My Mom's Basement - QUARANTINE MINI-POD: DANA WHITE LIVE FROM FIGHT ISLAND

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Dana White joins Robbie for his monthly check-in to discuss the latest Conor McGregor feud, Israel Adesanya's dominant performance at UFC 253, the future of the heavyweight division, upcoming fights on Fight Island, and more! 3Chi: Use code BASEMENT at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.comYou 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

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. I'm going to have back-to-back episodes in the same span of 24 hours. So let me tell you about our presenting sponsor right away. We'll get into this interview with Dana White and waste no more time. As always, 3Chi are keeping the lights on here at My Mom's Basement. 3Chi is the leader in hemp-derived cannabinoid products, and all of these products are formulated by a biochemist, some Bruce Banner

shit right there. They're made in the USA. It's USA-grown hemp, and what is it? It's Delta-8-THC. It's a federally legal version of THC. All of the effects are there. They're kind of the perfect hybrid of CBD and Delta-9-THC, which is the THC you would find in weed. Takes're kind of the perfect hybrid of CBD and Delta 9 THC, which is the THC you would find in weed. Takes away some of the laziness, some of the anxiety, some of the paranoia, mental fogginess that comes with that kind of THC. I'm a Delta 8 user. I use it every day. I think this stuff is amazing for anxiety. I think this stuff is amazing for just taking a deep breath at the end of the day and being fine. It's not just the best in the Delta 8 industry either. These people invented the industry.

This is their stuff. It's 100% hemp-derived, federally legal, like I said. It's all available online at 3chi.com. If you go to the number 3chi.com right now, and you're over 21 years old because you must be 21 to purchase, use the promo code BASEMENT and you'll get 5% off all vapes, gummies, tinctures, oils, and more that can be used to make homemade edibles and all that stuff. You'll get 5% off, though.

It's a great deal. Get this stuff before it sells out again. You don't want to be the one tweeting all of us and being like, where is this stuff? It's all sold out on the website again. Listen, just get it now. Get it. 3C, it's the best.

Let's get into this interview with UFC president Dana White hello ladies and gentlemen welcome back to my mom's basement it's Robbie Fox and I'm here with it's basically a monthly check-in now with the boss the UFC president Dana White I'm honored to have you here again how you doing I'm good brother I'm good let me ask you this right off the top are you used to the time zone change in Abu Dhabi yet? Or is that still messing you up? Yeah, I think we've been here nine days so far. And it's still a little tough. I'm sleeping pretty good through the night. But it's rough. It's a rough adjustment. Is your phone blowing up at all hours of the night? Because fighters in America don't know that you're sleeping and they're texting you they want fights shit like that oh yeah it's mostly business stuff but yeah my phone blows up all

night so I usually get up around uh 4 30 or 5 o'clock and go through the phone and respond and you know do what needs to be done and then try to get another couple hours in before I get up wow it's unbelievable all right so you're fresh off the first show back on Fight Island, like you said, UFC 253. Real quick, just want to get your overall thoughts on the card that that was, the show that it was. Yeah, I mean, it was super successful in a million different ways, and we broke records on that show.

And obviously not the fight of the year like i had anticipated but uh you know an absolute dominant performance by uh adesanya yeah it reminded me of like an anderson silva in his prime performance and i know i'm not the first to say that people were putting it all over twitter on saturday night uh stylebender mentioned maybe wanting Jared Cannoneer if he got through Robert Whitaker coming up, which is a fight coming up on Fight Island, actually. What did you make of that call-out, and is that something that you're interested in,

that fight going forward? I mean, that's the call-out to make. You know, a lot of times these guys will win, and they'll call out somebody that doesn't even make sense. That's the call- out that makes sense. I thought that was a stud move by him. And not only did he call out Cannoneer, he said, but if Whitaker wins again and he wants to fight again, I'll fight him too.

Guys, that's what you got to love about, you know, when you have a fighter who's on top of the world and he's literally willing to face all the best. Who looks like the best who who looks like the best who looks like they might be the the next guy that's who Adesanya is calling out I love it I respect it um and you know when uh when Paulo Costa was hurt what did he say he said I want to fight Yoro Romero it doesn't make sense he doesn't deserve a shot but I want to fight Yo Romero. It doesn't make sense. He doesn't deserve a shot, but I want to fight him anyway. I'm telling you, those are the guys with that type of mentality

and think like that that become huge stars. And Adesanya is on his way. Do you look at a performance like he had on Saturday night and as a promoter have any urge to rocket him to that Jon Jones super fight? I know that they've been going back and forth on social media even since Saturday night. Do you think we're inching closer to that John Jones super fight. I know that they've been, you know, going back and forth on social media even since Saturday night. Do you think we're inching closer to that? Yeah, I mean, that's up to him.

