TORONTO – UFC president Dana White on Friday hosted a fan-driven Q&A session at the UFC Fan Expo Toronto 2011, which takes place this weekend at Toronto's Direct Energy Centre.As usual, the outspoken boss didn't shy away from any hard questions, and he covered a wide variety of interesting topics including how close Junior Dos Santos vs. Brock Lesnar was to being the UFC's first five-round non-title title fight, the possibility of Nick Diaz entering a boxing ring and why all future editions of "The Ultimate Fighter" will feature elimination fights to get into the house.
MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) shares White's thought on those topics and more in this Dana White Q&A Notebook.
Junior Dos Santos vs. Brock Lesnar was nearly a five-round non-title fight
A rash of recent draws and controversial decisions have led many fans to call for five-round contests in all main-event bouts, whether a title is on the line or not. White said not only is he in favor of the idea, but the upcoming UFC 131 fight "The Ultimate Fighter 13" coaches Brock Lesnar and Junior Dos Santos was nearly tagged as a 25-minute affair.
"I'm in to that," White said. "I like it. I think there's some fights that aren't title fights that are main events, and it ends up being three (rounds), and it should have been five. I'm a big fan of it, and we're working on that right now.
"We were actually going to start it with Brock Lesnar and Junior Dos Santos, but we had already made the fight, so it's kind of hard to go back to those guys after you've already made the fight and say, 'You know what? This is going to be five (rounds) instead of three.' So we're very close to doing it."
As for the draws, some fans have suggested a "sudden victory" overtime around could prove valuable. Similar to the way ties are broken on "The Ultimate Fighter" with a third round if the first two prove even, supporters of the overtime idea would like to see the potential for a fourth round in a three-round bout and sixth round in five-round affair.
White was less supportive of that idea. While he admitted his disdain for draws, he said changed in round structures would need to be made by athletic commissions.
"That's a commission thing," White said. "It has nothing to do with me. I hate [draws].
"Listen, when guys train for a fight all that time and prepare, we put on this big event, everybody shows up – that's my big beef with soccer. We go sit there and watch this game for hours, and nobody wins? I don't get it. That's something I hate about fights, too. Draws suck, and I don't know. It is what it is."
Boxing may be in Nick Diaz's future, but Georges St-Pierre could lie there, as well
Current Strikeforce welterweight champion Diaz has made quite a stir in recent weeks by suggesting he hopes to box in the very near future. Earlier this week, White admitted he might not be able to stop Diaz from pursuing his dreams, but today, the UFC boss said he's certainly going to try.
"I'm going to talk to Nick Diaz," White said. "Literally, when this fight is done I'm flying up to Stockton to go talk to him."
Diaz fought 10 times under the UFC banner between 2003 and 2006, but White said he hasn't had a meaningful business conversation since. Now that Strikeforce is the newest sister-promotion of the UFC, White said he hopes to talk Diaz out of his desire to box. However, if he's unsuccessful, White said he won't stand in Diaz's way.
"He has a deal with Strikeforce," Diaz said. "They have a verbal deal that he can go out and box. We honor deals. If you have a deal, you have a deal. But I don't think it's in Nick's best interest to box. The funny thing is that all boxers wish they could come over here and do this, but they don't have the skillset to do it.
"I just have to sit down and talk to Nick. It's been a long time since Nick and I have sat down and really talked since when he was in the UFC. I just want to have the opportunity to talk to him. If I leave there and he says, 'I'm doing this. I want to do this,' then we'll honor the deal."
While it remains "business as usual" for Strikeforce, at least for the time being, White did mention Diaz's name as a possible future opponent for Georges St-Pierre should "Rush" elect not to make the leap to 185 pounds
"If Georges St-Pierre decides to stay at 170 (pounds), and the Anderson Silva fight doesn't happen, there's always going to be new guys coming up out there," White said. "There's Nick Diaz, and there's a lot of other guys.
"Georges St-Pierre is one of these guys that's such a great champion, and he's so good at what he does, but listen, he's a human being. Anybody can be beat on any given day. Georges wants to keep testing himself and keep fighting the best. Who knows what decisions he'll make after he beats so many guys and how he'll want to challenge himself next, but we'll see. It's kind of the fun of being in the fight game."
White admits mistake with "TUF, " says elimination fights back next season
While there has been some debate as to why the 13th season of "The Ultimate Fighter" has struggled a bit in the ratings department, White admitted some contractual obligations were at least partly to blame.
Some MMA observers have suggested the lack of elimination fights to earn entrance into the "TUF" house has left viewers without an attachment to the competitors – not to mention participants that might not necessarily be the best available.
White hesitated briefly before explaining why the elimination fights were eliminated and promising they'll be back next season.
"We had a lot of obstacles this season," White said. "I don't even know if I should talk about this, but I will because that's me. In our deal with Spike TV this season, we don't have as many episodes as we've had in the past. We figured that we would be killing some of the reality. We wouldn't have enough time to tell stories. But we really, really made a big mistake not having these guys fight to get in the house. I guarantee you that will never happen again."
