02 December 2023 , 09:00
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UFC boss Dana White has explained why he will never allow fighters to walk to the cage with huge entourages whilst criticising boxers for doing so.
Fighters in the promotion are only permitted to walk out with their corner team, whilst boxers are often accompanied for their ring walks by huge entourages. Ring legend Floyd Mayweather walked to the ring with the likes of music artists Justin Bieber and Lil Wayne during his career, but White said there is no chance of similar scenes taking place in the UFC.
"We don't turn it into a f****ng circus. If you've ever noticed in boxing, there are 500 people in the ring that don't belong in the ring. Who the f*** are these people and why are they in there? They're nobodies looking to get on f*****ng TV. The only people in the octagon are people that need to be in the octagon," he said on the Full Send podcast.
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"Even the promoters are going in there, for what? What the f*** do you need to be in there for? You know when I go in there? When it's time to put the belt on or if a big f****ng melee starts to break out or whatever, that's it. The fighters walk out with their team, the guys who help them train and get there."
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White was also sceptical of reported pay-per-view numbers in boxing as the Misfits Prime card last month was said to have sold 1.3million buys. The event, which featured KSI vs Tommy Fury and Logan Paul vs Dillon Danis, was a huge success but the UFC boss struggled to believe it sold as well as reported.
“When you hear those kinds of numbers fly around the pay-per-view world, they’re lying motherf*****s," he added. "Don’t ever believe that s***. You know how much money that is if they cut a deal and did 1.3 million pay-per-view buys? I like Logan Paul and some of these guys that are involved in this, but if you come out and you say you did 1.3 million pay-per-view buys on your event you’re lying through your f****ng teeth.
“If you sold 700,000 pay-per-view buys, they’d put putting on fights 10 times a year. The amount of money you’d f****ng make, they’d be doing pay-per-views all the time. Let me tell you what, every pay-per-view distributor out there would want them, and Showtime wouldn’t have went out of business.”