Dana White: "There’s Definitely Not Enough Talent For The ‘Tuesday Night Fights’ Type Show."
by Kelvin Hunt on Aug 8, 2009 11:30 AM EDT
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UFC president Dana White answered some questions from some UFC Fight Club members, and below is some of the things he touched on:
- "On WEC/UFC merger: They’re talking about it"
- "We just started really cultivating Brazil." Hired a PR firm there, has a TV deal and ratings are "awesome."
- On Wanderlei Silva’s next fight: Likely for England in October.
- On having a weekly show right now: "There’s definitely not enough talent for the ‘Tuesday Night Fights’ type show."
- On Tito Ortiz’s first fight since returning: Tito vs. Mark Coleman is set.
When I first saw the statement about the WEC/UFC merger possibility, I immediately went to "I wonder if that is a prelude to a weekly show" type of thing. I'm not sure how I feel about about a WEC/UFC merger, but the positives probably outweigh the negatives. At least those WEC stars would get better pay, and UFC cards could potentially be more stacked. The other factor is that with WEC 42 and UFC 101 on back to back nights, the WEC seems to be getting swamped with all the noise surrounding UFC 101 and the beginning of the war with Strikeforce. Which is unfortunate, because that WEC 42 show has potential to be lights outlike our official podcast. Give us your thoughts on a potential WEC/UFC merger.
HT: Sherdog
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I like the idea of bringing the WEC talent into the UFC brand. I also agree with Dana’s statement that there’s not enough depth of talent for a Tuesday Night Fights type show (at least not a consistent QUALITY show). I would not, however, be surprised to see the UFN Spike TV shows be at least once a month in the near future. There’s definitely more than enough quality talent signed with Zuffa to do that and put on some great fights.
Son
I would kill to have a UFN every month…
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im not a fan of a full merger but i think they should tie the two companies together more closely, the WEC is not going to be established on its own because the UFC have essentially branded their logo on the forehead of fans out there, its been great when trying to crush competition but most people(by that i mean casual fans) only recognise the UFC. Tie them together do joint PPV’s( Torres Bowles could have been a great addition to 103) you could have countdown shows on both Spike and Versus and use joint PPV’s as a way to test the audience to see if they would be interested in buying seperate WEC shows and if that doesn’t work then look at a merger.
Ya know
I feel with that philosophy as well…but if you tie them together on joint PPV’s…you might as well merge them no? I’m sure it would save money in the long run…just combine the current WEC staff with the current UFC staff…because as you said…the WEC will never get out from underneth the shadow of the UFC brand…
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good point but i would still look at keeping the WEC as an active brand because the Versus show will help them to create new stars in the lower weight classes and if they do come to crush Strikeforce having an already active brand will be helpful in creating a minor league sort of system to find and develop young talent
Word
I feel you in regards to the minor league sort of system…but I don’t think the Versus show can help create new stars..that channel just doesn’t have a big enough audience…if so, Torres, Brown, Faber, would all be bigger stars than they are rigth now IMO.
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