My Mom's Basement - QUARANTINE MINI-POD: DANA WHITE FRESH OFF FIGHT ISLAND

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Dana White heads back down into the Basement fresh off a month spent on Fight Island to discuss how he felt everything went, Mike Tyson's return to boxing, Conor McGregor's "retirement" status/cryptic Manny Pacquiao tweets, and more.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

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It's Robbie Fox back here again with UFC President Dana White, the most frequent return guest outside of the Barstow office on this show. I love it. Uncle Dana is back, fresh off a month spent on Fight Island. How are we feeling? I'm awesome, man. I'm having a great summer, and everything's good. It sure seems like it.

If you had to put a grade on the whole Fight Island as a whole, the whole experience out there, what would you give it? A-plus. It was a home run, man. Every way that an event could be successful, that event was successful. Plus, it broke up the monotony for me and everybody else that went there. It was a cool experience. It was a cool change of pace. It was incredible. It seemed like you enjoyed yourself so much over in Abu Dhabi. I heard you were looking for a house. Did you wind up finding one? I did.

I went and looked. I found a place that I liked. It's not a house. It's a condo. It's 15,000 square feet, though. It's a 15,000 square foot condo. It's in a cool spot that they're developing right now on the beach. They've got shopping restaurants. It's right next cool spot that they're developing right now on the beach. They've got shopping restaurants.

It's right next to the Louvre. But I didn't pull the trigger on it yet because I didn't get enough time to look. I went three or four hours looking while I was there. I'm going to go back again and look again, but that's probably the place I'm going to grab. Wow. I was going to say a Dana White condo isn't really your average condo, I don't think. You've got to bring Al Iaquinto over there. Have him be your real estate agent.

That'd be a hell of a looking for a fight, looking for a house with Al Iaquinto, Matt Serra, and Dana White. That's what I want to see. That is funny. So moving on a bit, this is something that I'm just very fascinated, and I think many other people are as well. Friend of yours, Mike Tyson, is returning to the ring, and I saw that you were going to go out there and watch him train soon.

What are your thoughts on this? And I want to know if you think Mike Tyson is going to abide by these exhibition rules where apparently he's not going to try for a knockout. Do you buy that? I'm flying down there Thursday to watch him and watch him train. And no, I don't think that you can ever put two fighters in a ring in a situation where they're not going to get a knockout.

That just doesn't even make sense to me. Especially Mike Tyson. Right. Roy Jones Jr. Roy Jones Jr. has the best left hook in the business. You know, Tyson is still explosive, still powerful. And I actually think this thing's going to be successful. And I think it's going to pull a number.

Wow. Especially now with what's going on right now with, you know, there's nothing, there's no live sports to watch. Yeah. Well, they are starting to come back now. And I'm almost surprised to hear you say that. I know you're friends with Mike and everything, but you know, you've been very anti old guys fighting for a while.

So I didn't know where you would fall on this one. And I was anti this in the beginning and I talked to Mike and Mike's like listen man I got that fire back in me I want to fight you know he's a grown-ass man this guy you watch him hit the mitts still explosive still has head movement still has everything there and he's going in against you know a guy who's close to his age so it's not like you know 50 something-old Tyson going in and fighting some 20-year-old, 28-year-old young kid. So it should be fun.

As long as they do the proper medical testing and make sure that both of these guys are healthy to fight, they have the proper medical attention that night, these guys should be safe and should be okay. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it just in the circus aspect of it, the whole draw of that aspect. The Reebok deal is just about done. We know that Venom will be the next partnership for the UFC in clothing and fighter wear. I wanted to know if more customization would be coming with the Venom deal.

We know Bryce Mitchell wants those camo shorts, right? And we heard that he's going to get them and all that kind of stuff. Is that going to be something going forward with Venom that you're going to work with fighters on? Well, I don't, I don't know if we're going to be able to customize things for certain guys, but not saying we can't either. You know, the Reebok deal was the first deal. And I have to say, you know, thank you to Reebok deal was the first deal that we, and I have to say, uh, you know,

thank you to Reebok if it wasn't for Reebok, um, you know, and, and their willingness to give this thing a shot, even though all the, all the stupid shit that the media talked about, you know, the Reebok deal, the Reebok deal was incredible for this sport. Um, fighters made money. Everybody made money, uh, you know, from the top tier to guys just coming in. It was an incredible groundbreaking deal. And Reebok will go down in history as always being, you know, the first one to do it for us. And going into this new deal with Venom, you know, Venom knows a lot more about the sport.

