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Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Dana White: “What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?”

By Zach Arnold | September 5, 2012

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ARIEL HELWANI: “Just a few days removed, of course, the big news that UFC 151 was canceled. Obviously, you were very fired up when you made this announcement. Have you calmed down? Has it subsided? How are you feeling just a few days out?”

DANA WHITE: “Yeah, I have. I, uh… you know, I had my moment where I was upset. Again, one of the things that I like to do is I like consistency, I loved that we never canceled an event, you know, and there were times where people felt, you know… should you have made that certain event a PPV? But the show always goes on. People don’t realize, you know, the collateral damage that goes down, how many people are depending on these events to happen. Not just the fighters and not just the UFC but so many other people that are, you know, either work for or our invested in this and, you know… in some way. And, uh, it’s the first time that we’ve ever had to do it. So, yeah, I was a little emotional about it.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Any regrets with the way it was handled from the UFC’s end?”

DANA WHITE: “Nope. I don’t want to speak for the UFC. I’ll say no on my end, no. I have no regrets whatsoever.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “You were obviously very emotional, you said a lot of things about Jon Jones, your UFC Light Heavyweight champion, his trainer Greg Jackson, who doesn’t work for you but obviously a part of the sport. There’s nothing you would take back?”

DANA WHITE: “Nothing, no. What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?”

ARIEL HELWANI: “I think if you want to get into that specific statement, I think Jon Jones… you can criticize from today until next year for not taking this fight. A lot of other people have stepped up on shorter notice, right?”

DANA WHITE: “Right.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “But I don’t think it is fair to solely criticize. SOLELY, one guy only.”

DANA WHITE: “I agree with that. You’re right. This might be the first time I ever agree with you.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Right.”

DANA WHITE: “And I agree with you, you’re absolutely right.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “So, when I say solely, obviously I’m talking about his team.”

DANA WHITE: “Well, not just his team. There is some truth, too, to … Dan Henderson knew two weeks before the fight. Two weeks before he told me he was injured… he knew. And had he given me that two weeks, like he should have, this fight might have happened.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “And you could make a case that he’s more at fault in all of this because usually when a guy gets hurt, they need to call you up, right?”

DANA WHITE: “He’s definitely to blame, too, but there’s never been a case ever in UFC history where a guy didn’t step up and take the fight.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “How would you characterize your relationship with Jon Jones right now?”

DANA WHITE: “Um… you know, I don’t think that I… Jon and I haven’t talked since the incident. Do I hate Jon Jones or have any animosity toward him right now? I don’t. If I did, I’d tell you, I think you know that. But it’s just one of these things. We’ll find out, you know, as uh… as we move along in our relationship, we’ll find out where we’re at.

“Obviously this thing that just went down is… a little weird. It’s never happened before but, I mean, Jon Jones is… all my other interactions with Jon Jones have been good. He’s a young guy. He’s a young guy… um… has he made some bad choices and some bad decisions? Yeah. Who doesn’t when they’re his age? Seriously. Imagine being, if I went back again in my life and I was 23 years old, a ton of fame, a ton of money and everything else… That’s when you make all your mistakes. The great thing about making all of your mistakes in your 20s is that when you’re really start(ing) to establish yourself in your late 20s and early 30s, you’ve already done all the stupid stuff and, you know, you can conduct yourself in, you know, the way that you should.”

Jonathan Snowden: Jon Jones plays the race card

Other quotes

ARIEL HELWANI: “It seems like finally Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva want to fight each other. How close are we to actually seeing that fight?”

DANA WHITE: “I think we’re pretty close. I mean, if Georges St. Pierre beats (Carlos) Condit, that could be the next fight.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Really?”

DANA WHITE: “Yeah.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Why all of a sudden, though? Because people were talking about it three years ago when there were no contenders in those divisions…”

DANA WHITE: “Right.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Now there are tons.”

DANA WHITE: “Right.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “How did this happen?”

DANA WHITE: “No idea. These guys want to fight each other now. I think that… if you’re a fighter and you’ve dominated as long as Anderson has and you’ve been great as long as Georges has, you finally want to say ‘you know, I want to test myself, I think I can beat this guy.'”

ARIEL HELWANI: “What weight class do you think that will happen in?”

DANA WHITE: “They’ll probably do the fight at 180.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Really?”

