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Dana White pre-UFC 107 press conference quotes
By Zach Arnold | December 11, 2009
“I think there’s two different Frank Mirs. I think there’s the Frank Mir that started in the UFC and then there’s the Frank Mir after the motorcycle accident. Um, you know Frank’s had really two different careers and the talk with him and Brock Lesnar, he really does hate Brock Lesnar and believe me when I tell you Brock Lesnar really does hate him, too. Um… I think that, like Frank said in this fight, Frank was giving his opinions on Cheick Kongo and uh and you know like you said, Cheick doesn’t like he had to say so I’m sure it’s going to make for a very good fight on Saturday night. It’s good, though, stuff like that motivates guys. I’m sure it helped Cheick in the gym.”
“Well, 2010 we’re going to go to a lot of places that we haven’t been yet, so, um… we’re looking to move this show around, going to go to Australia, going to go to Abu Dhabi, um… Boston, you know, a lot of markets we’ve never been, um… and we’re looking at opening up a lot of new markets in 2010, too, meaning other countries and New York.”
Q: “How does that process work? I mean, do you just visit somewhere and you’re like, yeah, this would be great, we could bring it here?”
“Yeah, well… we, uh, yeah that’s pretty much it, yeah. It’s that scientific. I like it here! I think we’ll do a fight here! Heh heh. We think about where the market’s going to be strongest. This sport has gotten so big so fast that I’ll give you an example. When we went to Cologne, Germany, you know when you start talking to the I guess we’ll call them the decision makers in Germany, in Cologne or these different states, um you know they think that the UFC is small and you know nobody’s ever heard of it but we know when we put on that event that people are going to come and the place is going to be packed and then after we leave, people are blown away but what that does is just like we did in the UK, you know, you set off an MMA bomb there and the virus starts to spread um after you do the live event. We went on uh we sold over 10,000 tickets just on pre-sale in Australia before they even went on sale, 10,000 sold. So I was supposed to fly there uh Monday for a press conference, I’m not going now. We don’t have to do it because we did so well there, so… um… it’s bigger than everybody thinks.”
“No, listen, we put together a great fight card here, you know, if anybody should be upset it should be Rampage that he’s not fighting in his hometown. Um, you know we brought an awesome title fight you know to Memphis, um, he’s still with us, yes, uh, Rampage is still with us and he’ll be fighting in the next few months.”
“Depends on who wins, you know. One of the things that I always used to talk to BJ about was cleaning out a division, you know, you know when he was going to his whole wanting to jump around from Lightweight to Heavyweight and all that stuff I said you know, settle into a division, clean it out, and then we’ll talk from there so you know if BJ’s a couple of fights away from cleaning this thing out, if he should beat Diego on Saturday night, um so I don’t know if BJ wanted to we’d have to look and see what’s next. Diego obviously, Diego wins, there’s a lot of talented guys in this division for him to fight.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 2 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I’m starting to feel about Dana and his expanding markets the same way I feel about tito/jackson/couture’s expanding acting careers.
I’m not all that impressed with an octagon on another continent when every card is becoming thinner on legit talent in favor of more celebrity fighters and local clubbers aimed at appealing to a casual fans fickle and shallow tastes.
Meh.
Good observation robthom!
All the “hype” Dana spews is starting to leave a bitter taste.
Quit worrying about world domination and start putting together good fight cards.
Meh.