If you thought UFC president Dana White was upset about his cash cow Conor McGregor getting choked out, or watching Miesha Tate squeeze the life out of a Holly Holm vs Ronda Rousey rematch, you must be a drunk dummy.
Because according to White, who appeared yesterday (Thursday, March 10, 2016) on the Max and Marcellus Show on ESPN, things couldn’t have gone better.
“Saturday night was amazing for us. We broke so many records. It’s funny because people talk about this all the time. Sixteen years old this thing is. Social media was ridiculous. For the prelims we were number one on all broadcasts and cable. You name it, we broke the record.”
Well, yes, we knew all that. The big news today was all about a monster number of people who purchased the pay-per-view, disproving Brock Lesnar’s theory you can’t turn chicken shit into chicken salad.
But surely Uncle Dana was miffed about McGregor getting exposed by a lightweight after talking a big game about knocking out Robbie Lawler?
“You have to understand that Conor’s loss was at two weight classes up from where he should have been fighting. The one thing that I’ve learned about the sport of fighting, people just want to see great fights. It’s not about who wins or loses, it’s about seeing great fights.”
In before the comment section is filled with remarks about McGregor not fighting two weight classes up, he simply fought at his walking around weight.
“Nobody knew Holly Holm until she beat Ronda Rousey, you know, however many months ago. Nobody knew Conor McGregor four years ago. And Conor McGregor is such a stud. He stayed in the fight when [Rafael] dos Anjos pulled out, moved up two weight classes to just fight Nate Diaz because he wanted to fight him and at the end of the day he’s still the 145 pound champion. It was awesome.”
Still, you have to think that some of the magic died when the seemingly invincible “Mystic Mac” found himself furiously tapping Nate’s arm as the life was choked from his body in the second round of their fight. What if McGregor suddenly goes into a tailspin and loses the next 10 fights?
“It is what it is. It’s been it’s a fact forever. People have been telling me, ‘what are you going to do when Chuck Liddell retires?’ There’s always new great fighters coming down the pipeline. In this sport man, we’ve put the best against the best. Or sometimes we do crazy stuff like Saturday night. Conor McGregor says I wanna fight Nate Diaz. I wanna fight him. I’ll fight him at 170. I mean these are things that capture people’s imaginations. That’s why the thing does 1.5 million pay-per-view buys.”
I’d say it did 1.5 million buys because everybody wanted to see somebody shut up McGregor and that now he’s been defeated he won’t draw quite as much attention. But then again, that’s probably why I don’t make that Dana White money.
The UFC prez is already promoting the idea of McGregor fighting Frankie Edgar, likely at UFC 200.
The funny thing is that UFC 196 wasn’t about “new great fighters coming down the pipeline.” It was more about how ya’ll forgot about Dre. Nate Diaz, who debuted in UFC in 2007, and Miesha Tate, who won her Strikeforce belt a few months after the MMA debut of Ronda Rousey, showed that the world you can never count out the veterans.