DANA WHITE: “Yeah. At one point, it sounded like Anderson wanted to go to 170 and take Georges’ Welterweight title. Yeah. That was what he was talking at one point. Then it was 180 at catch weight because Georges doesn’t want to go to 185, he’s going to stay at 170 and says if I had to make the move to go to 185, I’d have to stay at 185, you know? So… we figure that a 180 pound catch weight make sense.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Just curious… Could that be a Texas Stadium-type of show, like a massive deal? That would be one of the biggest fights ever, right?”

DANA WHITE: “If that fight happens, it will probably happen at Dallas –Texas Stadium.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “You went on The Underground, the very popular MMA web site recently and you, I guess, asked the fans. This came up in a discussion about Brock Lesnar who doesn’t fight in the UFC versus your good friend Fedor Emelianenko.”

DANA WHITE: “Who doesn’t fight in the UFC.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Exactly.”

DANA WHITE: “What happened was people were asking me, there was a question could Dana make this fight. And then I asked them, well how many people really want to see this fight? I was asking a question.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “But the response has been overwhelmingly yes.”

DANA WHITE: “Yeah.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “What does that tell you?”

DANA WHITE: “You know…”

ARIEL HELWANI: “You always say you give the people the fights they want.”

DANA WHITE: “Yeah. I guess a couple of people want to see that fight. *laughs*”

ARIEL HELWANI: “Are you going to try to make it?”

DANA WHITE: “Uh… I’ll tell you this. I have done… heh… I’ve done so much to try to get Fedor into the UFC, I think you guys know at one point and you know how I am, especially when I say it publicly like this is an obsession, I got to get this thing done. I tried to get it done and it was just… you know… and the crazy thing is now everybody’s asking me, are you going to make this fight, when you know Fedor’s retired. The guy retired.”

ARIEL HELWANI: “You don’t think you could get him back?”

DANA WHITE: “I don’t know. I mean, I couldn’t get him when he was fighting. Now we’re on such good terms that I’m going to pull him out of retirement? Heh.”

Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 40 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

40 Responses to “Dana White: “What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?””

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    Dana White is falling apart…. He is tripping over his own words far too often. He has become a liability to the UFC at this point.

    Let me also add…..

    Between Jones and White…. Both need to learn to keep their mouths shut.

    Everytime both of them speaks or tweets, it makes them look worse and worse.

    I can see why JJ’s publicist quit. And White needs to hire a better one.

  2. donger says:

    i think the declining sales and the mountain of debt the ufc has is getting to him

    • Chromium says:

      I’m pretty sure the UFC is not in anything close to debt, even if their PPV buys have gone way downhill lately. The Fox deal is like $60 million a year more than their Spike deal was or enough to make up for 2.4 million PPV buys, and their international revenue streams have clearly increased (Brazil alone has been a huge boon apparently).

      • donger says:

        chromium they have over 550 million in debt go check out the articles on mma payout.com

        the ferttitas have been using the use as collateral to save there casinos

        • The Gaijin says:

          “the ferttitas have been using the use [assume you mean UFC] as collateral to save there casinos”

          I don’t really think that is accurate. Station Casinos was in lots of trouble and they took it out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar – as far as I recall, I don’t think they had a great deal of their personal wealth at stake in those deals. Zuffa is a completely separate entity from Station and the Fertittas have been using it [Zuffa] to make themselves extraordinarily wealthy with the dividends they pay out to themselves (kinda operating like a PE fund, except they’ve always been the owners and are just paying themselves out as they’re allowed to do under corporate law and if their debt covenants allow them).

          So long as the UFC is keeping their revenue streams running, I’m sure they’ve got more than enough coin to service their debt. Maybe they’ll face some issues when the debt becomes due, but that’s really only if they cannot get good terms to refinance it. Tons of corporates do the exact same thing – you just hope there’s not a big liquidity crisis going on when your debt comes due or that interest rates haven’t sky rocketed.

        • Chromium says:

          Dude, you said “the mountain of debt the ufc has”, not Zuffa, not the Fertitas. I’m well aware of the Station Casinos’ debt and if it’s down to only $550 million that’s actually a huge improvement. The UFC is still quite profitable. Dana White doesn’t even have an ownership stake in Station Casinos so I have no idea why you either mentioned any such debt in the context of Dana White.

          If you mean the ~$500 million loan that Zuffa took out a while ago closer to the beginning of the UFC’s boom period, this was purely to make payments on Station Casino’s near-term debt by using the UFC as collateral and that Zuffa will have no trouble paying it off on time.

