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Dana White calls Fedor a “mythological creature” made up by the media
By Zach Arnold | July 1, 2010
CLICK HERE TO WATCH DANA WHITE’S 8-MINUTE INTERVIEW WITH MMAFIGHTING.COM
For any fan or writer who is educated on the latest happenings in the business in the past week, this is a terribly frustrating interview to watch and read the transcript of. There were a couple of points where I threw up my hands.
Rather than poison the well for you when you watch the interview or read the transcript, I will let you observe this interview and then I will address the many things that need to be pointed out.
ARIEL HELWANI: “Brock Lesnar/Shane Carwin, title on the line. Was there ever a point with everything that Brock had to deal with that you ever thought you’d never see him sit up here about to fight for you again?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, you know, or if not never I thought that maybe there would be a couple of years before he’d back. I mean it was looking pretty scary there and very real for a while and like he said, he says it best, it’s literally a miracle that this guy has healed and come back.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “A lot of talk about the New Brock Lesnar, maybe a happier Brock Lesnar. What’s been your perception of him? Is he a little different now?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, you know, he’s definitely a little different but let’s make no mistakes, he’s the same Brock Lesnar. You know, I was just saying earlier, all of our fighters that fight for us you know all the guys who are on the roster, there’s sometimes where he have to send them out somewhere and we have to do some promotions, maybe they got to go to Best Buy or one of these other places and Brock Lesnar doesn’t have to do any of that. I keep him, no human contact whatsoever. I like him being out in the woods and doing his thing.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “More to that point, it seems as though every time he fights the mainstream media gets a little more interested in your product. Can you kind of safely say that he is the biggest draw in the UFC and probably MMA?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, he’s the biggest star right now, no doubt about it. There’s a lot of guys who are big stars from you know, I can go down the list of all the guys that people love but there’s no doubt that Brock Lesnar is the biggest star right now.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Safe to assume that you’re line of thinking is that the winner of this fight is the #1 Heavyweight in the world despite what happened last weekend in San Jose with Fabricio and Fedor?”
DANA WHITE: “There’s no doubt about it. I would have thought that no matter what happened last weekend. If it was the other way and I’ve been saying it forever you know but the media over-hyped this mythological creature they thought was the #1 pound-for-pound in the world which is so…”
ARIEL HELWANI: “People like me.”
DANA WHITE: “People like you. It’s just so asinine and ridiculous. It’s good to stand here today in front of you and do this interview.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Yes, I’m sure it is. OK, let’s, we’ll get to him in just a second but let’s talk about Chris Leben and Akiyama. How much did you have to do convince Akiyama to take this fight because there were reports coming out of Japan that he was actually very upset that Wanderlei pulled out.”
DANA WHITE: “He was and it’s hard to explain how much this thing meant to him. He wanted this Wanderlei fight so bad and you know it’s just one of those things where a guy trains physically, mentally, emotionally, he’s ready for a fight and he wants it so bad and then it’s pulled out from under him so close, it’s disheartening, man and yeah, you know, I deal with this kind of stuff with guys all the time, though.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “There are a lot of people who say that it might not be very safe to have a guy fight two weeks after he last fought. What would you say to them? I mean, is he 100% healthy and is this good for the sport to fight a guy on such short notice?”
DANA WHITE: “Here’s the thing. If you do the proper medical testing on guys, this is the safest sport in the world. You know the guys go in and get CT scans and MRIs and EKG’s and get the full gamut run on them, it’s an absolutely safe sport and they come out of a fight like he did with no, you know, not banged up at all. No cuts, no you know hand isn’t sore, his arm, his leg, he’s 100% and ready to go.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “OK, you tweeted after last weekend a little smiley face and this was different than the one after Nashville… Can you explain the emotions that went through your body when you saw what transpired in Fedor?”
DANA WHITE: “To be honest, I was kind of being a punk and just being a wiseass about that. Honestly… it’s not like I was like, believe me I’ve had my moments where you know it’s go to go ‘I got you’ you know like Nashville, but… not this time. Not this time. I’ve never… I never believed in the guy, you know, my thing with him was the best fighters in the world are the guys who fight the best three times a year. Those are the guys who deserve your praise and deserve to be talked about. This guy won’t even fight the best guys in the world one time a year. So, to give him this praise, you know, and I’m telling you right now, 90% of it is because ‘oh, he’s not in the UFC, so this is a guy we can really you know we’re anti-establishment’ or whatever, you know. OH, YOU CRAZY REBELS OUT THERE, you know.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “OK, a lot of speculation about this and I figure we go right to the source. M-1 said before the fight that they had a deal with Tapout that didn’t happen because you got in their way. Can you clear the air on this? Did this actually happen?”
