White Silences Critics: Business Has Never Been Better

UFC President Dana White spoke to Yahoo! Sports recently about the current state of the UFC, and how the business is doing exceptional, regardless of what the fans think.

The UFC took some criticism after it was reported that UFC 174: Johnson vs. Bagautinov did under 250,000 PPV buys. Dana White commented on the event saying:

“Demetrious is a guy who’s getting better and better, and if he keeps finishing people and winning fights, sooner or later, he’s going to break through. People are still getting familiar with him and with that division. We didn’t go into that fight with the thought it would do a massive number. We know the market and our projection for what it would do was right on the money. This kind of [expletive] is stuff I’ve heard for years and I’m just sick of listening to it, because it’s so [expletive] stupid and wrong. People are [expletive] without any facts. We built this business in the U.S. and everyone kept telling us we couldn’t. Then we built it in Canada and Brazil and now we’re doing the same thing around the world. This is how you invest and build your business to make it strong for the long haul.”

“This business has never been bigger and never been crazier. I hear all this [expletive] about the Fight Pass cards, but Americans can’t wrap their heads around the fact we’re not doing those cards for them. The fights are for the people in those countries. Say what you want about a card, but there is nothing like a live UFC event. We’ve found that people who go to one of our live events tend to become regular UFC fans. We are looking at a total attendance in these fight cards of 60,000, so those are 60,000 people we’re developing into UFC fans. We put the fights on Fight Pass so that the hardcore people who might want to watch them have a way to see them. This has nothing to do with us trying to sell those fights to the fans here. If you want to watch them, great, it’s 10 bucks a month. We have Roy Nelson and Mark Hunt fighting in Japan coming up. That’s going to be an unreal fight. If you want to see it, it’s 10 bucks and you can cancel it after a month. If you don’t want to see those cards, we don’t give a [expletive] because we’re not doing the shows for anybody but the countrys we’re doing them in. We’re putting the shows on for the people in these other markets where they can see the shows live in their prime time instead of having to watch at three, four or five in the morning.”