          Dana White’s issues are burnout and being a narcissistic jerk (I can’t really find it in me to hate him though, having been a wrestling fan and being desensitized to promoters generally being either incompetent or truly horrible people, and Dana is neither).

        • nottheface says:

          That $425 + million in debt wasn’t taken out was mostly used to make dividend payments to the owners, and was not used at all for Station.

          And Gaijin is right, it is done all the time by businesses. In fact a prime example of the practice of loading a company with debt loans in order to make executive dividend payments is Bain Capital…

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Yeah, it is extremely uncommon to see companies without debt these days. What Zuffa did was par for the course.

          I have actually had to look through the basic financials of Bain Capital before for a previous job. I remember it so well because it was one of the most complicated stuff I ever had to look at. I never fully understood how they calculated everything. Not saying they were doing anything illegal. It was just very complicated financials.

      • @MMAontheReg says:

        ANYONE that thinks that UFC/Zuffa isn’t in debt is an idiot. Moreover, ANYONE that tries to justify the amount of debt they currently have is close to delusional. Let me end this right here for everyone. UFC/ZUFFA has a terrible credit rating. UFC/ZUFFA has a disturbing amount of debt by any known standard. UFC/ZUFFA has virtually no cash on hand. This is all fact. Anyone that has said anything to the contrary is simply ignorant and has certainly never done anything serious in business.

  3. Chromium says:

    When White has himself under control he’s very smooth and shrewd, a lot moreso than Jones, but then again he’s the promoter.

    Anyway this entire debacle has gotten so depressing and there’s plenty of blame to go around here.

    I would say only about 50% of the cards of the boom period would be at all salvageable if they lost both halves of their main-event at the last minute, and I can’t remember a main-event fighter ever turning down a late-notice opponent and simply refusing to fight. It’s his right, but it certainly doesn’t make him look like much of a champion when not long ago he was considered to be the hottest new star in new years.

    However this was a particularly weak card and it’s clear the UFC is stretching themselves too thin right now. They’re sacrificing good fights by wasting them on Fuel. They could still build Fuel TV by strictly showing prelims and “shoulder programming”, or at most just have two Fuel TV events a year or something.

    Meanwhile you have Strikeforce fighters trying to quit because they can’t get enough fights. Say what you will about Paul Daley’s attitude but he’s a credible, exciting fighter and someone you’d think they’d want to keep around. The UFC should trim a total of around 40 fighters at FW through MW, and not try and stretch things so thin. They aren’t there yet, and sooner or later it was going to come back to haunt them anyway.

    Anyway, Jones really needs to choose one direction here. He says he turned down the fight for professional reasons, but that Chael, a potentially huge draw, was wrong for talking his way into a title shot (a professional accomplishment), and took offense to Chael’s antics, which again are clearly calculated, just as Jones’ decision to not take an opponent he didn’t have time to methodically prepare for, even if the same was true for the opponent who was out of shape and moving up in weight. Jones should just have downplayed Chael’s trash talk outright. If he truly wants to pretend to be the good guy still, he should not have responded angrily to it, just said he gets that Chael is really good at self-promotion, that’s it’s an act, that Chael’s really good at it, and he hasn’t said anything that he takes offense to. He could have reitterated that he had already offered to fight Chael at 152, but that the UFC declined to make that match. He could have said that part of being champion is having thick enough skin to withstand insults and criticism. Jones would have looked like a pro again. Instead he’s done the opposite of all this and it’s clear Chael is completely in his head. Playing the religion card by saying he’s excited to face a good Christian like Vitor Belfort doesn’t fucking help anything. He’s still in holier-than-thou mode and failing miserably. Dear God, he has single-handedly managed to make Michael Bisping look amicable and charming.

    So, yeah, hard to defend Jon Jones and I don’t know what to make of Dana White right now (shifting the blame to Hendo was weak when it’s standard practice not to disclose injuries until you absolutely have to since your opponent could take advantage of knowing you have an injury at all; Hendo was still training as late as 4.5 days before the cancellation). He cuts Miguel Torres for a very vague second “rape joke” but waits 3 months to do it, which seems to serve no purpose. I want to just move on from all this shit right now.

    Oh hey, Sara McMann signed with Strikeforce. She may just give Rousey a run for her money. Excellent signing.

    • 45 Huddle says:

      They have like 75 fighters signed at Lightweight between the UFC and SF. That is insane.

