White: In MMA, unlike boxing, we always do the big fights
Dana White: “The difference in MMA is that we always do the fights, the big fights that guys wanna see. Right now, our fight like that is Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo.”
UFC president Dana White got his start in combat sports as an amateur competitor, white collar boxing entrepreneur, and pro fight manager. He remains a huge boxing fan, and has been known to watch big prizefights live from cageside.
White spoke recently with the Latin American media about Saturday’s Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. It is being billed as the Fight of the Century. It is far from the most important fight in the last 100 years, that honor, very, very arguably, goes to champion Joe Frazier vs. challenger Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, NY. But we are in a new century, and this is the biggest one so far.
Still, White argues that the marquee matchups in boxing no longer happen with the frequency they used to. He explains further, that in the UFC with the vast majority of the top fighters in one promotion, the top names fight each other with far greater frequency.
“Fight of the century? I mean, seriously? Is this the fight of the century?” said White, to Guilherme Cruz for MMAFighting.com. “This is a fight that people wanted to see for a long time, and boxing doesn’t do a lot of these. They used to. If you think back to the day when… Imagine if Tyson was fighting Lennox Lewis right now. If this was a Tyson Lennox Lewis fight. This fight would be massive. These fights used to happen all the time. But now you don’t see this kind of fights in boxing anymore. I believe if this fight happened in their prime six years ago, it would be this big too.”
“The difference in MMA is that we always do the fights, the big fights that guys wanna see. Right now, our fight like that is Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo. You saw the reception with the world tour that we did. We did seven million dollars… You’re talking about featherweight that did seven million dollars for gate, which will be the biggest gate that we’ve ever done in the United States.
“In North America was 11 million. Think about this: we did an $11 million gate in Toronto, with Georges St-Pierre, and 56,000 people. This one here has 16,000 people and a $7 million gate, so it’s a pretty big fight.”
“Listen, it’s definitely a massive fight. Everybody is talking about how this thing sold out. This thing isn’t sold out. There’s still a lot of tickets left for this thing in secondary market. The boxing guys are so greedy… Here we go again, man. Room rates are dropping all over the place for the city right now, they are dropping room rates and tickets haven’t been sold. It’s not what it appears to be, but it will be massive on pay-per-view, and I think it’s going to be a good fight.”