November 3. 2011 – Yesterday afternoon, UFC President Dana White, heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez, and challenger Junior dos Santos spoke on the latest media conference call in advance of the highly anticipated title fight and network debut event, UFC on FOX.
While much of the talk centered on the title fight itself, much of the focus was also on the back-end aspects of the upcoming show. After all, this will be the promotion’s first foray into producing an event in concert with their new global partner. While the UFC does retain control over most aspects of the upcoming show as they’ve intended all along, there will also be some changes as the UFC moves into a new era in front of a much larger mainstream audience.
“This is going to be a different format than we’ve ever done before,” said Dana White.”Obviously this is a show featuring one fight so we’re doing a lot of things differently. We are going to be rehearsing for this from Thursday (as opposed to the day of the event). There’s going to be a lot of pressure here to pull this off and make this thing great. There’s going to be a lot of backstage features, we are going to be talking to both guys backstage before they fight which isn’t something we’ve done for a very long time.”
By using the UFC’s tried-and-true model as far as shooting and producing the fights while integrating FOX’s model for how they cover sports, White and the rest of the UFC brass are hoping to hit a grand slam with a broadcast audience that will undoubtedly be larger than any they’ve ever been able to reach before. “We’ve working hard and we’re going to nail this thing,” Dana said.’ The fight is the least of my worries. I’m confident in Junior and Cain. We made this fight the first fight on free TV for a reason.”
Moving on, the UFC frontman also spoke about his own personal satisfaction in finally being able to put together an event of this magnitude, fulfilling a longtime dream to bring the UFC to audiences in the way boxing (his first love) was brought to him through ABC’s Wide World of Sports, free television.
“This is a throw-back to the old days of boxing; we are putting a big fight – a huge fight – on free TV to expose this thing to a new audience. Our goal has always been to bring big fights back to network television; we are thinking long-term for the future of this sport. It is an investment in the future of the UFC. Fans that have never seen the UFC before will see this show and that’s why we decided to put Cain and Junior in this position. This is going to be an awesome fight; a great fight.”
UFC Continues to Go Global
The upcoming heavyweight title feature between Cain and Cigano will be carried LIVE on various networks in 16 countries, from New Zealand to Canada and also on Rede Globo, Brazil’s largest TV network and 4th largest in the world, for the very first time.
In addition, there will also be an increased focus on expansion starting with The Ultimate Fighter Brazil, planned for 2012. Likely to air on FOX-owned Fuel TV, the show will have fighters travel to South America instead of Las Vegas to compete for an opportunity to fight for the UFC.
“The amount of talent that The Ultimate Fighter Brazil is gonna create is gonna be phenomenal,” said White. “MMA is the new martial art. Kids are growing up taking it and it’s really spread like wildfire all over the world. There literally isn’t a country that you could point your finger to on the map that we couldn’t get a fighter from. I think we’ve done a great job finding and cultivating great talent from all these different countries.
If we continue to go into these different markets and do The Ultimate Fighter, it’s going to be very interesting.”My goal is to get The Ultimate Fighter running in all these different countries at the same time. Then when you have a winner, we do like the World Cup, where each guy from each country fights each other and we end up with one winner. We’re getting closer and closer to this dream I’ve had for the last five years.”
Based on what Dana has to say regarding their international plans, MMA fans here in Texas and all over the world certainly have a lot to look forward to in the foreseeable future. With UFC on FOX 1 leading the way, it looks like the sport is undoubtedly on the way to mainstream acceptance if it’s not already there. With The Ultimate Fighter Brazil and a planned TUF World Grand Prix maybe in the works, it looks like the sport may be taken even one step further towards an even loftier goal of getting MMA into the Olympics.
Good times ahead.
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