You know, we're just pretty sure as MMA fans, people that follow sport, is that whoever
was going to headline Madison Square Garden—couldn't tell you any clearer—it's going to be Jon
Jones.
I don't know how to speak any clearer than that.
But one thing that we were confident—and even though I'm making that statement I can't
prove it.
I don’t actually know these things, right?
I just have my beliefs and I want to make them clear to you so that I can say “I told
you so” at the end of this.
But one thing that we were willing to bet money on is that whoever was going to headline
it, it would be announced today.
And I thought one of the big and intriguing things about today and I really liked it even
though we left without this piece of information that would have been fun to have, they didn't
tell us.
And when they didn't tell us, everything became crystal clear to me, right?
Everything’s so clear on Monday morning when you're quarterbacking something.
But when they didn't tell us who the main event of MSG was going to be for November
13th, whatever the date, I don’t even know that, November 3rd, it dawned on me – why
would they tell us?
They, the UFC, know what the live gate is doing.
If the live gate tickets are moving, as a piece of business they don’t need to enhance
the card, and as far as the pay-per-view goes you certainly don’t need to advertise the
card this far out.
As a matter of fact, why would you do anything to overshadow the biggest fight of the year,
which is Conor and Khabib?
Biggest fight in history, which is Conor and Khabib.
Why would you do anything to overshadow that?
And even though we all predicted that's what it was going to do because it was a media
event—it was in New York, it would have been very appropriate—as you look at it
in hindsight, once again, Dana White gets it right, right?
In fairness, once again Dana White gets it right.
Why would he announce that today?
Why would he overshadow any headline of the biggest fight he's going to do today?
That's crystal clear.
As a matter of fact, he never has to announce it for pay-per-view sales if the tickets are
moving.
If I'm right about that—and I'm quite sure I am, in Madison Square Garden—he could
announce the fight at the end of Conor and Khabib.
He could play the— Remember when they did that for Lesnar’s
return for UFC 200, he's going to take on Mark Hunt?
Remember how they did that?
He could do the exact same thing on October 6th or the press conference right before.
There are a number of places he could do it for a pay-per-view that's not for sale until
November.
There are a number of other opportunities.
So for us to predict that he was going to do it today, in hindsight that was a sucker
prediction.
Once again, he gets it right.
I will tell you, as far as the Jon Jones thing goes, look, I don't know who's headlining
that card.
In fairness, I don’t actually know.
I will not back off one single bit that it's going to be Jon Jones.
I won't even back off that that's it's going to be Jones versus Gustafsson.
I'm very bullish on that.
I'm very sure of that with no inside information, just standing back and looking at the facts.
But I will tell you this: It's not completely as easy as Dana White saying, “Okay, it's
Jon Jones versus Gustafsson.”
It's not quite that easy.
Jon Jones is coming through some licensing issues.
As a guy that sat in Jones’ chair, there are things that you have to do coming back
for your first fight.
Once you get one commission at the ABC to approve you, the rest of them will generally
just stamp it and go along with their brother and sister commission.
But that first one can be a little bit more complicated.
It doesn’t always call for a hearing.
Nevada likely would call for a hearing.
Andy Foster in California likely—not guaranteed, likely though—would call for a hearing.
That doesn’t mean other commissions go online.
I'm just offering to you there are a few moving parts that perhaps they haven't worked through
yet.
But the media, they just refuse to do their job, right?
I mean, god bless them, I've got a contention with the media and they got a contention with
me, but they sit back and wonder why I got five times the voice they do when they’ve
been doing it their whole life.
I mean, literally, they’ll sit back and wonder that, and then they get pissed and
write a bunch of bad articles about me and it stems from jealousy.
But I watched them at the press conference today and one guy musters up the confidence
to ask Dana White the question, “Is Jon Jones headlining Madison Square Garden?”
and Dana White said no, and the dumdum didn't have the balls to ask the followup question
which anybody simply would have said, “Then who is?”
You had no followup question, that was the answer that was given, let's see what happens.