If he thinks he wants to fight John Jones. I mean, John Jones said the other day the guy's got 100 fights. You know, if he wants to fight, you know, we'll see. Now, normally when that kind of stuff happens, they start talking about fighting out of their weight class. You know, I don't always love that in most situations, but Adesanya has beat everybody, man. The only guy left is if Kananir wins, Kananir would be, you know,

the next guy, the only guy he has to beat. The great thing for a guy like Adesanya, when you look at what he's done and who he's cleaned out, there's still a bunch of options. We're talking about Kananir. We're talking about Whitaker if he wins. We're talking about Jon Jones. You talked about Blachowicz.

I mean, there's just so many different guys he could fight. It's a great problem to have. Yeah, the Blachowicz one, even that makes sense right now. Let me ask you this. Did you have any issue with any of his post-fight antics? Any of the humping? Any of the telling the coaches, I'm going to come on you? Any of that?

Listen, it's not my – you know. In this pussy-ass, oversensitive fucking world that we live in today, everybody's fucking crying about something. You know, everybody – this is a fight business, man. This is a rough business. Mean things are said to people. Mean things are done to people. That fight ends one of two ways.

You know, they get up and they shake hands and they're cool after, or it ends the way out of sight. You know what I mean? This is the fight business, guys. If you can't fucking handle it, don't cover the sport. You don't have the sport you don't have the stomach for this shit yes mean things are going to be said to each other mean terrible

things will be said and and mean things will be done to each other that's this business yeah i mean we're talking about cage fighting here um did you see that after costa found out that he got humped he didn't find out till days later he demanded an immediate rematch he says it's what everyone wants it needs to happen now i assume he will not be getting this shot no there will not be an immediate rematch no no clause in the contract no no there was not um what did you think of stylebender's plea to you after the fight about fighters missing weight and he basically said that they should get charged 90% of their purse and they should be penalized a lot more than they currently are. I don't think anybody would disagree with that.

I think that everybody hates when somebody doesn't make weight. But we don't control that. The Athletic Commission does. Collectively, I think we could all push, you know for for higher stakes if you don't make weight and i don't disagree with with without a sign you know i think that if the number was higher less people would uh not make weight yeah all right so i saw also a few days before this card you broke a tooth was this a dana white candy incident? What happened there? Yeah, it was a candy shop incident. I know it.

I know it was the candy shop. Let me give everybody a little piece of advice. Don't chew fireballs. Okay? Suck on them. So you broke a tooth on a fireball? Yeah. Oh, that's unfortunate.

Broken teeth are pretty much the worst thing. Going to the dentist is the worst. All right. Not the way to start out my five-week stint on Fight Island. No, definitely not. We got to address the elephant in the room. Let's get it out of the way. A few days ago, Conor McGregor posted some private DMs with you.

This was on Friday. From way back in February, these DMs were, and you weren't too happy about that. You said that it broke the man code, and Conor shot right back. He said, the code was broke when you lied about me turning down fights mate i said justin and may and you went and said i did not want to fight it's not about diego diego was a filler to get more fights in also you have been involved in manny talks the legal letters are there stop lying love to know what your response to that is and if you've had any contact with connor outside of the the public stuff that we've seen yeah um no we have not connor and i have not talked outside the public

stuff and uh we uh i don't know if you just saw but the saudis went after connor basically said you better take that it's a lie that that fight is said, you better take that. It's a lie that that fight is happening, and you better take that down in the next 15 minutes, or we're going to sue you. I did not see that. Yeah. He took it down. You don't see the poster anymore about him and

Pacquiao that he had posted. And then he called out Poirier for a fight with, with, with Connor in Dublin for charity. So we offered them both a fight. I figured that would be the next step. Yes. We offered Dustin and Connor a fight.

So we're waiting to hear back from both of them. Now, when you saw him put out that exhibition challenge to Dustin on the same day as UFC 256, and he said, I want this to have nothing to do with the UFC. Like, what did you think of that? Do you roll your eyes? Do you put out the offer and just say, fuck it? All right. If you want to fight, fight.