DANA WHITE: “Uh… first of all, I don’t run Tapout.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Right.”
DANA WHITE: “You know how many decisions I’ve made at Tapout over the last 10 years? Zero. I’ve made no decisions over at Tapout. You know, Tapout is a sponsor of ours. Has been for a long time. I’ve had a great relationship with these guys. Did I make a phone call and say, are you guys sponsoring Fedor? And they said, yes we are, and I said, well, why would you guys sponsor Fedor? And you know the guy that I talked to over there said, you know what, this wasn’t my call, let me look into this, you know. But I don’t make any decisions at Tapout. They make their own decisions.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Would you have been upset towards them had they gone ahead and sponsored him for that fight?”
DANA WHITE: “Well, let me tell you, and I think I explained this very well when I talked to The LA Times. With the stuff that’s gone on between me and Fedor’s management and all the stuff that’s gone back and forth, do you think I’m really going to help them out in any way? You think I’m going to open the doors and say, come on in and try to compete with my business and do this and do that? You want to go out and you want to become a competitor with me and I’ve said this publicly many times, you know, and I really don’t give a [expletive] what anybody thinks about it. You want to come out and compete with me? Let’s compete and competing is fighting and we’re going to fight and compete until somebody wins and somebody loses.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Speaking of competition, you’re at the NBA finals, Game 7, and a couple of seats down from you sat Les Moonves of CBS. Was that just a coincidence or did you guys talk turkey?”
DANA WHITE: “No, yeah, it was a coincidence that he was at the same game and sitting next to me, but…”
ARIEL HELWANI: “That close, a lot of people were thinking that you were there together.”
DANA WHITE: “No, we weren’t together, but I’ve always liked Les. He’s a guy whom I respect and he’s a good guy and you know he’s a legend in the television business. I’ve never had any beef with Les and we got there, shook hands, talked, we talked MMA and UFC for a while and then we watched the game. But, no talks of let’s do a deal and let’s do this or do that, we just you know two guys there to see the game.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “And in unfortunate news coming out of New York, how disappointing was it that the MMA item was taken off the budget?”
DANA WHITE: “I’m pretty bummed out about it, you know, we were right there. I thought we were going to get it. I idn’t see this coming and they pulled the rug right out from underneath us, but it’s inevitable.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Is it back to the drawing board? Will you continue to try to push this through?”
DANA WHITE: “Not only are we going to try to push it through in New York, we’re going to do it in Ontario. We’re going to do it in you know every other country all over the world. It’s just, you know, it’s a setback. It sucks because I thought we were there and we had it and I was looking forward, you know, we’d be doing a Madison Square Garden fight this year, but you know… like you said, back to the drawing board.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “Strikeforce announced that they have released Jake Shields and a lot of people thought this was sort of a pre-emptive strike to the eventual announcement that he had signed with the UFC. Has Jake Shields signed with the UFC?”
DANA WHITE: “He has not. You know and one thing that we don’t do and never have, we don’t mess with people’s contracts, you know… he had a contract with them, he did the right thing and did what he was supposed to do and now that he’s free to talk, we’re talking.”
ARIEL HELWANI: “But it is kind of in your mind inevitable that he will sign with you?”
DANA WHITE: “Absolutely, I mean, he wants to be in the UFC, we want him in the UFC, so unless you know something crazy happens in contract negotiations, which I don’t anticipate, you know he should be fighting in the UFC.”
The first bone of contention is his usual spiel about how MMA “is the safest sport” and he says this coming off the heels of a death in South Carolina and the absolute beating that Jan Finney took from Cris Cyborg last Saturday night in a fight that was inexplicably sanctioned. This idea that the athletic commissions always do a perfect job with medical testing is just not a solid point. MMA is a violent sport and there’s no way of getting around it. There’s also no way of getting around the fact that Chris Leben shouldn’t be fighting two weeks later after fighting Aaron Simpson. Dana claims that Leben is fine going into this fight, but as we saw during Leben’s interview with Fighter’s Only Magazine, he was talking about how his body was sore coming out of the Simpson fight.
I understand that Leben has his track record regarding his own physical health and well-being (such as getting busted for steroids). But maybe, just maybe, I care more about the value of his health and well-being than I care about what value Chris Leben’s sacrifice means to UFC’s bottom line.