      Do we really need to see the 75th best Lightweight in the world in one of 8 weight classes? Nope. And I say 75th best fighter, but the realy is that once you put in Bellators LW’s and other random fighters…. The worst UFC fighter at LW is probably closer to the 90th or 100th best fighter in that weight class. No business being in the big leagues.

      Middle, Welter, Light, & Feather should have a maximum of 50 fighters per division. That is enough to have veterans and up & coming prospects. The other 4 divisions (Heavy, L. Heavy, Bantam, & Fly) should probably have a maximum of 40 fighters per division.

      Less is more. White doesn’t understand this.

      • Chromium says:

        I would excuse the bottom 10% of any division as being kind of “failed prospects” so I wouldn’t invoke the worst fighter in a division but I agree with what you’re saying.

        Sadly, I actually came up with what I figured was a fair divisional spread of 440 fighters (including hypothetical women’s divisions), enough to support 44 cards a year at an average of 11.25 fights per card an 2.25 fights per fighter per year (I know the aim is closer to 3 but injuries are a bitch).

        Target sizes:

        34 Flyweights
        42 Bantamweights
        50 Featherweights
        54 Lightweights
        54 Welterweights
        46 Middleweights
        42 Light-Heavyweights
        36 Heavyweights

        14 W145 fighters (W145 specifically would be strictly an exhibition division for a bit)
        18 W135 fighters
        18 W125 fighters
        18 W115 fighters
        14 W105 fighters

        Total: 440 fighters.

        Actual current size of the UFC’s per their website:
        HW: ~32 (probably a bit less in reality)
        LHW: 40
        MW: 48
        WW: 62
        LW: 64
        FeW: 63
        BW: 38
        FlW: 14 (obviously still growing)

        In the near term, adding more Flyweights and establishing the lower divisions will help them as they add more stars and add card diversity, and adding women’s divisions can add even more card diversity. The idea here is what the end-game should look like: bypassing the PPV model. 12 “A” events a year on Fox or whatever, 28 on FX, and 4 on Fuel that would be treated the same as FX shows. Prelims would be on FX or Fuel or both depending on the event, with curtain-jerking fights still on Facebook. Fuel and FX would both still show “shoulder programming” with cross-promotion on Fox.

        If you bypass PPV, you do not have to cancel events if a champion pulls out. The networks will be disappointed and so will the owners and fans, but the show would still be doable; they’d just need to refund some people who paid in person and some of the sponsors, and even then the ticket prices would be less variable between “A” and “B” events, and “B” events would still sometimes have title fights.

        You also won’t have people complaining about having to “pay” to see women’s fights since the shows will be free.

        • bigweeze says:

          How about they get rid of WMMA and keep the bigger mens’ rosters.

          There are really not 84 women that any sizable portion of people want to watch. There are maybe not even 5 (including Carano).

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Right now, according to their websites….

          UFC website has 361 fighters in their roster. I think a few of those are retired HOF guys, so it is probably closer to 355. Your list has 358. But your list also includes more Bantam & Fly guys then they currently have on their roster.

          Strikeforce has an additional 67 fighters. So right now Zuffa has under contract…. ~420 Male fighters. And that roster number will soon be closer to 500 Male fighters once they have increased the sizes of the Bantam & Fly divisions.

          The two biggest divisions…. Lightweight has 85 fighters. Welterweight is 79 fighters.

          So at some point we are watching some Lightweight in the UFC or Strikeforce that is about the 100th best fighter in his division. That is just BAD!!

          The number of fighter per weight division are good. They could be tweeked slightly depending on the number of veterans and good prospects at the time. But in general, it should look like a bell curve with more fighters in the middle divisions…. And many less fighters in general.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          In my last paragraph…. I meant to say that the number of fighters per weight class in YOUR list is good.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          If you want weekly shows, guys even further down the depth chart in the sport will have “UFC fights”. The problem is that we’re all pretending that terming bouts “UFC fights” means shit. The idea that it is more meaningful is a construct internet fans have created. Individual fights mean something based on the level of opposition someone meets and how they perform.

          The UFC needs to provide entertaining cards and build guys into being not only world title contenders, but to basically push through those sorts of fighters up the chart with careful matchmaking, along with having guys who can generate some interest as pure opponents. They’re not doing that. You have them discard decent fighters based on a loss or two and then sign guys who are bums to fill cards. It is foolish.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          I have no problem with a weekly show. But then there needs to be more of a division between a PPV/FOX fighter and a weekly fight card guy.

        • Chromium says:

          @bigweeze: funny how a lot of fans say they don’t want to watch any WMMA and a lot of fans love it, with Invicta doing quite a lot to convert hardcore fans.

