Earlier this year, Dana White, the UFC’s longtime impresario, was taking in a U2 concert at the Sphere, the stately pleasuredome in his hometown of Las Vegas. The concert was fine. But White, being White, was seized by an idea. Why not hold a UFC card there?
This weekend, the UFC serves up "Noche UFC,” celebrating Mexican independence day. The card is headlined by UFC bantamweight champion Sean O'Malley, taking on Merab Dvalishvili; but the real star will be the venue. This will be the first major sporting event staged at the Sphere. And, with typical understatement, White predicts “it will be f---ing incredible.”
To make it happen, White leaned on UFC chief content officer and executive producer Craig Borsari. “I said, whatever you're doing next week and cancel it, you're coming here and bring the team. I want you to walk through this and tell me what you think,” says White. “And you know, our big thing at UFC is ‘no’ is never an answer.”
Borsari was tasked with overseeing preproduction and figuring out how to turn a concert venue into a sports venue; and he will oversee execution on fight night. A film devoted to combat sports will air between fights. Action in the Octagon will be replicated on screens, so the 17,000 or so in attendance can watch live or from an array of monitors. Pressed for details and specifics, White is vague. “Have you ever been to an IMAX theater? Literally multiply it by f---ing a million.”
Sometimes White misses (see: the abomination that is slap fighting). More often, he nails it. This marks the latest bit of bold ambition. And also marks as good a time as any to take stock of the UFC and where White sees the enterprise heading. With a random WNBA jab thrown in for good measure.
Some outtakes from a conversation, edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Jon Wertheim: In your mind, who are the biggest fighters right now?
Dana White: Alex Pereira. Sean O'Malley. Weili Zhang. Israel Adesanya. He's not the champ, but he's still one of the biggest fighters. And then I would say, uh, Who the f--- I'm thinking of here? Islam [Makhachev].
JW: We keep hearing of all the sports media properties, the only one that isn't long-term locked up now is UFC. Give us a sneak peek. What are you selling [suitors] these days?
DW: A lot different than it was in 2005. I think coming out of the Spike deal, we had already really gotten the respect from the big networks. I mean, we went right down to the wire with NBC. Vince McMahon f---ed that up. Which led us to Fox. And then from Fox we went to ESPN.
JW: And if you're handicapping this now how do you see this playing out?
DW: I honestly don't know. As we get closer, this could either be, we end up on a bunch of different networks—like all the other sports do—and pay per view type fights. Or, we end up on one network. But I do believe that over the next several years, like when I grew up, you got Channel 3, Channel 5, Channel 8, Channel 13. I think that's gonna play out the same globally now. There'll be, you know, four or five big players globally and we end up on one of them.
JW: What’s the next market you want to crack?
DW: Listen, I'm going to take this thing everywhere in the world that we can. This next year, in 2025, I'm going to Africa. So, that'll be the next. You look at all the places. We were waiting to get into New York. Then we were waiting to get into Toronto. Once we got into Toronto, we'd open all of Canada up. Then, we were waiting to get into Paris and then we finally got to Paris. And now my next big one is to get to Africa.
JW: You know where that fight's going to be?
DW: South Africa.
JW: You've got a, you've got a champ from South Africa [UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis].
DW: Exactly.
JW: To what extent do you care about MMA in the Olympics?
DW: Couldn't care less.
JW: I’m in Indianapolis and going to see Caitlin Clark play …
DW: That's awesome. I have so much respect for her and how gritty and tough she is. And all the controversy that's going on? And all the people talking? She just puts it aside and she goes out—speaking of Jordan mentality she's got it too. She's a killer and yeah, I have a ton of respect for her …
JW: One of the big themes is like this WNBA is now what? It's like [UFC] years ago, like they finally made it. It's not this sideshow anymore. Now it's legit. The players want more money. The league wants to expand. It's very much what you guys went through. What would you tell the WNBA about expanding as a sports property when you've kind of hit the mainstream?
DW: Don't listen to everybody else's opinion. Do what you know is right. And what you think is right for the business. Like every time we would expand and go to the new country, everybody would tell us, there's not any fighters there. It's never going to work over here. You're doing too many fights. People are going to lose interest.
You're never doing too many anything as long as they're good. There's always going to be people who want to watch them. And I have had season tickets to the Aces. I love to see it happening for them … . Bob Arum sitting f---ing over courtside on the other side I'm like, this dude is 93 years old flying in from Saudi Arabia, and he's got a f-----g Aces game at 9 o'clock at night? You know, he's an asshole, but you got to say, damn this dude's a gangster.
JW: As you come up on 25 years in this job, what do you cherish most and what’s your biggest regret?
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dana White ‘Really Happy’ With State of UFC Ahead of Sphere Event.
