BURBANK, Calif. — Dana White had a story Wednesday which illustrated his theory on why there are so many training injuries in the UFC these days.
Speaking to reporters at a media luncheon, he related an item told to him by UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.
“Georges St-Pierre told me a story where, he showed up to camp one time,” White said. “They were going to have him spar with Shane Carwin. Georges said, ‘Why the f— would I spar with Shane Carwin? How does that help me?What does that do for me, for my career?’ When you hear stupid s— like that its like, no wonder why guys are getting hurt left and right.”
The way White sees it, mixed martial arts camps were once run the way major boxing gyms approached big fights, and it wouldn’t hurt if the sport went back in that direction.
“Back 10 years ago, Chuck Liddell was at his camp, he was the top dog, Tito [Ortiz] was down at his camp, [Randy] Couture at his,” White said. “[Matt] Hughes had probably the most guys, you look at [Pat] Miletich’s crew, they had the most killers, the top gym. Nowadays these gyms are packed. Look how boxing does it. If Floyd Mayweather is training for a fight, they build a camp around Floyd. Guys come in and you have sparring partners and all this stuff. [In MMA] they have 10 guys where they’re all training for a fight. It’s so hard, its different now. They need to start building these camps around one guy.
“We had a situation, and I’m not singling out Greg Jackson here, I can’t remember if it was Rashad [Evans] who rolled over onto Diego Sanchez’s knee, or the other way. They were training right next to each other. There needs to be a more professional approach to training camps than there is right now.”
As a promoter, though, it’s not White’s job to tell trainers and coaches how to do theirs, and he knows it.
“It’s one of those things I can’t control though. I can’t call them and go, ‘I want you to do this and I want you to do that.'”