Dana White is not rattled by Conor McGregor’s upcoming lengthy absence and Ronda Rousey’s unclear fighting future.
After his fight at UFC 205, Conor McGregor announced that he and long-time girlfriend Dee Devlin are expecting their first child next year. And early this month, Ronda Rousey announced that her upcoming fight against Amanda Nunes may be one of her lasts.
That takes two of the company’s biggest superstars out of the limelight for a long period of time, with the other one potentially for good. Yet, despite this circumstance at hand, UFC president Dana White doesn’t seem bothered by it, as he even promised even bigger things for the coming year.
“Every day I walk in this office is a new day for the sport. This is what we do, what we are,” White told the LA Times. “I’ve been doing this [stuff] for years, and I can tell you, 2017 will be dynamite. This is the … fight factory.”
In July, new owners have taken over the UFC, since it was sold by the Fertitta brothers for $4 billion. With WME co-CEO Ari Emmanuel at the helm working alongside White, the UFC president shut down detractors who claim that they have already reached their peak.
“We’ve done this for 16 years, with a lot of big stars who couldn’t fight or moved on – Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre. There’s not a day in this office I don’t get the question, ‘What are we going to do about this guy?’ Every day I turn around, I’ve got a reporter saying we’ve peaked,” White said. “If I listened to any of that, we probably would be done.”
“But I can tell you, we’re just getting started. Ari is a bright, fresh-eyed guy who’s just getting into this business, and he’s in love with it.”