Placing Blame on Dana White & UFC, UFC Vets Expose Hypocrisy of Unhappy CEO’s Rant on UFC 304 – “You Messed It Up”

Dana White was veritably evil at the UFC 304 post-fight press conference. He not only chewed out and publicly fired Muhammad Mokaev, but promised he would never up the fight bonuses ever, complaining about the seven consecutive decisions. Along with the low finish rate on the card, perhaps the most important reason for White’s fury was that the Manchester card didn’t sell many pay-per-views. And the former UFC stars think it is all the UFC CEO’s fault.

Josh ‘The Punk’ Thomson and ‘Big’ John McCarthy discussed Dana White’s saltiness after UFC 304 at length on their ‘Weighing In’ podcast. The referee felt that the main problem was that “[Dana White] did put these fighters in a position where they were fighting at three o’clock in the morning.” McCarthy believes that it was no wonder that the card didn’t work out quite as expected since “no one fights at those times” because “it’s an odd time.” This is very taxing on the fighters since their body “doesn’t feel the same,” and they must have felt “sluggish most of the time.”

‘The Punk’ agreed and seconded McCarthy’s view that the biggest reason UFC 304 in Manchester, England, reportedly flopped, was because the UFC decided to start it at 3 in the morning local time. Dana White & Co., of course, had done this because they wanted the card to start at 10:00 p.m. in the US in hopes it might sell more PPVs in their primary market.

However, Thomson felt that this led to the internal clock of fighters on both sides of the pond being messed up. Indeed, Leon Edwards, who lost his welterweight title to Belal Muhammad in the UFC 304 main event, blamed the odd timing of the card for his lackluster performance. And Thomson felt this played a huge role in the card flopping.

“The ones that come from the States that are working for the UFC, their body clock is trying to change to get adjusted to the UK time when in fact they can’t, because their show is at 5 in the morning. Then the fighters that are there they’re getting all screwed up because they’re having to fight when they’re normally sleeping,” he said on the latest episode of the ‘Weighing In’ podcast. 

“So you really kind of messed up both sides of this equation. You messed it up for the people that work for the promotion and some of the fighters that came over. He kind of shot himself in the foot by scheduling the event this way and it kind of baffled me that they were doing this,” Thomson added.

‘Big John’, however, was a touch more sympathetic to Dana White’s vitriol after the event.

McCarthy thinks UFC CEO is justified in being angry at UFC 304

McCarthy felt that there was good reason for White to be bitter at how UFC 304 turned out. The legendary referee felt that the UFC CEO must have felt aggrieved since, despite promising double the bonuses to try to get more finishes, the event saw so many fights going to the judges’ scorecard.

However, ‘Big John’ did feel that this was a misunderstanding of the events on the Las Vegas resident’s part since it wasn’t that the fighters didn’t want it or want to finish their opponents, it’s just that most of the fights turned out to be ‘tight’ and competitive.

“When you have all the decisions that they had in that show, I think that’s what makes him in the end go ‘I got all these fighters, I’m giving them extra money for their bonuses and stuff and I got nothing but decisions. That means people aren’t going for it.’ No it just means that they were tight competitions,” McCarthy countered.

What do you think about McCarthy and Thomson’s take on UFC 304? Let us know your views in the comments below.