he can’t help himself, won’t apologize for his methods and therefore lost an opportunity to appear human, even if just for a few minutes.
And now, a few words on Rousey.
In August, I was part of a press junket that got access to the TUF premiere in Boston. As part of the screening, Rousey, Miesha Tate and White were there answering questions. The tension was butcher knife thick and a clearly irritated Rousey didn’t want to be there, blaming her aggravation on her travel schedule.
Rousey didn’t seem to care for the TUF experience, almost acknowledging what was to come. This year, Rousey has come off like an overtrained, Type A caricature of a way too intense football coach. She’s grumbled at Tate, flipping her off during hand-shaking attempts and clearly doesn’t like her. The “she’s laughing at my girl’s pain” line from earlier this year remains among the most eye-rolling quotes I’ve ever heard an athlete say.
Wednesday’s TUF featured the coach’s challenge, a race up a rock climbing wall. Rousey won after a spirited race and within seconds, yelled, “F**k you, bitch!” and flipped off Tate several times as they were let down from the top of the wall.
I’ve followed competitive sports most of my life and have had to endure the Bob Costases and Joe Bucks of the world attempt to give us morality lessons on how sports should be played. That’s not what I’m attempting to do here, but I can’t help but say Rousey’s reaction was a classless and pointless act.
Yeah, she’s competitive. Yeah, she was raised tough because her mother is a bad-ass judo champion who raised her tough. Yeah, she’s a “Diaz brother”. I really don’t care. It’s not an excuse and is a detriment, regardless of how talented she is or what her background is. Perhaps it was pent up frustration from the idiotic team Tate pranks and maybe because she can’t help herself, but she should try. Like it or not, she is a champion. Time to act like one.
In both cases, White and Rousey played up to the unwashed MMA masses, the ones that still hold the flag for ‘free speech’, that want the sport to stay just like it is, and that live on f-bombs being dropped at all times.
But there’s a reality in that the sport is still looking for mainstream eyes. Hiding behind the nature of the sport doesn’t cut it anymore. The UFC doesn’t have to be a group of Boy and Girl Scouts, but there’s a lot of growing up still to be done in order to get there.
