Few soundbites have haunted Dana White so commonly all through his tenure as UFC president as a 20-second TMZ clip captured exterior an LA restaurant again in 2011. Within the video, White solutions a query about Cain Velasquez’s return from harm, earlier than getting requested “When are we going to see ladies within the UFC?” His reply, delivered with amusing, couldn’t have been extra succinct.
“By no means. Ever.”
Two years later, the UFC hosted its first ever ladies’s MMA bout. A important occasion battle between newly minted champion Ronda Rousey—her title ported over from Strikeforce with the UFC’s acquisition of the rival promotion—taking up Liz Carmouche. The years since have seen the world’s largest blended martial arts promotion host a whole lot of ladies’s MMA matches. Immediately the Endeavor-owned battle group hosts 4 ladies’s divisions and greater than 100 feminine athletes.
On a current episode of the BASIC! When Cable Was Cool podcast, White sat down with former Viacom and Spike TV government Doug Herzog to speak concerning the UFC’s rise to TV prominence. Alongside the way in which he acquired onto the subject of ladies’s MMA and the journey White went on, in going from ‘by no means’ to creating feminine athlete’s a cornerstone of the UFC model.
“So, one of many issues that you need to keep in mind on the time—there’s a really well-known clip of me on TMZ, I’m getting out of a restaurant in LA, they usually’re asking me, ‘When are ladies going to battle within the UFC?’ And I look within the digital camera and I say, ‘By no means,’” White defined, setting the stage for his story on the UFC and girls’s MMA. “At the moment, I’m attempting to get folks to just accept males combating in a cage! Proper?”
“I went to a battle up in northern California, as soon as, the place there was a horrible mismatch between ladies. And I used to be like, ‘Oh, my god.’ And pay attention, I’m not gonna lie, there’s a bit little bit of that—being a person—little chauvinistic; in that, ‘Girls are fairly, ladies are—bwah, you don’t wanna see ladies get beat up, you don’t wanna see—’ In 1,000,000 years, I by no means noticed this coming; the place these ladies could be so technical, and so powerful, and so badass. I imply, the ladies that we’ve now, within the UFC? There’s loads of issues I noticed coming, I didn’t see that one coming. That’s for rattling positive.”
White might not have been in any respect ready for the thought of ladies competing contained in the Octagon, however—as he’s usually repeated—the rise of Ronda Rousey in Strikeforce was a significant recreation changer.
“However the factor that modified the whole lot was, I met Ronda Rousey,” White defined. “Ronda Rousey manifested all this stuff which have occurred. And I had a gathering together with her in the future, and midway via the assembly I’m like, ‘Holy shit, I feel I’m gonna do that. And I feel she’s the one to do it with.’ And thank god I used to be proper.”
Surprisingly sufficient, after that assembly and White’s rising curiosity in bringing ladies to the UFC, the longtime promoter revealed that he acquired no push-back in any way from FOX executives or anybody else within the UFC entrance workplace. In response to him, it was followers who held all of the resistance to the thought.
“No,” White answered when requested if he had hassle convincing different high brass to carry ladies to the UFC. “However, I feel that you just hear this stuff about—and that is coming from a person’s standpoint—you already know, ‘Girls aren’t handled the identical as males. Girls aren’t this and that.’ All this different stuff. And I used to be at all times like, [chuckles] ‘You understand, possibly there’s a few of this and a few of that.’ Till I headlined Ronda Rousey above Dan Henderson and Lyoto Machida and folks misplaced their fucking minds. I used to be getting these messages from folks, like, ‘You piece of shit. You dah-dah-dah-dah-dah.’ I used to be like, ‘Oh my god!’ I by no means realized this existed as a result of it’s by no means occurred to me, you already know what I imply?
“So as soon as I headlined Ronda Rousey I used to be like, ‘Wow, man.’ I by no means realized there could be this type of blow-back from these lunatics on the market. Then, that evening, we have been in Anaheim; when she walked out of that tunnel in that enviornment, I knew I made the appropriate choices. Offered out, two ladies combating in a important occasion.
“In case you take a look at ladies’s boxing—earlier than I did my first ladies’s battle, you checked out ladies’s boxing and it was extra type of a sideshow sort factor,” he continued. “When Ronda Rousey walked out of that tunnel that evening? All the enviornment erupted. I get goosebumps even telling the fricking story. All the enviornment erupted. And the battle, it was unimaginable. She was one her approach to not solely being the largest celebrity within the sport, however the highest paid. Fairly badass.”
Past simply coming round on one star, or just the concept feminine athletes might be a worthwhile presence within the battle enterprise, White admits that the entire expertise gave him a brand new perspective on the sexism that ladies face of their on a regular basis lives.
“I’ve discovered my lesson, imagine me. I’ve discovered my lesson,” White admitted. “We reside and study, and I’ve discovered. It’s true.”