On the bright side for "The Ultimate Fighter," this past week's episode No. 5 matched the season's highest viewership with 1.5 million viewers. White said viewers still tuning in to Spike TV each week will be rewarded as the season continues to play out.
"Trust me when I tell you … you are not going to be disappointed with the way this season ends and the fights that happen at the end," White said. "It turns around."
"We're coming everywhere"
Most Q&A sessions with White consist of at least a dozen questions asking him when the UFC is visiting a particular market, and Friday was no exception. The UFC head said expansion in both the domestic and global markets are still a priority and said for most major cities, it's simply a matter of time.
"Anywhere that we can take this thing that we think is going to be a good market, we're going to," White said. "It's a matter of, as we lay out these fights, having enough fights. As the sport continues to grow, there's more athletes to compete, and that's [the reason for] the Strikeforce acquisition and other acquisitions where people think, 'Oh, we don't like competition.' That's not the case at all. The issue is we need more fights.
"As we continue to grow globally, and we want to go to all these places, we need more and more and more fights."
In the U.S., the Washington D.C. area was one of the few areas White said was on the UFC's radar.
"We actually were very close, I think last year, to doing a fight down there," White said. "We almost did, and then we pulled out last-minute, but it's definitely on our radar. We almost did it last year, and I'm sure we'll be there soon. It's on our radar."
Internationally, White said the company continues to make great strides around the world, and the company is working on signing massive deals in China and India that will eventually lead to live events in those markets.
"Right now we're in 175 different countries," White said. "We're in 22 languages in a half-billion home worldwide.
"We're working hard right now on China and India. If we get these two deals done, in the next couple of months, we'll be in a billion homes worldwide on television. China is one we're working on very hard, and another one that we're real close to doing a fight and possibly 'The Ultimate Fighter' is the Philippines."
Another Q&A tradition involves at least one Irish MMA fan asking when the promotion will return to the European country. White has often praised the raucous crowd of 9,300 that packed the O2 Dublin for UFC 93 in January 2009, and he said the company intends to return to Ireland soon. However, the high demand for events around the globe makes it difficult to pin down an exact date.
"We're trying, man," White said. "There's so much demand to bring the fights to all the different places. Believe me, we're trying."
White said Canada will certainly see more shows in the near future. The country that White has repeatedly referred to as a "Mecca" of mixed martial arts continues to prove a massive profit center for the UFC, and the enthusiastic exec said the country will unquestionably see more fights in the very near future.
"This has become our second-biggest market in the world," White said. "I really do love it up here. I love everything about here. You guys have very cool cities. Every place is clean. There's great restaurants, great hotels. The shopping is incredible. There's nothing that sucks about Canada except for the weather.
"I would come here and do a fight every weekend if we could. Now it's just a matter of figuring this thing out, moving it around, but we want to bring Ultimate Fight Nights up here. We want to bring The Ultimate Fighter Finales up here. Believe me, we're going to start doing a lot more fights up here."
Where exactly those fights will take place remains to be seen, but White said the company is looking at destinations outside of the three cities (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver) the company has already visited.
"We want to get over and do Edmonton," White said. "We've obviously hit the big three, and now there's other places throughout the country that we believe would be good markets for us that we're going to do. And it doesn't have to be a huge St-Pierre fight or something else. Fight Nights and The Ultimate Fighter Finales are fun, too.
"Showtime" still in line
In his shortest address of the day, White cleared up any potential confusion in the UFC's current lightweight title picture.
With Jim Miller and Dennis Siver making strides in the 155-pound division, some MMA pundits wondered if former WEC champ Anthony Pettis might be forced to wait for his shot at the UFC crown even if he proves victorious in a June matchup with Clay Guida.
White quickly shot down any potential theories regarding the future of the division.
"No," White said. "It's Pettis."
"I've never seen Bellator"
With Strikeforce no longer a competing organization with the UFC, where exactly does Bellator Fighting Championships rank in the world of MMA? As far as White is concerned, it hardly matters.
"I've never seen Bellator," White admitted.
White quickly insisted he didn't mean to disrespect the tournament-based promotion with his admission.
"I know they're out there," White said. "I know they're putting on shows, but there are tons of shows out there. There's tons of shows out there that I don't know about."
White scoffed at the notion that Bellator was any type of "real" competition, but he said the fact that he's never witnessed the promotion wasn't related to his thoughts on the organization's market share. Instead, he said he relies on his business partners to fill him in on the happenings of competing MMA promotions.
"I'm not anti-competition," White said. "You can ask anybody that knows me. Ask Lorenzo (Fertitta). Lorenzo watches it. I never do.
"The only thing that I focus on, and the only thing that I worry about is what we're doing and what we have coming up."
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