Those are my principles, and,if you don't like them...well I've got others.
Dana White is a principled man. Any fighter who cross the UFC -or, more ominously, 'the company' - has essentially been told that they are replaceable, that no man is bigger than the organisation. Hence why there are no fighter unions, and why fighters are subject to absurdly one-sided and unfavourable contracts, of which more can be read here.
In Conor McGregor, White and the UFC are currently facing an unprecedented challenge from a fighter The Irishman is seemingly determined to flex his dual muscles of earning potential and mass appeal to back the UFC in a corner and have them yield to the will of a fighter for the first time.
Yet it seems that the UFC are not bending to McGregor's will, as Dana White confirmed yesterday:
All the media keeps asking me that. I feel like the scene in 'Step Brothers' when they ask if they can build the bunk beds. I don't know how many more times I can say the fight is off or how many more press conferences I can have saying the fight is off for people to believe it's off.
So UFC 200 will more than likely be headlined by Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier. But can the UFC afford to take such a principled stand? The figures would suggest not. Take a look at the difference in the gate receipts sales for Jones' last 12 fights and McGregor's last five:
Total gate for all 12 #UFC events headlined by #JonJones: 26.2 mil
Total gate for all 5 UFC events headlined by #ConorMcGregor: 28.14 mil— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) April 24, 2016
It may be put down to his lethargy with the promotional side of things but that above tweet does a rather good job of summing up what all this is really about, it's a power struggle at the end of the day and McGregor clearly believes he's not getting a fair slice of the cake and those figures, balanced against the P4P champion would certainly give credence to McGregor's claims.
ESPN's Darren Rovell has crunched the numbers further, and estimates that the Lorenzo Fertitta stands to lose around $45 million at the flagship UFC event.
Rovell estimates that McGregor would guarantee an estimated $10million in gate receipts, but the real difference is in PPV buys.
Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier fought at UFC 182, and earned 800,000 PPV sales. Compare this to McGregor/Diaz in March, which did 1.5 million. Given how recent the last McGregor/Diaz bout was, it is likely that the difference in PPV sales would be even greater at UFC 200, and at $70 per PPV buy, the difference could be as high as $35 million.
Further emblematic of his influence, McGregor's retirement tweet last week was the third-most retweeted tweet by an athlete in 2016, despite the fact that was confirmed as false a day later. Yet a solitary, well-timed tweet by McGregor - of just 13 words - was covered by virtually every major media outlet in the world.
White and the UFC are famously steadfast in the face of rebellious fighters in the past, and in the absence of a fighter's union, White's mantra has been that no fighter is irreplaceable. Given those eye-watering numbers, McGregor is as close to irreplaceable as has ever been in the UFC.
What White and the UFC do next will be instructive. McGregor's dual strengths of earning potential and myriad fervent fans have backed the UFC in a corner they are unfamiliar with. It will be fascinating to see what they do next. White has his principles, but never have the preservation of them been so at odds with money.
White has his principles, but McGregor does not appear to like them. Will there be others?
[ESPN]