          I knew who Ronda Rousey was when she was 1-0 and I knew then that she had the potential to be the next Gina Carano. The difference is exposure. With Strikeforce having all of a dozen active fighters until recently, no shit there were only a handful of true draws. However other than Featherweight, there are enough active women each of the divisions I listed that have star potential where their existence is justifiable. Yes that includes Atomweight. There certainly aren’t close 356 male fighters that an sizeable number of people wanna see but that doesn’t mean the UFC needs less than that.

          Do you really want me to go through a list of who you could get to put together marketable divisions (as in star power on top and credible fighters underneath supporting them)? Because I could do that.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          Invicta’s “success” is a scam and I can’t believe people fall for it.

        • edub says:

          What star power for women are you talking about? Ronda is the biggest active draw right now, and she still draws shit on Showtime.

          Why would she even turn in to a “star”? She’s being pushed as the next Gina, but she hasn’t brought in the eyeballs Gina has on the exact same format.

        • bigweeze says:

          @Chromium

          This is no knock on the effort women fighters put into their craft. But what makes WMMA a viable product when it has direct competition with men’s MMA?

          I’m talking long-term, where novelty plays no role. Keep in mind that people are becoming increasingly choosy about what MMA they spend their time watching.

  4. donger says:

    the heads of ufc were so arrogant and full of themselves

    they actually thought they could turn the lighter class fighters into ppv draws

    something they have failed miserably at.

    • Nicholai says:

      So are you saying Jose Aldo is a failure? It’s not like he’s popular in his own country or anything like that.

  5. Alan Conceicao says:

    “burnout” isn’t what makes Dana and Co. run as many PPVs as they do. Greed does. Why anyone would believe any differently, I have no idea. The blade cuts two ways – we have relevant fights between top contenders that would be tough to make in boxing because of the politics in the sport, but we also have some dog shit PPVs and title fights (like Belfort/Jones in a couple weeks) because of the system in place from the UFC. Right now the failings are more apparent than the successes.

    • bigweeze says:

      With their goal of being the biggest sport in the world, constant saturation needs to be palatable to the people. That’s what all of this is about. Unfortunately, what we’re finding out is that this is not so.

      People can watch 6 months of baseball, 6 games per week.
      People can watch 9 months of basketball, 3 games per week.
      MMA is getting oversaturated at 2-3 cards per month.

      MMA’s other big problems are – the lack of an offseason – fandom feels like a treadmill.

      The lack of familiarity with fighters also hurts consistent viewership. I can watch Derek Jeter or Kobe Bryant week in, week out. But GSP? Twice a year. With fighters fighting so infrequently, there is no particular draw for fans who haven’t been paying attention online. Other than – “We are putting on fights, come watch.”

      Back in the day fans would lap up nearly any MMA. Now, we’re getting thin cards when fans are pickier than ever. Funny how that works.

      • Alan Conceicao says:

        There were more than 2-3 cards a shows a month during the boom time too for the sport when you figure in DREAM, Sengoku, WEC, WFA, Strikeforce, Affliction, etc. in that. Ultimately there is no consistency with the events. If NASCAR held races on all seven days of the week depending on what the tracks wanted, they’d have had a far tougher time getting a consistent fanbase too.

        • bigweeze says:

          Sorry – I said MMA when I meant UFC.

          The reason being that UFC events have typically drawn more media coverage and fan attention than other promotions.

          The effort (for me) to follow other promotions was much less than to follow the UFC.
          – Less notable fighters (but more consistency with big names appearing)
          – Less quality fighters to remember
          – Less attention to the promotions because of legitimacy reasons (Japanese regulation, matchmaking, my preference for the cage fighting style)

          But the point is, as you allude – there is not enough time for anticipation to build and fans to recover. Not many could endure daily NASCAR or NFL. The scarcity makes event more significant.

    • 45 Huddle says:

      I don’t think the next PPV is garbage.

      Sure Jones/Belfort is a fight where the challenger has no busines in there. But it should be a quick exciting fight. And the co-main event is a great title fight. And Stann/Bisping & Oliviera/Swanson are quality fights on the main card.

      UFC 153 is also a strong PPV card. I like it from top to bottom. UFC 154 is a 2 fight card at this point with GSP/Condit & Hendrick/Kampmann.

      Don’t get me wrong. The PPV choices this year from the UFC have been borderline horrible at some points. But the next 3 are more where they should be.

