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Dana White: No actors allowed
By Zach Arnold | October 5, 2006
By Zach Arnold
We’ve seen a MMA and pro-wrestling crossover with various UFC stars in the past (starting with Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock, who happens to be fighting on October 10th for UFC). Yeah, that Ken Shamrock guy, who worked for TNA & UFC. The same guy who worked in the old UFC days and worked for then WWF.
So what does UFC President have to say about Kurt Angle?
White, though, said he lost interest when Angle signed a contract to remain a pro wrestler with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (11 p.m. Eastern, Thursdays and Saturdays, Spike).
“I wouldn’t hire someone who is doing both,” White said last week in a telephone interview. “I would never blow that line. You’re either a fighter or an actor.”
“He’s one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and he’s done well,” White said. “He keeps coming out publicly about how much wrestling wore him down and he’s going back to wrestling again. I don’t know.
“It’s interesting, but I want guys who want to be real fighters.”
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 17 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I luv that “no actor line”. I realize wrestlers have a bad stigma but c’mon, Angle is a former Olympic GOLD medal winner. How many UFC fighters can claim they did that?! Plus IMO wrestlers have to be in top physical shape to go through the grueling schedule of wrestling five days out of the week (from anywhere to 10-30 min matches), I doubt many UFC fighters can even do that…even if it is “fake”. That Dana what a class act…he wouldnt be saying that if Angle did sign with the UFC.
He should drop Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.
Meltzer reports that TNA told White about the Angle signing prior to the big announcement, so as to avoid a public snit (as per my speculation). Now White puts the badmouth to Angle in public, fascinating.
Ditch – the Inside Pulse server has been flaking out all day, otherwise I would have linked to your new column (I can’t access it).
No actors, but we will hire cops that fought Kimbo Slice.
I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s obvious what he’s doing here… and that is call Kurt out. His whole line about actors is nothing more than him telling Kurt to put up or shut up, and calling him an actor. Kurt has been talking alot lately, but actually doing nothing. I think you’re taking it word for word instead of taking it for it’s intention. Childish? Maybe, politicians do it all the time. But he isn’t talking about actors, former actors, or anything else here, he’s just taking a jab at Kurt.
The dude blew up at a lower member of PRIDE. Somehow this “jab” sounds too complex for Dana.
I’m fairly certain this is code for “we can’t afford him”.
To be fair, I have heard that Spike proposed doing some tie-ins between TNA and the UFC in the past, and that Dana absolutely refused to have any connection with pro-wrestling. They have employed folks that have done wrestling in the past, but do not allow them to do both at the same time.
With that in mind, this does not seem like anything different.
Dana has been an absolute jackass in the past(and likely will be in the future) but this does not sound like much of a dig. He calls Angle one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Is anyone going to say calling pro-wrestlers actors is a huge dig?
Yea when its a former Olympic gold medalist…its kinda spitting on everything Angle has accomplished. Its like calling any MMA fighter a barbarian whose too stupid to do anything else but fight…its very ignorant.
Unintentionally hilarious given that the same article went on to hype Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock’s third fight. Not only because of the fake pull-aparts on TUF 3, but also because Shamrock just happened to do pro wrestling for the same company (TNA) before and after his first fight with Ortiz.
Also, in addition to the things mentioned by others about what the Wrestling Observer, Meltzer wrote in a review of WWE’s latest business trends that he has been specifically told by both Dana White and Marc Ratner that “the business model they are trying to copy is WWE’s.”
Its not a dig. Pro-wrestlers are actors no matter what there atheltic career was before that. Kurt Angle is not an actor. Great wrestler and would be great for UFC to say they have a gold medalist. But White just said it like it is. It wasn’t a jab at all, he noted what Angle has done before. Sure Shamrock and others have worked for WWE and TNA, but not now.
Get over it and quit riding White into the ground for everything he does.
I think the crux of it (according to the quotation pulled in this post) is that he wouldn’t want someone to be doing both, ie choreographed and non-choreographed. In that sense, one is an actor, the other a fighter.
Plus I think it would blur the lines in the public’s eye further between UFC and pro-wrestling–the last thing White wants.
What is the so-called WWE/UFC business model?
1. Promote its brand
2. Build personalities that people want to see
3. Sell tickets and merchandise
This formula isn’t rocket science and isn’t exclusive to either the WWE or UFC. I think the same applies to the NBA, NFL or MLB. So if you are going to accuse the UFC of being like WWE, you might as well lump everyone else in the same bucket.
What people are forgetting is that just because the UFC utilizes this basic model, that mean the UFC is becoming more like the WWE in style and content. Nor does that make Dana White into Vince McMahon.
If the MMA media is so concerned with protecting the integrity MMA, they should stop comparing the two because it seems like the only connection WWE and UFC have these days is when editors decide to write ridiculous stories about how the UFC is mimmicking or connected to the WWE. This will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
so…why is Ken Flo fighting Sean Sherk instead of Hermes Franca or Yves Edwards?
And why is the undercard almost full of TUF fighters?
“And why is the undercard almost full of TUF fighters?”
Because they are cheaper to use. Plain and simple. And I am sure they can use Florian cheaper than they could Franca or anyone like that.
I think Dana white is quite right. You’re either doing one or the other. Could he compete in the UFC. Yes. He’s a former gold medal winner. NOW on to more relavent matters. Somebody should contact Dana White and let him know that at the University Of Victoria training facillity there is a guy who not only would completely destroy Tito Ortiz, but thinks he’s a total punk and would jump at the oportunity to spank the so called huntington beach moma’s boy and put him in his place. Give the UVIC ATHLETIC FREAK TITO. If you thought Randy dominated Tito you’d want to see this happen as the UVIC FREAK would completly physically dominate Tito.