The UFC has famously negotiated some “virtually offers” that by no means fairly bought completed, and it seems disgraced ex-WWE proprietor Vince McMahon was on the middle of personally sinking one of many largest.
Again in 2011, the UFC was working in direction of a brand new broadcast rights deal after outgrowing its earlier dwelling at Spike TV and there have been various events concerned. Ultimately, UFC CEO Dana White says that it was NBC that got here to the desk with one of the best provide, and the 2 sides had been simply hammering out just a few closing particulars earlier than finally signing a contract.
“So I’m on the 1-yard line, we’re about to get a deal completed with NBC,” White stated on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story podcast. “Certainly one of my massive deal factors was that The Final Fighter needed to be on USA [Network]. We’re actually in New York for days hammering it out with all of the executives over there. Lastly they arrive again and say ‘we’ll do it, we’ll put The Final Fighter on USA.’
“So the following day we come again, and we’re about to signal the deal and do all these items, they usually’re like ‘we will’t imagine this, we didn’t know this, we simply came upon — Vince McMahon has the correct to find out whether or not one other fight sport can come onto USA.’ I’m like what? How is that even f*cking attainable?”
On the time, WWE was one of many largest packages airing on the USA Community with its flagship collection Monday Night time Uncooked. McMahon wielded full management over the promotion , nevertheless it seems he truly had the facility to nix another fight sport from showing on the identical community.
That compelled White and former UFC proprietor Lorenzo Fertitta to fly out to the WWE workplaces to fulfill with McMahon in hopes of hanging a deal so the promotion might ink the cope with NBC.
“So me and Lorenzo stated we’ll fly out to Connecticut, and we’ll meet with Vince, and we’ll see if we will get this completed,” White defined. “We fly out, we go to the workplaces, we go in with [Vince] and we sit down, we lay it out to him, inform him the story and he’s like ‘yeah, I don’t need you on the community.’ We’re like why? [He said] ‘I simply don’t need you on it.’
“In order that blew up the entire NBC deal. We had been truly going to purchase G4. We had been shopping for G4 and all this different loopy [stuff]. So then we choose up the telephone and we name Eric Shanks and we fly out to L.A. and we do the FOX deal. The remaining is historical past.”
G4 was a community devoted primarily to video video games with collection akin to Assault of the Present the place future stars like Olivia Munn bought her begin.
As soon as McMahon nixed the deal, the UFC clearly didn’t find yourself shopping for G4, by no means ended up working with NBC and as an alternative landed at FOX for the following seven years.
If there was a silver lining to that entire state of affairs, White says he believes shopping for G4 would have been one of many worst concepts in UFC historical past.
“Life is loopy in these methods,” White stated. “You don’t know what we might have completed or how it could have performed out however we imagine that if we purchased G4, it could have killed us.”
Barely three years after the UFC was compelled to move on shopping for G4, the community ceased operations and went out of enterprise with NBC shutting it down.
The UFC’s cope with FOX labored out for each side earlier than the fight sports activities large left in 2018 to then signal a brand new seven-year cope with ESPN that was price round $300 million per 12 months. The UFC is now again in negotiations on a brand new broadcast rights cope with the group reportedly looking for round $1 billion per 12 months for the brand new contract.
So far as McMahon selecting to tank the cope with NBC, White believes that was simply his nature and he determined that the UFC was going to be a rival fairly than an ally.
“I believe that [Vince McMahon] had this factor the place he needed to create that [rivalry],” White stated. “It was his factor
Humorous sufficient, McMahon later praised the UFC, and the brand new house owners at Endeavor, when WWE bought to the corporate led by Ari Emanuel, which merged the 2 organizations into one powerhouse conglomerate now often known as TKO Group Holdings. McMahon finally resigned from his place in TKO after an explosive lawsuit was filed towards him by a former worker alleging sexual abuse and trafficking amongst different offenses.
