UFC President White Stands Atop MMA Landscape As Top Promoter
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White Integral Part Of Rise In
Popularity Of Mixed Martial Arts |
UFC President Dana White "may soon be hailed as the greatest sports promoter ever," having taken MMA, a sport that was "essentially moribund seven years ago ... and turned it into a moneymaking, crowd-frazzling sensation, a new heavyweight [PPV] box-office champ," according to an extensive profile by Erik Hedegaard of ROLLING STONE. White has been the "exact right guy to bring the UFC back from the dead." White: "I'm not your typical head of a sports league. I say exactly how I feel. I don't hide it. I don't lie. And I swear a lot. Some people think I'm a classless moron. Other people think I'm this monster that screws my fighters over. And other people like me. You can't make everybody happy." Hedegaard notes with fighters clamoring for more money, there has "been considerable talk of late about banding together to unionize. And of high hopes that [Mavericks Owner] Mark Cuban, whose upstart cable channel, HDNet, has begun featuring [MMA] fights as a main staple, can provide White and the UFC with some honest competition." But White said, "Like Mark Cuban really thinks he's going to beat me? I eat, sleep, breathe and live [MMA]. ... He's never going to beat me. Never, ever." Hedegaard writes White has become UFC's "most visible and valuable public asset." White, in response to demands for more money from fighters such as Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture, explains the "difference between boxing's business model and the UFC's." White: "We assume all risk, we get no f***ing guaranteed fees, we pay for everything. We can't pay fighters the same." But Couture said, "Now that the sport is successful, the UFC's athletes need to get the right kind of treatment." Former UFC fighter Matt Lindland in '05 was fired by the promotion for "attending a weigh-in wearing a T-shirt that bore the logo of an unapproved sponsor." Lindland: "You really don't want to get on Dana White's bad side. Trust me. That's why none of the other fighters will say anything. They're terrified. He's got powerful guys behind him, and he goes around acting like a gangster" (ROLLING STONE, 6/12 issue). CIGAR AFICIONADO's Joel Drucker notes White believes that the success of the sport "is due to how MMA compares with other sports." White: "The NFL can't make a go in Europe because no one there grows up playing (American) football. We transcend all cultural and language barriers" (CIGAR AFICIONADO, 6/ '08 issue). White also appears on the cover of the June/July issue of Men's Fitness (THE DAILY).
SPRINGING INTO ACTION: White yesterday appeared in-studio on CNBC's "Power Lunch" and announced that UFC "just closed a deal" with Jakks Pacific to produce UFC action figures that will be available this Christmas. White denied various rumors, including taking on WWE as a minority partner, announcing a new TV deal with either Fox or ABC/ESPN and signing retired boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. White said of other companies trying to start MMA leagues, "If you look at their track record, they've lost tons of money over the last couple of years and a couple have even gone out of business. ... This is a rough business and a lot of these guys that are just getting into it, there's a lot of things that they don't know that they don't know yet" ("Power Lunch," CNBC, 6/10).
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