Mayweather Humbles Dana White
Outspoken UFC president Dana White was very vocal over the last two months in stating the Floyd Mayweather's return PPV bout last Saturday (September 19) would be a flop. In particular, White taunted that Floyd’s style was “boring” and Marquez was a “nobody,” two ingredients which he thought would ensure UFC 103 would come out on top in the first head to head PPV matchup between boxing and MMA.
But as the great orator Shawn Carter states, “men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.” The Mayweather-Marquez PPV was a shocking success, with a staggering 1 million PPV buys. The unexpected figure rebuffed boxing critics as well, who regularly insisted Floyd wasn’t a draw and could only sell with other big names like Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton.
"To all the non-believers who have been saying that Floyd Mayweather is not a draw, hopefully, this will silence them,” Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer told Yahoo Sport’s Kevin Iole. “Floyd Mayweather has proven with these numbers that he’s the No. 1 pay-per-view star in the business. I said all along my goal was to break 1 million homes and so many people said I was nuts and thought it was just hype or that I didn’t know what I was doing. Media members kept talking about boxing is dying, but we knew what we had and we stayed the course in the end, we have been vindicated.”
Dana White gave boxing credit, but framed the lopsided numbers as the result of UFC 103 being the company’s 4th PPV in 10 weeks.
“I’m an emotional guy and if we’d only have done 100,000, or barely above 100,000, I would be suicidal. Bottom line, we did a good number and we still got our asses kicked,” he stated. “What they did was phenomenal and I’m happy for them. This was our fourth pay-per-view in two months (actually 10 weeks) and we still did a great number, but this was only their second all year. We honestly thought we’d do our number and that if they knocked it out of the park, they’d do around 650,000. We are ecstatic with the number we did, but they did a huge, huge number…I’m a true boxing fan and I’m happy for them, but what that number they pulled shows is the promise of combat sports.”
Hopefully going forward, both sports will take a more reasonable approach of working together instead of the counterproductive antagonism we've see on both sides. Just think of the money pot for a Mayweather/Pacquiao and Fedor/Lesnar double headliner PPV (I know, it'll never happen).
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Originally Posted by composed