They've been making clothes for mixed martial artists for years. So, you know, I think this is the perfect, you know, timing is everything. And this is the perfect deal at the perfect time. Yeah, it seemed like it to me. Moving back to the UFC, moving back to actual fights themselves, we've got Stipe Miocic versus Daniel Cormier three coming up and I'm very much looking forward to this one it's back at the UFC apex where you guys have been using the smaller cage do you know if they'll be using the smaller cage for that event that fight yeah we're using the cage that's in there yeah um and yes we're we're uh we're very excited about this too too. You know, two of the best ever in the heavyweight division.

This is the trilogy. And I think that this fight definitely determines who the greatest heavyweight of all time is. Yeah, and this will go down as the greatest heavyweight trilogy in UFC history, I think. I agree. Without a doubt. Moving on to another guy that can't seem to do an interview without bringing up, Conor McGcgregor i know you said you didn't give a shit about the tweet the other day but we saw some teasing of a manny pacquiao boxing match or something you know they're under the same management so people are speculating what's your take on this what's the whole what's going on here

not to be taken out of context there but saying that i don't give a shit man you know these guys keep asking me about Conor McGregor who is retired you guys keep asking me about him he's retired Conor plays you guys like fiddles man you guys are like puppets on a string um you know he's retired he sends one tweet that says I accept um and it's right after Hamza calls him out and two other guys you know I I'm not focused on anything with anybody who's not fighting Conor McGregor is retired um you know do we all believe he'll stay retired I think most of us don't believe that he'll remain retired but let me put it to you this way I owe I owe fighters that are under contract with me three fights a year. If I don't deliver those three fights a year, I have to pay them.

Conor McGregor is retired, whether people want to believe it or not. He is not fighting right now. So when he's not fighting, I don't even think about him or what he's doing or any of that stuff on a business level. I'll still shoot him a text personally, but on a business level, he's, he's out of the mix. He's not fighting at all. So everybody keeps asking me questions about him. And I'm like, Manny Pacquiao, the fuck are you talking about? So if he wanted to do that though, and you're saying he's retired, would he be able to do that? Or is he under UFC contract?

If he wanted to do it, he would have called me. But if he wanted to do that, it seems like maybe he's not retired then. You see what I'm saying, Dana? You see what I'm saying? That is some fucking crazy logic there. Yes. He is retired. Conor McGregor is not fighting.

He is retired. I have no plans. I'm in the war room right now. And this thing is laid out to November. We have fights laid out right now until November 7th, okay? And Conor McGregor is not on any of them. I believe you as far as that. I just don't believe that he's retired. I don't buy it. I know that you know that I don't buy it. I think a lot of us are in the same boat there.

This year he's retired. He doesn't have a fight this year, and he won't have a fight this year. Conor McGregor will not fight in 2020. We'll see 2021. We'll do a return interview in 2021. We'll revisit the subject. I'm not saying he won't fight in 2021, but I'm telling you, we don't have a fight plan for him in 2021, but I guarantee you, we will not fight in 2020. All right. Another guy, another guy I'm very curious about then is john jones right the last we heard from jones he said listen i'm gonna sit out i don't like the the fighter pay that's going on and he had a lot of complaints about that is there any thought to hey maybe john jones might be quote-unquote retired and stripping him of his championship

for now or what's going on with jones what's the deal there yeah you know as much as I know the last time he said I'm not fighting he's not fighting so we're we're feeling this thing out and you know when it's time for him to fight we'll see so no thoughts to stripping him just yet not as of yet no okay and I've got one more question for you this might seem like a weird one but recently there was this incident in Vegas where some maniac caused a crime and that said he was a UFC fighter. I don't think anything turned out from it. I don't think he was a UFC fighter. He wasn't.

But you mentioned that people in Las Vegas sometimes go out and claim that they're you. And I wanted to know if you have any stories about that because that just sounds absurd. You get calls from the Las Vegas Police Department thinking you're out causing chaos? People say they're me all the time. So they'll go to dinner and pretend they're me at dinners. One time this was when my daughter was like my daughter had to be 10, 11. One of the ring card girls was one of our ring card girls from New Jersey. She lives in Jersey. Ashley Bacone had reached out to me and said, there's a girl here.

She worked at Wet Republic, the pool. She said, there's a girl here, and they gave her a booth, and they're giving her free drinks and everything. She's saying she's your daughter. And she's like, Dana's daughter's like young. Yeah, my daughter was like 10 and this girl was pretending to be my daughter getting free drinks and all this other stuff. It happens all the time. Apparently, all you have to be is fucking bald or just say you're fucking related to me and you can get free shit.

Listen, we got enough pictures together at this point. I might be able to get free shit in Vegas. I start flashing those photos to everyone. Yeah, yeah. He's my uncle, Uncle Dana. Yeah, definitely. Exactly. You know it.

Here's the interview. You hear me calling him Uncle Dana. Exactly. I do think you do have a soft spot for nerds, by the way. The John Oliver feud has gotten a little soft. You love Aaron Bronstadter.