I've been doing this for, you know, I've been doing the UFC for 20 years. I've been in the fight business for 19. I mean, I don't know what would you expect me to do. I, you know, I've been through all of it. Does that piss you off? Like, do you laugh at it? Yeah, it didn't piss me off, no.

Interesting. That's very interesting to me. And I assume there's something in both guys' contracts that prevents them from fighting outside of the UFC. Yeah. Nobody knows more about this business than I do. How it works, how it runs, how it's going to play out, all those things. Nobody. I trust you. One more Connor question for me. What has been in your eyes,

the biggest difficulty in getting him in the octagon this year? Because his plea over and over again is sort of his public thing is i want to fight he's you know calling out the ceo of disney and saying i'm trying to get fights i'm requesting fights i put out four fight requests and i can't get a fight the fuck is the ceo of disney gonna do i i don't know connor but connor put out a a bit of an sos to him and he's got nothing to do with this i think connor thinks he's your boss got it i just listen i just i think that's what connor thinks let me make this very clear i made it clear before to some other guys i don't have a boss not even the ceo of disney not even mickey mouse himself i do not have a boss. Not even the CEO of Disney, not even Mickey Mouse himself. I do not have a boss.

All right. Well, I appreciate you. I run the ship here. The buck stops right here. I appreciate you entertaining that. Actually, one more thing. Khabib recently said that, you know, an offer was made for him to host the Ultimate Fighter with Conor,

and he said that that'll never happen. I'll never rematch Con connor never in a million years what do you think about yeah he was gonna he was he was gonna do it until connor did all this this shit i almost had that's what i was saying i felt like i was in a good place and i was gonna get that done so we were gonna do the ultimate fighter on espn and fucking do the rematch but you know connor blew that so and and the other thing is connor's recent stuff you're saying with all the connor recent stuff against you that blew it for khabib yeah wow that was a tipping point for him khabib said fuck him interesting i wouldn't expect khabib to be in and then that to be the factor that

that brought him out of it wow that was shocking all right so then uh what my question is too when when did i say connor wouldn't fight i don't even know what the fuck he's talking about when did i say he wouldn't fight i mean i've been saying i've been saying he's retired i mean did you not see the post where he said he's retired? No, I mean, I've been asking you about it for months, and you just keep telling me he's retired and he's not fighting and you're not thinking about him in a business sense. Did he ever make a post and come out and say,

what the hell is that dude talking about? I'm not retired. No, I mean, I think he's technically still retired. He's got the Instagram Twitter picture of him jet skiing, so I think that means he's retired. All right, we can move on from that. Let's talk heavyweights. I know Stipe Miocic only just defended this title, but there's a lot of buzz around that division right now. It seems like the division is back to what it used to be, at least in a sense. That fight in August was incredible. Stipe says he's not very interested in the Francis Ngannou rematch. It doesn't excite

him. He's looking for a new challenge, he says. Is that the fight to make next? I know in your eyes you said it was after the fight, but if Stipe's not interested in that, would you be interested in Jon Jones getting an immediate title shot at heavyweight? That's the fight to make. You know, Francis Ngannou, I mean, what year was that when those two fought last time? You guys know off the top of your head? It had to be beginning of 2019, 2018. It was in January. Oh, really?

I thought it was longer than that. I remember that. You were next to frigging our guy, Soupman, for that fight. That was two years ago? I think so, yeah. So the guy has worked for the last two years to get back in position to fight for the title. He deserves it.

Francis Ngannou deserves that title shot and he's going to get it. So if Steve Paniotric is saying, I don't want Francis, I would rather fight Jon Jones, that's not something you would be open to? You can't jump over. You would rather fight Jon Jones. That's not something you would be open to.

