Photo by Anton Tabuena
Both of them are under ESPN, but that seemingly won’t make them play nice.
Despite the UFC and Top Rank both being under the same umbrella on ESPN, Dana White and Bob Arum still take shots at each other.
Shortly after the UFC’s second Las Vegas show during this pandemic ended, White spoke about having better ESPN ratings now that other sports aren’t around.
“There’s not much going on. So many people are watching. This is everybody’s time to shine,” White said on the post-fight press conference. “The sport is on a whole ‘nother level right now.
“When we first started on ESPN, when you look at the ESPN totem pole, you had NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA — these guys, right? We were down… like one notch above cornhole. Now we sit in a much better place on the ESPN totem pole than we did when we signed this deal a year and a half ago.”
This is when the UFC President decided to take another shot at his boxing counterpart.
“By the way, cornhole almost outrated Top Rank the other night, for their live fights,” White stated. “So congratulations to Top Rank and Bob Arum. Let’s give him a shout out. Good job, Bob. You’re f—king brilliant, you d—khead!”
Top Rank’s return on ESPN didn’t have any marquee names and it happened on a Tuesday night. As White stated, the ratings indeed weren’t very good, averaging just 397,000 viewers, with a peak of 609,000.
In terms of name value, Saturday’s Eye vs Calvillo also lacked star power, and was one of the weakest cards and main events for the UFC in a long time. The recent events on ESPN did pretty well, so it will be interesting to see how this card does ratings-wise, as it was likely selling mostly on the UFC brand alone.