Dana White addresses booking a vacant flyweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Sijara Eubanks for the UFC 230 pay-per-view event. Once this fight was reported online and later confirmed, fight fans around the world, as well as media members, went nuts as this fight was an odd choice.
Thus, when the UFC President had to address it in a recent interview with Brett Okamoto of ESPN, it was quite the scene to see him explain it. All of the uproars about it was due to the situation that the UFC found itself.
First, you had a fight that the fans wanted to see in the headlining role, which was Nate Diaz fighting Dustin Poirier in a lightweight bout. You also had the fact that Shevchenko was supposed to fight former UFC women’s strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk, at the UFC 231 pay-per-view event. By booking this flyweight title fight at UFC 230, not only did the UFC not give fans what they wanted with Diaz and Poirier but also nixed the UFC 231 fight as well.
Dana White Addresses
“Because we moved it sooner, Joanna wasn’t ready for that fight,” UFC President Dana White said (H/T to Sherdog). “Valentina doesn’t care. This girl will fight tomorrow. She wants to fight every month.”
At least in the eyes of White, he appears quite happy with making this fight in the main event. He also made it clear that he has made sure that Eubanks will be able to make weight and to the Octagon for this title fight.
“Eubanks, if she’d have made weight, she’d have been the champion or at least fought for the championship,” he said. “And there’s no doubt Valentina is the baddest girl around at 125 right now. It was the fight to make. I’m just glad we could pull it off this soon. We made sure that Eubanks was on weight,” White said. “So Sijara is close to weight and Valentina is a beast and wanted this fight. It’s a fun fight.”
People’s Main Event
Regarding not making Diaz and Poirier the headliner by creating a 165-pound division and giving them a vacant title fight, he says it was never a consideration.
“It’s all just talk,” White said. “First of all you make 165 pounds, you’re gonna start pulling people from the 170-pound division. Then you’re gonna see a lot of people from 170 and 155 that couldn’t win a title at 170 and 155 jumping to 165 to fight for a title there. It doesn’t make sense. We’ve always kept it simple…We have enough weight classes.”
Save The Date
The UFC 230 pay-per-view event is set to take place on Saturday, November 3, 2018 at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, New York City with the main card airing on pay-per-view at 10 p.m. ET while the preliminary card will air on FOX Sports 1 at 8 p.m. ET and the promotion’s streaming service, UFC Fight Pass.
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