      • Alan Conceicao says:

        The main will be exciting in so much as Belfort will probably get annhilated. If that excites you, great. No one cares about the Flyweights. Swanson/Oliveira is a “who cares” fight that means nothing of practical value right now and probably never will. Same with Hammill/V-Mat in a battle of “guy that should probably be retired against the guy coming out of a premature retirement”. Stann/Bisping is important because they like to promote both guys because of their backgrounds, even though both guys consistently fall short at the elite level. Which is whatever. But this is not some sort of great, amazing super card. It is an OK Spike TV card with a hilarious mismatch main event.

        • edub says:

          Nobody cares about flyweights in main event fights. They’re the co-main here, and if boxing has taught us anything its that the little guys can become draws after enough exposure. Swanson/Oliveira is a really good fight between guys on a winstreak. It also has implications towards pushing the winner to a #1 contender match. Stann/Bisping have both failed on the top level, but they are both rightfully ranked anywhere from 5-12 in the division (and it should be a good fight as both are strikers). From top to bottom it’s a good card. Title fights (although one is laughable), and matches that should be exciting with implications in their respective divisions. If it had somebody like Hendo, Rua, Machida, or a decent HW in the main event against Jones it would be near the best this year.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          Every fight in history can be seen as having the potential of pushing the winner to a #1 contender match. In this case, the likelihood that one of the two men in the ring will ever ascend to be that person (Swanson) is small. That even with two title fights (one in the premier division) it may not be among the best PPVs of the year says it all.

        • edub says:

          “That it may not be the best PPV of the year says it all.”

          So you’re saying the fact that it might not be the best PPV of the year, makes it a bad PPV card?

          Sure every event in history can push a fighter to #1 contender. However, both fights mentioned have legitimate implications of a guy fighting for the top spot afterward that would actually deserve the spot. Even if those guys just become interesting opponents you spoke of down the line.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Alan…. There are a lot of UFC cards to sh!t on in 2012. UFC 152 is just not one of them.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          So you’re saying the fact that it might not be the best PPV of the year, makes it a bad PPV card?

          How often can you put two legitimate world title fights on a PPV and still have it require staunch defense to be even mediocre? What does that tell you about the titles and the title fights? Here’s the reality of the 125lb title fight: You have two good but undersized guys who’s careers were made at bantamweight fighting one another. They are not transcendent P4P guys. Which is fine, I guess the UFC belt has to start somewhere, but it is an OK fight between OK fighters. It is not a great fight. It is not a fight anyone really cares about. It is a fight that could have happened at any point in the last 2-3 years in the WEC at 135 as a prelim contest below a Cowboy Cerrone/random headliner.

          Asking me to care about Cub Swanson is LOL stuff.

        • edub says:

          It’s not causing some stir in the media about being mediocre or less than. It’s actually being hailed for how deep it is, but its being overshadowed by the big Fox card in December. It’s not even mediocre. It’s a good card, and really the only person that seems to think its less than that is you. Very few comments have been made about how bad of a PPV it is. Just how much of a mismatch the title fight is.

          I’m not asking you to care about anything. I’m saying its a meaningful fight, because it is.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          It is meaningful in that they’ve created a belt for it in a division where they have maybe 8 active fighters signed to the promotion. I guess I lack the perspective to see the quality there.

        • edub says:

          But before that brought in the best 125 lb fighters from the biggest organizations on both sides of the earth to compete in the tournament. So it’s a fight for the actual best 125 lber in the world.

        • Megatherium says:

          UFC has what, fourteen or fifteen flyweights under contract and nine of them are ranked in the top ten. This is a unique situation that won’t last forever. Might as well enjoy, these little guys are a lot of fun to watch.

          And though they may be called mma flyweights, they fight just ten pounds lighter than the great Roberto Duran did in his prime and at the same weight as the equally great Alexis Arguello, two of my favorite fighters of all time.

          Why would I not get excited about watching nine of the worlds top ten battle it out in a group of fourteen?

    • The Gaijin says:

      Just spitballing and probaby not much to it, but given the discussion thread above, maybe another one of the reasons we’re seeing so many ppvs/oversaturation is because they want to ensure they’re generating the steady cashflows required for quarterly interest payments while trying to do 1,000,001 other things?

      • 45 Huddle says:

        It probably doesn’t help. Leveraging a company just puts more pressure on all of the working parts. Especially in this case where they weren’t fully established through the products life cycle.

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