I think this issue, more than any one issue, is the one that drives home the point just how weak the media is in questioning White and forcing him to actually answer some tough blowback. This is not an issue isolated to one media interviewer or one media writer — this is across the board throughout the bigger media outlets that cover UFC. I’ve never seen a sports organization as big as the UFC be able to completely control the media from the top-down. The NFL can’t do it. The NBA can’t. MLB sure can’t. And yet, the UFC has masterfully worked the media over and put those covering them into a position where there is very little hardball questioning about what goes on in the organization.
So, I guess you can say that it’s hard to blame UFC for being so shameless on certain issues if there’s little or no accountability at all when it comes to investigating the things that need to be asked.
It’s even more remarkable to keep talking about the issue of safety coming off the death of Michael Kirkham in South Carolina and the whole story of Matt Hamill fighting two weeks ago with something had been initially labeled as a staph infection!
The second bone of contention I have with the interview is the way the media is allowing the UFC to work everyone over regarding what the standards should be regarding Heavyweight discussion. Do I believe that the winner of the UFC 116 main event should be ranked #1 in the Heavyweight listings? You bet. I felt that way before the Fedor/Werdum fight. But, don’t tell me that the top heavyweights in UFC are fighting three times a year. That’s not happening. That’s as shameless as the advertising that’s been running non-stop on Comcast all week long with the PPV barker ad saying that Shane Carwin is 12-0 and all of his wins are by way of knockout.
The third bone of contention is about the Tapout deal. The way Dana White gives a ‘between the lines’ answer is amusing. He all but admits that he called up Tapout and gave them the business, but his spin on it is so laughable that I can’t believe he didn’t get challenged on it. Dave Meltzer noted that Tapout had tried to get a deal with Fedor twice in the past and both times the UFC sent a message to them about it. The funny thing in all of this is if M-1 had a valid contract with Tapout, wouldn’t they have actually bothered to sign it? If they didn’t sign the deal and let Tapout wiggle out on it, then that is extremely stupid.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 24 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Thank god for this site. I just watched the interview and Dana is the media darling. If you fight for anyone else in this game, you are a fighter. If you fight for the UFC, you are a UFC fighter.
If you are a commentator, the major MMA sites – I can imagine it must be good to earn money and make a living at it. But 99% of the hardball questions have gone away, media outlets are soft on questions — will this limit the show from growing any more?
What other sport do you have to pay hundreds of dollars to watch on a regular basis?
There are those that enjoy Dana, and those that don’t — I have not found too many people who are in between. As far as shows goes it is best that they love you or hate you, and Dana is great and getting both responses.
I’ll be at the aquarium Saturday night.
Fedor vs Sasquatch
SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY
MMA is stuck in a odd place that it may never get out of – it’s not a real sport. Greg Savage has pointed it out many times and the reasons are numerous but situations like you describe above will always keep MMA in ‘sports entertainment’ genre. Regardless of what Dana/Zuffa says, they are in it for the money alone. Thus the stranglehold on media and talent relations.
While I may always enjoy a good fight, I’ve grown more ashamed of MMA when friends and family are discussing other sports because MMA is literally the carnival sideshow to other mainstream sports. I’m sure I’m in the minority on this but that’s just the opinion of one guy who has watched MMA from all promotions I can find for 15 years.
This is a silly notion, is there any major professional sport that isn’t “in it for the money”? NFL, NBA, Baseball? They’re making money hand over fist. Every single person involved. How are they not in it for the money?
Dana is never one to shy away from hyperbole, but i do think a certain mythology has been built up around Fedor. Though i’d attribute this more to his overzealous fans rather than the media. Either way, the mythology in its current form is now over as we all know. I’m really interested to see where Fedor goes from here.
I haven’t read/watched the interview yet, but I probably agree with his sentiment.
Fedor was merely a great fighter, who did some great things in 03-05. However, with the larger than life persona Pride stars had, squash booking, and a ridiculous maintained media campaign, he turned into some mythological invincible cyborg.
A fighter was being kept #1 on P4P lists based on things he did 5 years previous, and the fact he was undefeated. This is hilarious and makes my point perfectly.
Of course though, Dana does this himself. It wasn’t long into ASilva’s reign that Dana was harping about him being #1 P4P. I don’t think people would have put him into consideration for that as quickly as they did without Dana’s hyping.
are the best HW´s in the ufc ? dana´s just pissed, because fedor doesnt sign his contract, although he offered him a bunch of money..and now he acts bitchy..come on. that guy just get caught in a choke, seconds after he had rocked his opponent. is this proofing dana to be right ? NO. for me the ufc-HW´s neither are interesting nor a benchmark for any HW.
