Dana White “Done Playing Games”: UFC no longer wants Fedor
UFC President Dana White has discounted the possibility of Fedor Emelianenko fighting in the octagon with the UFC. Following the UFC 116 pre-event press conference, White stated that now that Fedor has lost his mystique, he will no longer pursue the former PRIDE champion.
“Now that he loses, now they want to say, ‘OK, now we’ll come over,’ because he lost?” White asked. “I’m done playing the games.”
“Honestly, when he lost, you guys know there’s been times when I have animosity with guys and you lose, and I’m like, ‘Ha. Alright, there you go,’” White said. “But to be honest with you, I didn’t have any of that for Fedor.
“In my opinion, the media pumped him up more than anything. When he did the fight, they were far from selling out. They did under a million-dollar gate. They had 400,000 people watch it on Showtime. It’s not like anybody is really clamoring for [him to come to the UFC].”
“To be honest with you, without joking around and no shit, I honestly and truly have not believed that Fedor is this great heavyweight that everybody thinks he is,” White said. “Yes, back in the day in 2005 and before that, he was beating some great guys who were in their prime, and he was nasty. But to prove that you’re the best in the world, you have to fight the best consistently. You have to consistently fight the best.
“It would be like calling the Lakers the world champions and they’re playing some college team. It’s not the same. I know that everybody can see the sense in that, but people just love to because he’s not here they want to say, ‘Oh, he could do this and that.’ It’s all mythology and shit.”
“If we were to have come to a deal with Fedor, yeah, we could have put on a big promotion, and we could have found out (how goood he is),” White said. “People are going to say, ‘Oh, he got caught in a triangle. Anybody can.’ Yeah, anybody can, but it would have been a lot better if he came over here and lost to Shane Carwin, Brock Lesnar, Cain Velasquez, than losing to Werdum.”
“Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar, we know all their attributes,” White said. “We know how good they both are. I have no idea what’s going to happen on Saturday night. I have no clue. So to say that one guy could beat this guy, there’s only one way to find out who can beat who, and that’s fight, and [Emelianenko and his camp] aren’t willing to do it.
“You don’t get the honor of being called the best fighter in the world when you won’t fight the best guys in the world. Now doesn’t that make sense?”
“I know it’s fun because I don’t have [Emelianenko] and he’s not in the UFC, so it’s fun to say, ‘Oh, what we he do?’” White said. “And I guarantee you, get ready: (Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair) Overeem will be the next guy now. ‘Oh, Overeem would beat them all.’
“Overeem got knocked out by Chuck Liddell at light heavyweight.”
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