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Dana White talks to Yahoo Sports
By Zach Arnold | August 22, 2007
By Zach Arnold
Dana White is a fan of rabbits.
At first glance, I wasn’t all that intrigued by what Dana White had to say to Kevin Iole in the Yahoo Sports Q & A session on Tuesday. However, as the case with a lot of what Mr. White says, you have to pay close attention to what he says to truly appreciate some of what he tries to spin.
White was asked by a reader about steroids. Any time Dana responds to a question about steroids or drugs in MMA, in my opinion, it always causes a public relations issue. He doesn’t disappoint here:
But this sport and boxing are the only ones where the guys are tested every time by the government. If they tested the NFL players every Sunday, Roger Gooddell would be out of a job because there would be no more NFL. Can you imagine how many of those guys would test positive if they were tested after every game? Staggering. But our guys are tested every time they fight by the government.
I love the fact that he is no longer using the word ‘states’ and has decided to use ‘government’ all the time, as if he found out in some Frank Luntz-style focus group that the word goes over better with the public. However, the obvious misnomer here with what White said is that it’s not accurate or true that all fighters are tested on each UFC card. Only the state of California tests all fighters on major MMA events. For smaller California events, there is random testing. In Nevada, it is random testing. UFC’s private drug-testing policy overseas is random drug testing of four individuals per show.
Furthermore, the drug testing in MMA takes place before and after the fights. In the NFL, their drug testing program is offseason and on-season and happens to involve off-the-field drug testing of their athletes.
Next, White was grilled about booking Keith Jardine vs. Chuck Liddell for 9/22:
I don’t get this thinking. I really don’t. Chuck Liddell and Keith Jardine are both coming off first-round knockout losses. Keith Jardine knocked out Forrest Griffin in the first round. Forrest went the distance with Tito and many people think he beat Tito, so how do you think Keith doesn’t deserve this fight? Be sensible and look what he’s done.
I can tell you that in boxing media circles, White is getting hammered for booking a fight featuring two guys who got knocked out in their last bouts. In boxing circles, this rarely happens (hence why White is drawing heat in that corner of the combat sports spectrum). Notice White using the “A > B is barely > C, therefore A could struggle with C” logic here in justifying booking Jardine in the main event.
Finally, there was this beauty of a statement about UFC titles:
Are there too many belts? Not at all. There is only one belt that means anything and that is the UFC belt. You have to realize most mainstream fans don’t even know these companies exist. They’re the minor leagues, but we need them. Baseball needs a minor-league system to develop players and we do, too, to develop our fighters. So we don’t mind those companies being around because they’re doing us a favor and being our minor league system. At the end of the day, though, they’re all fighting to hold onto a UFC belt. If you ask them, I think nearly all of them would tell you they want to win a UFC world title.
I’m sure that guys like Urijah Faber and Doug Marshall are glad to hear that title belts in organizations like WEC didn’t mean a thing and won’t mean a thing compared to the UFC belts. 🙂
As always, Dana is Dana in the UFC interview (just less loveable than Manny being Manny in Boston).
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Also interesting to note that when a reader asked about UFC fighters having more representation or rights, specifically the possibility of a union, that issue was not directly addressed and instead the response was:
“The fighters in the UFC are treated very well. You have to remember, this is a business like any other business. But we got into this particular business because we love it and care about it and we try to develop it and make it get better. I like most of the guys in the sport. They’re my friends. We’re not going to mistreat the fighters. I wouldn’t mistreat a friend and so I won’t mistreat my fighters. The only fighter I really don’t like is Tito. And you should know that none of them are unhappy with us.”
So much for the PRIDE belts then.
Which just shows how poorly the boxing media understands the UFC business model.
“White is getting hammered for booking a fight featuring two guys who got knocked out in their last bouts.”
To be fair, I don’t think that there is a Ricardo Mayorga around for Chuck to fight and beat the piss out as a go-between for another big fight.
Why is booking two guys who got knocked out in their last bouts looked down upon? I don’t come from a boxing background so I’m not very informed here, and can’t quite see the big problem. So while it might be a naïve position, I think this type of booking provides an interesting scenario as we will see them both trying to the catiousness that can come from a knockout. It will be very interesting to see who handles that best, and if/how that background alters their respective fighting styles.
Irrespective of the two guys being brutally destroyed in seconds (which is more accurate than the milder sounding “knocked out in one round”), my main problem with the main event is that Jardine (i) isn’t very good (ii) hasn’t acheived much (iii) has no star power (iv) matches up very badly against Chuck.
Even if both were coming off wins it would be a poor main event.
I kind of doubt that Urijah cares since UFC doesn’t have a belt in his weight division, and his checks are still signed by Dana White.
Zurich, what belts? Henderson’s booked for a unifying fight with Rampage, and Fedor and Gomi are all but certain not to return to the new Pride. With the top fighters from the old Pride moving to Hero’s or to UFC, it’s not much of a stretch to say that those belts don’t have much value at this point.
Heh, the union-response is a blueprint of what WWE and their top stars answer to the same question 🙂
What’s funny here is that Zach always jumps all over writers for getting things wrong, but here, he says this was a Yahoo chat with Kevin Iole, when in fact it was White fielding questions from readers and Kevin Iole’s name is not on the byline.
If you paid any attention at all whatsoever to the Yahoo Sports MMA/boxing section or to links on this site, you would have already known that Kevin Iole put out a public call to people to send him questions via e-mail for him to ask Dana White in a Q & A session. Q & A session. Where did I say “live chat”? Iole took the questions and asked them to White. How hard is this for you to comprehend?
Of course Kevin doesn’t need a byline – he’s asking the questions on the behalf of the Yahoo readers.
I’m rather disappointed in the fans that sent in questions that he’s already answered 900 times. I mean, I sent in 10 different questions and there were plenty of softballs among them, but when you have the ability to get answers from someone like this the sum-total of those questions are just sad.
I don’t have a problem with UFC 76. In fact I think it is a good card. It just lacks a traditional main event level match. The main event is what it is because people still love Chuck, despite a recent loss. critics should look at the card as a whole and they would see how deep it is.