Yeah, you can't jump over. Can't let Jon Jones jump over Francis Ngannou. Francis Ngannou has worked hard for the last couple of years to earn that spot. All right. Further down the line in heavyweight division stuff, have you had any discussions with Brock Lesnar since he's became a free agent? No. Brock and I have not talked okay and you said you would have some boxing news for us soon now Stipe said that boxing was an interesting thing to him maybe a new challenge for him when you launched this thing do you expect crossover like that between UFC fighters wanting to hop in or do you want to keep the world separate i don't know i don't know man i mean

the the connor thing was the right place in the right time um with the right guys to do it boxing guys shouldn't be fighting mma guys and mma guys shouldn't be boxing boxing guys you know what i mean it's just personally i'd rather the world stay separate yeah yeah all right so we've got some fun fights coming up on fight island as well just next week we've got holly holm taking on irene aldana we got awesome heavyweight co-main that that's one the octagon will be shaking for carlos condens back in there what are you looking forward to the most next week yeah i mean there's some fun fights uh you know the uh jermaine de randame um juliana pena fight is fun um you know this is a big deal

for uh aldana too you know she finally has worked her way up to a fight with holly home uh you know i'm happy for her so should be fun yeah i know I know you talked after Holly's fight with Amanda Nunez and said that maybe it was time to start winding down for her, at least looking at things. Do you think if she loses this fight, it will be the end for Holm? I don't know if it will be the end. But, yeah, I mean, I'm sure she's looking at, you know, what her future is

and how much longer she's going to do this. Yeah. Can we expect a date for Aljamain Sterling versus Pyotr Yan coming soon? I don't know off the top of my head. But is that fight in the works? Is that something that, you know, we could look forward to? I think so. Listen, anything beyond Fight Island?

All right, let's talk Fight Island. I'll go back to Fight Island. I'm not thinking about anything but Fight Island right now. I'll go back to Fight Island. One of the fights that I'm looking forward to the most on this entire stretch of Fight Island is the main event in two weeks. It's the Korean Zombie versus Brian Ortega. Me too.

We've wanted forever, right? I mean, since it originally got booked, I feel like it's been booked a few times now it's almost the uh the junior version of khabib and tony and that it just keeps getting canceled what do you think of the entire feud that we've had thus far between zombie and ortega what did you think of the translator getting slapped i mean that was crazy right i know it's it's fascinating because they're both such good guys. You can't even see that going down with those two. It doesn't even make sense. But that being said, it's going to be a badass fight. It's one of the ones that I'm really

excited about, for sure. Yeah, and the matchup, just even taking away the feud from it, having Kareem Zombie in there with brian ortega looking at them as just fighter a and fighter b blows my mind i can't wait for that fight and then after that we've got ufc 254 might be card of the year you guys have put on some pretty good ones this year the masvidal card was legit the the covington card was good but this card top to bottom is like a main card, basically. I agree. Tell people what you're looking forward to the most on 254.

This is headlined by Khabib versus Gaethje, if people don't know. I don't know how people don't know. I mean, obviously, you have to – the main event is obviously the fight that you've got to be the most excited about. And then the co-main, Whitaker versus Cannoneer is a badass fight. I mean, that could main event. And, you know, everybody knows how I feel about Rafael Dos Anjos. Every time that guy fights, it's a tough fight. Struve and Tai Lassa, I mean, that's a fun one too. Yeah, Struve back in there, the skyscraper.

So many fun fights on this card. It's a great one. And this, do you expect this to be your last run on Fight Island for the year, or do you expect to be back before 2020 is up? No, we won't be back on Fight Island again until 2021. But you will be back for sure. Yeah, I mean, unless the, you know. Yeah.

We're going to be coming here. You know, we have five fights. We have a five-year deal with these guys to put on five fights. But until the rest of the world gets normal again, Abu Dhabi is the fight capital of the world. You making any progress on that house market I haven't even done anything yet no since I've been here unfortunate I'm telling you

Matt Sarah Dana White Ally Quinta looking for a house that's the next show that's the next show and by the way the most recent looking forward to a fight with Matt Sarah talking to Diego Sanchez's coach at breakfast I mean Daniel Cormier said it best. How do you teach the school of self-awareness and not be self-aware enough to know you don't interrupt Matt Serra at breakfast? Unbelievable. Right. Dana, this has been a good time.

As always, I appreciate the time. I appreciate you answering all the Conor McGregor questions. I assume those are the most pleasant to answer answer i assume you're tired of it it is what it is man it's all good all right like i said we got fights on saturday we got the korean zombie versus brian ortega the next week we got ufc 254 the next week if you're in pennsylvania make all the bets on this barstool sportsbook i don't know if you seen, we launched that in Barstool. We'll get that in Nevada soon. I watch the pizza reviews all the time. So he's been promoting it in the pizza reviews.

I love it. I love it.