Sincerely yours, the brock-hater
Far be it from me to point out Dana’s negative marketing campaign. The “mythology” he refers to around Fedor is what I would term “mystique,” and any fighter of a serious W/L record has some of that. Case in point, Chuck Liddell, Minotauro, Shogun, Mirko Filipovic, Hell, even Semmy Schilt though it pains me to say it (not a big Semmy fan). Moreover, I think Dana knows this, and he’s taking the opportunity to spin a sort of negative publicity campaign that will benefit the UFC and his bottom line. Hey, it works for election campaigns, why not here? I think it’s even shown him some success. However, it will lose it’s effectiveness at some point as people begin to see through what he’s doing and the schills that promote that point of view actively (who shall remain nameless).
I love it when fight promoters offer a ton of money to a
“mythological creature”. Then proceeds to throw hissy fits and temper tantrums when they can’t sign him.
COuld not have said it better myself.
He’s partially correct. Correct that there was a mythology about Fedor, wrong that it was solely because the media wanted it. The guy went undefeated for 10 years, dominated one of the best collection of fighters in a division ever for 4 years, and he didn’t deserve at least some of the megahype?
But any fighter who goes undefeated for a long time gets this. The most famous case being Mike Tyson, who from 1986-1990 was seen as the guy who would destroy the entire Soviet Army if you sent him alone into Moscow. And he ducked some fighters who probably would have beaten him (namely Holyfield) and ended up getting beaten by a guy nobody even entertained a single thought was worthy of dethroning him, much like happened with Werdum to Fedor.
And another Tyson comparison to Fedor would be how Fedor’s post-PRIDE years mirrored Tyson’s post-prison years a little where he came back and fought a bunch of guys nobody respected like Bruno, Seldon and and McNeely. Although to be fair to Tyson, the heavyweight division was pretty bad all-around by the late-90s so with the exception of ducking Lennox Lewis there’s not a situation where UFC has 5 top guys he should fight like with Fedor.
As for getting mad about Dana hyping how safe MMA is, nobody should be surprised regardless of who dies. If God forbid someone died in the next UFC show he’d still say “Well, boxing has at least one death a year and we’ve had one death in 17 years so we’re still safer.” Since he was among those on the frontline of the battle to regulate MMA, of course he’s always going to have the bunker mentality of “Deny there is any risk whatsoever.” He’s always going to have his guard up and believe MMA is under constant persecution even if it wasn’t because of what he went through.
And UFC controls the media for two reasons. #1 He has successfully made the entire “MMA Media” his bitches out of intimidation with “I have no problem cutting you off from everybody associated with us.” And the real media don’t know or care about anything revolving around the entire sport, only even talk about it because they’re forced to and keep it at a bare minimum. So UFC officials telling them what to say makes them perfectly happy because they don’t give a crap and it’s less work for them. And should you even be surprised? The media hasn’t even asked tough questions of politicians for a generation, and that actually matters to the world. Should we expect them to hound Dana about letting a guy fight twice in less than a month?
Say what you will about Dana White and UFC, but the one reality you can’t overlook is that Fedor has never translated into business in the US. The last event didn’t sell out the arena, and did worse on Showtime than the Herschel Walker or Gina Carano events.
When you go to MMA websites, Fedor is considered magical and amazing and the best in the world. I’m a Fedor fan, but the fact is that never translated out of the hardcore “internet sites” community. Yes, all of us who were downloading PRIDE bootlegs in 2003 have a special attachment to Fedor, but we’re a tiny minority of MMA fans.
The fact that UFC was ever willing to pay Fedor big shows a few things:
– Yet another example of the UFC execs acting as fans and overpaying the guys from PRIDE days (like Mirko, Wanderlei)
– The reality that with UFC properly promoting him, Fedor could have been made into a pretty big star in the US. Not Brock Lesnar big, but big.
I think UFC could have made a Fedor-Brock (or Randy before that) fight huge, but the longer Fedor spent pissing around in the minors for a big payday, the less that was likely. Now that he went and got beat by a guy he should have beaten, he’s severely damaged his value. That was a gamble Fedor/M-1 decided to take, and they lost.
Fedor, M-1, Strikeforce, as well as Affliction and Bodog in the past have all severely overestimated Fedor’s drawing power. The dude doesn’t sell tickets or PPVs. Hell, even CroCop who’s drawing power in the US is so-so, can put asses in the seats in Europe. Fedor might put asses in the seats in Japan or Russia, but neither market is looking very likely for UFC any time soon. Affliction had to surround him with a who’s-who of free agents and their PPV buyrates were stil abysmal.
