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Dan Patrick: So I met UFC President Dana White one time in a bathroom in New York City…
By Zach Arnold | May 25, 2010
… and you’re going to have to read the full transcript of Dan’s interview on Monday with Dana in order to get the punchline. You can listen to the full audio interview here.
START OF TRANSCRIPT
DAN PATRICK: “He’s the President of UFC. He’s Dana White. UFC Undisputed 2010 coming out today. PPV, UFC 114 Memorial Day weekend. They had 400,000 pre-orders of this video game. He’s Dana White, joining us on the Dan Patrick Show. Dana, how are you?”
DANA WHITE: “Good, how you doing Dan?”
DAN PATRICK: “I’m doing pretty well. I was thinking of this… if I had an Octagon set up at every NASCAR track because these guys always go at it, how do you think that would work if I got NASCAR guys in the Octagon?”
DANA WHITE: “I don’t know. You know, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt the PPV numbers, I’m sure.”
DAN PATRICK: “Yeah, you can’t have them using their cars as weapons. But you get into the Octagon, but you find this with a lot of athletes that they think they can get in the Octagon and then…”
DANA WHITE: “Oh yeah. Not only athletes but you know people that I meet in the streets. People always say to me, ‘Man if I was 10 years younger.’ Yeah… heheheheheh.”
DAN PATRICK: “Any famous people want to get into the Octagon?”
DANA WHITE: “SHAQ! Shaq’s been terrorizing me to fight. Shaq’s been training for years and says he wants to fight some day.”
DAN PATRICK: “OK, but I got you in against Shaq, who would win?”
DANA WHITE: “Hell no, I’m not fighting Shaq.”
DAN PATRICK: “OK, but you told me before you know technology having technique that’s really the key with this, that if a guy goes in there he can be big, tough, but Chuck Liddell going against Shaq right now, who wins?”
DANA WHITE: “Well, Chuck Liddell has been in the game for years, you know what I win? He’s one of the best ever, former world champion… you know but Shaq, listen, Brock Lesnar came in you know obviously he has a great wrestling background and is an incredible athlete, it’s amazing what he’s been able to do.”
DAN PATRICK: “OK, but would Chuck Liddell take Shaq?”
DANA WHITE: “Yes.”
DAN PATRICK: “OK. We could have simplified that. What if Herschel Walker got in against Shaq?”
DANA WHITE: “Herschel Walker actually fights now. I don’t know, that would be interesting. Shaq’s been training, you know, obviously Shaq has a huge size difference, you know, size advantage. I’d probably have to take Shaq. Shaq”
DAN PATRICK: “Who is the most entertaining fighter in UFC and is that different than who is the best fighter in UFC?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah. Well… you know there’s some guys that are… for instance, right now, the best pound-for-pound best fighter in the world is a guy named Anderson Silva who in my opinion hasn’t been too entertaining lately. But you got guys like Brock Lesnar, there’s never a boring Brock Lesnar fight. Georges St. Pierre is one of the best in the world.”
DAN PATRICK: “What size are Silva’s feet?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, there’s guy like Wanderlei Silva and Forrest Griffin who aren’t necessarily the best in the world right now but are very fun to watch.”
DAN PATRICK: “What size are Silva’s feet?”
DANA WHITE: “Ummm…”
DAN PATRICK: “They look like they’re flippers.”
DANA WHITE: “I don’t know the answer to that question, but he’s a big guy. He’s 185 pounds but he’s big, he can make 205 too, he’s fought there a couple of times.”
DAN PATRICK: “If I put Pacquiao and Mayweather in the Octagon, could you tell from their boxing skills how they would be in the Octagon?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, I’m a huge Pacquiao fan and Pacquiao’s a more aggressive fighter and you know, his fights are more fun, but either one of those guys would get beaten in Mixed Martial Arts.”
DAN PATRICK: “He’s Dana White, the UFC President, joining us on The Dan Patrick Show. Do you think UFC will ever become a college sport?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah. I mean, realistically, right now, a lot of these colleges are starting to pick up jiu-jitsu. There’s a lot of, you know, jiu-jitsu teams in colleges. I believe that one day there’s going to be an Olympic sport, too.”
DAN PATRICK: “What would it take though? Because it seems like the violence aspect is what trumps everything else that might turn off colleges or the IOC.”
DANA WHITE: “But violence, I mean, if you think about it, right now everything that we do in Mixed Martial Arts is already in the Olympics. First of all, you know they have Judo in the Olympics and you can use submissions and throws and everything else. Wrestling is in the Olympics, Boxing is in the Olympics, Tae Kwon Do is in the Olympics, all those sports are already in. I don’t know what makes Mixed Martial Arts any more violent than boxing or anything else.”
DAN PATRICK: “Yeah, but I think the blood shed though, do the Olympics want that or college sports want that?”
