Dana White Disses Mayweather-Marquez
Posted by fightstalker on Thursday Sep 10, 2009 Under Breaking News, Dana White
Dana White hasn’t cooled off on HBO boxing’s decision to air the Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez boxing match on Sept. 19 — the same night as UFC 103.
In a new video released by the UFC on Wednesday, which contains some obscene language, White took a few more jabs at his pay-per-view counterparts.
“Boxing is doing it to you again,” White said. “They’re giving you the fight that you don’t want. Nobody asked for this fight with Mayweather and … what’s his name? What’s his name? Nobody even knows. Nobody in this room even knows who Floyd’s fighting.
” … On that same night, on that UFC card, you guys can all tune in and you can watch not one fight, you guys can watch five great fights that night for ten dollars less than what Floyd wants you to pay to see him run around in circles, and lay on the ropes, and move around and not fight.”
However, Mark Taffet, the senior vice president of HBO pay-per-view, told FanHouse at a sports business forum in New York City on Wednesday, that they didn’t try to intentionally counterprogram UFC 103.
“It’s definitely not something that happens intentionally, and it’s something that you would want to have happen as infrequently as possible because the distribution pipelines prefer to be clean and singularly focused,” Taffet said. “When it does occur, we’re confident from a consumer perspective of there being very little overlap and the events will all thrive. But it’s clearly something that on a going forward basis that will happen as infrequently as possible.”
Regardless, Taffet doesn’t believe either show will generate less pay-per-view buys as a result of airing on the same night.
“There’s very little overlap in the fan bases between the sports. We believe that there’s not more than 5% overlap in the fan bases. Each sport has its unique fans, it’s passionate fans, and its loyal fans. We think that our fans are going to find Mayweather-Marquez that night — we’re very confident about that — and it’s a world in which multiple sports are thriving in the pay-per-view industry and the pay-per-view distributors the beneficiaries.”
The UFC and HBO boxing will also go head-to-head on Nov. 14 when the Manny Pacquaio vs. Miguel Cotto fight will air against Spike’s tape delayed telecast of UFC 105.
It’s clear that all parties involved on the boxing side have no interest in talking about competing against the UFC. When FanHouse asked Mayweather about White recently saying he wasn’t a superstar, Mayweather quickly brushed it off.
“I’m not worried about what Dana White said,” Mayweather said. “I mean, Dana White says what he says — it don’t matter. I’m not thinking about Dana White.”
Perhaps Golden Boy and HBO don’t want to give the public a reason to pay attention to UFC 103, or maybe they just don’t consider the UFC competition. But White is taking a much different approach. He seems to have no issue addressing the Mayweather-Marquez fight in the crucial days leading up to Sept. 19. Conventional wisdom says a promoter should never address the competition, but if you thought White would do that in this case, you haven’t been paying much attention.
Only time will tell if either show will suffer from going up against each other. But one thing is for certain: it looks like the war between the UFC and boxing is only getting started.
