Making the rounds with Dana White
By Carlos Arias, The Orange County Register (McClatchy/Tribune)
UFC president Dana White is a very busy man.
The UFC has events on FX, Fuel TV, Fox or pay-per-view nearly every Saturday for the remainder of the year, which means White is flying all over the world to promote UFC events. When he’s not doing that, he’s interacting with UFC fans all day on Twitter.
White stopped off in L.A. recently to shoot a show for FoxSports.com at The Palms in West Hollywood. White also met with a small group of local MMA writers.
He talked about his recent trip to Brazil to promote the rematch between UFC middleweight champion and pound-for-pound kingpin Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen. Sonnen received a hostile reaction from the Brazilians. Sonnen has slammed Silva, Brazilian fighters and Brazilians themselves in recent years.
“We had proper security with us,” White said. “We had like seven guys with us. These are guys that mapped out the whole route. We literally landed at the airport in Rio, a shuttle took us through customs, jumped on helicopters and the helicopters took us right to the hotel. I came through the front door. We put him (Sonnen) through a side door. We had him in a holding room. We went down to the press conference and he had a scrum. The reporters were getting really aggressive with him at the scrum. Somebody got him with shock pin and all kinds of stuff like that. He went out the side door. I went out the front door. Helicopters took us back. We got on a plane and got him out of there. I wanted to make sure we got in and out and got him safe.
“I’m still getting texts, ‘Did you and Sonnen get out of Brazil alive last night? I haven’t heard from you. Give me an update.’ I made him (Sonnen) ride in a different car than me.”
Silva and Sonnen were originally scheduled to fight at UFC 147 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The UFC decided to move UFC out of Rio because of a conflict in scheduling with the United Nations, which has convention in Rio June 20-22, the same week as UFC 147.
White wasn’t ready to announce a date and site for UFC 147, which will feature “The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil” coaches Wanderlei Silva against Vitor Belfort. Silva and Sonnen will now headline UFC 148 July 7 in Las Vegas. Brazil remains one of the UFC’s top markets. White said “The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil” gets 12 million viewers per episode.
Now that the UFC has signed a seven-year deal with Fox networks “The Ultimate Fighter” has been moved from Spike TV to FX and has a new format where it shows taped action from the week and then airs the fights live. The show is pulling in 1 million viewers per epsiode.
“I love the format; the format’s awesome,” White said. “As far as the shoe goes, it’s a home run for FX. It’s on Friday nights. Friday nights they do movies and reruns. We’re the No. 1 thing in males 18-34 every Friday night. If not we’re No. 2 if they pull something off that beats us. For me, I want to pull 3 million viewers on FX.”