DANA WHITE: “It’s inevitable, Dan, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. This thing isn’t going anywhere. It’s only getting bigger and what’s going to happen is, all these kids right now that are growing up with the UFC aren’t going to be as afraid of this thing as you know the older people are today.”
DAN PATRICK: “Who’s on the bill this weekend, Memorial Day weekend, with UFC 114?”
DANA WHITE: “Rampage Jackson versus Rashad Evans. They both coached on the last season of The Ultimate Fighter, they were supposed to fight and Rampage took off and filmed the A-Team movie, so finally it’s going to happen.”
DAN PATRICK: “I’d also be curious how a movie reviewer would rate Rampage’s acting ability and would be a little more nervous because it’s Rampage that he’s going to be assessing?”
DANA WHITE: “Actually, I heard he killed it, he did a great job in this movie and this movie’s going to be a big hit from what I hear and they’re doing a sequel.”
DAN PATRICK: “Is there a Dana White look-alike that is out there that somebody’s walking around somebody thinks it’s Dana White or vice-versa for you?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, every bald guy on earth looks like me I think. All us bald guys look alike.”
DAN PATRICK: “Has anybody ever come up to you and mistaken you for somebody else?”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, Andre Agassi.”
DAN PATRICK: “Oooh. Well, you’re a little thicker than Andre Agassi.”
DANA WHITE: “That’s true. Actually you know what when you meet Andre in person he’s bigger than you think he is.”
DAN PATRICK: “How would you do in the Octagon against him?”
DANA WHITE: “Pretty well, actually.”
DAN PATRICK: “Doesn’t it always come down to that? It ends all conversations, right?”
DANA WHITE: “It does.”
DAN PATRICK: “When’s the last time you got in a fight? Not in the Octagon, in a fight?”
DANA WHITE: “A long time. I was probably 23.”
DAN PATRICK: “OK. And did you provoke it?”
DANA WHITE: “I didn’t provoke it, no. I did not.”
DAN PATRICK: “Did you end it?”
DANA WHITE: “I did. And that was my last street fight ever, thank God.”
DAN PATRICK: “Meh. Because it’s hard to be a tough guy because everybody thinks they’re as tough as you and you get that liquid courage in you and somebody wants to challenge somebody.”
DANA WHITE: “Yeah, you know what’s funny, that used to happen. I actually used to work at a bar in Boston and there were a lot of you know for instance the best one, the best scenario here — Marvin Hagler used to have to walk around with bodyguards because people used to try to challenge him all the time, which is crazy to me. Never happens to our guys, for some reasons there’s a new time and era when people who are fans of the UFC are all cool, everybody everywhere I go I meet people nobody’s ever trying to challenge me to a fight or any of our fighters.”
DAN PATRICK: “If you were going to have a poster child for UFC right now that this is why you watch this sport. If you’re marketing, are you marketing Rampage? Are you marketing Lesnar? Silva?”
DANA WHITE: “We’ve marketed them all. The great thing, you know we’re very fortunate right now is that we have a lot of stars, we have a lot of guys that people really care about and want to watch. So, really we have a whole roster of guys who are poster boys for the UFC.”
DAN PATRICK: “I think that you know with this video game, is there a way to create a TV that will actually squirt blood on you as you actually do the video game, Dana?”
DANA WHITE: “That’s actually a good question. We were just playing the video game earlier today and when the fights start off, these guys are bone dry. As they start fighting, as you start to see them sweating and then if a cut happens they start, yeah, video games are getting so realistic it’s unbelievable.”
DAN PATRICK: “Well, good luck with that and a big Memorial Day weekend for you and thanks for joining us, Dana.”
DANA WHITE: “Thanks, Dan. Always a pleasure.”
DAN PATRICK: “All right, Dana White, UFC President. Still had that awkward meeting with him in the restaurant in New York, in the bathroom… and when you’re in the bathroom and I’m at the urinal and I see him out of the corner of my eye over at the sink, he goes ‘you’re a lot bigger in person,’ and I went, ‘uuuhhh, that’s awkward, hi Dana!’ so yeah. But you know what, he can get away with it. Anybody else, it’s go time. But I let him get away with it that one time.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |
[…] I heard on The Dan Patrick Radio Show that you were talking about MMA becoming an Olympic sport. “I’m not looking to do it. I said I think it’s going to happen. I hope its happen in my lifetime. I know what I’ve set out to achieve and what my job is in Mixed Martial Arts. That’s not it. Somebody else is going to have to do that. But I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. First of all, you know, Tae Kwon Do is an Olympic sport. Judo is an Olympic sport. They can do submissions and everything else. Wrestling is an Olympic sport and boxing is an Olympic sport and that’s basically what Mixed Martial Arts. Why should it not be an Olympic sport?” […]