As for the grumpy “mma websites”, it’s worth noting that most of the ones that get the most pissy (like BloodyElbow) are also the ones that post trolly linkbait headlines specifically calling out Dana White as a failure etc….can’t imagine any sports exec would be hyped to talk to that sort of website.
Helwani is a good example, he asks Dana the hard questions, but he doesn’t post linkbait shit like “DANA WHITE AN IDIOT: UFC DESTINED FOR FAILURE” like a lot of the other websites do. You can be critical but still respectful, but most people figure hey it’s the internet let’s just be cocks. Or they know they’ll never get more access than watching the PPV, so they might as well draw in traffic for their ads by posting inflammatory shit.
Where was he even critical? Dana was the aggressive one in the interview. I didn’t think Ariel was anything but meek. Dana fired off on him about the Fedor ranking he supported, Ariel took his scolding and changed the subject.
And nobody is asking MMA Journos to turn into op-ed pieces where they’re ranting and raving and making asses of themselves like Eddie Goldman. Just ask a freakin’ follow up question. It doesn’t have to be offensive, it may shock you and not even offend the interview subject. And, get this, it may make your interviews more interesting and therefore get you a larger audience.
Because I just love it when “MMA journalists” complain about how little respect they get and don’t bother to realize nobody respects them because they are PR reps who are working for free.
What follow up questions would you ask? I’m legitimately curious. I think Helwani asked all the topics that most people are interested in, so I’d love to see what sort of things he SHOULD be asking.
It seems like either you argue with the guy (or more likely blast him on your website and never talk to him in person) or you’re a “PR Rep” to most internet commenters
“I never believed in the guy, you know, my thing with him was the best fighters in the world are the guys who fight the best three times a year.”
This is one of his most tired lines. Which UFC champs have fought the best 3 times a year consistently? Why can no MMA media person ever give a decent follow up question? They may as well just do interviews through email at this point.
“If you do the proper medical testing on guys, this is the safest sport in the world. You know the guys go in and get CT scans and MRIs and EKG’s and get the full gamut run on them, it’s an absolutely safe sport “
So if Chuck can pass all the commission’s tests, why shouldn’t he be able to fight if he wants to?
I don’t think the concern is for Chuck’s safety as much as he doesn’t want to see him continue to get beat by lesser and lesser opponents. I don’t want to see it, and I’m not a personal friend of the guy.
I’m a little curious on the Leben objection. We still have an occasional tournament in Japan in which a fighter fights twice in a night. Is this worse? (Granted, Japan doesn’t have quite the regulatory backbone we have in the USA.)
Also, since he won his last bout in less than two rounds, isn’t he looking at less than five rounds of action?
Not saying this is wrong — just wondering what, specifically, is the objection with his participation here.
The objection is that the commission is clearly turning a blind eye as a favor to UFC, who make them a ton of money. If Bellator had a fighter work in DREAM and less than a month later came back for a Bellator fight, they’d never sanction that. Even guys who get a win in less than 1 minute do not get sanctioned this quick. I don’t think anybody really thinks Leben is going to get hurt fighting Japan’s favorite lubricated fighter, but much like the commission turning a blind eye to Hamill’s staph, there are a different set of rules for the UFC.
How do we know that? How often does it come up?
Every fight is completely different. The Commission doctors the night of Leben’s last fight decided that Leben wasn’t injured enough to warrant a medical suspension. I don’t know why people would think the same doctors (both in Vegas) would somehow find a reason to not clear him 2 weeks later.
They cleared him 2 weeks ago, before Wandy pulled out, it would take a very strange circumstance for something to happen to Leben in the last 2 weeks that would change his status.
I don’t get it either Leben got checked out and he didn’t take any major damage if he feels good and passed all the test there really isn’t much to complain about here.
As far as Dana’s comment about Fedor he is 100% correct, the myth that was created by mma writers and Pride fans grew to such heights that people started to believe everything they heard about the guy. Then he when he gets beat it’s like a huge reality check that maybe people were so busy trying to build him up, that they lost the ability to be subjective about how good he really was.
As far as the media somehow being under the spell of Zuffa that’s just laughable, most of the mma media are nothing but butthurt fanboys mad at the UFC’s popularity and wanting to bring them down.
Just look at the Tap Out/Fedor deal it wasn’t minutes before they were claiming that the UFC was breaking laws, because they didn’t allow one of their sponsors to make a deal with the competition.
I would love to hear what 45 Huddle thinks of this piece.
Of course you would…
Good job, Zach.
“If they didn’t sign the deal and let Tapout wiggle out on it, then that is extremely stupid.”
I believe this is what actually happened. The contract was in their (M-1/Fedor) possession, but yet to be signed and faxed back.