The UFC has famously negotiated some “nearly offers” that by no means fairly bought achieved, and it seems disgraced ex-WWE proprietor Vince McMahon was on the middle of personally sinking one of many largest.
Again in 2011, the UFC was working in the direction of a brand new broadcast rights deal after outgrowing its earlier dwelling at Spike TV and there have been quite a lot of events concerned. Ultimately, UFC CEO Dana White says that it was NBC that got here to the desk with the most effective provide, and the 2 sides have been simply hammering out a couple of ultimate particulars earlier than finally signing a contract.
“So I’m on the 1-yard line, we’re about to get a deal achieved with NBC,” White stated on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story podcast. “Considered one of my massive deal factors was that The Final Fighter needed to be on USA [Network]. We’re actually in New York for days hammering it out with all of the executives over there. Lastly they arrive again and say ‘we’ll do it, we’ll put The Final Fighter on USA.’
“So the subsequent day we come again, and we’re about to signal the deal and do all these things, and so they’re like ‘we will’t imagine this, we didn’t know this, we simply came upon — Vince McMahon has the precise to find out whether or not one other fight sport can come onto USA.’ I’m like what? How is that even f*cking potential?”
On the time, WWE was one of many largest packages airing on the USA Community with its flagship sequence Monday Night time Uncooked. McMahon wielded full management over the promotion , nevertheless it seems he really had the facility to nix another fight sport from showing on the identical community.
That compelled White and former UFC proprietor Lorenzo Fertitta to fly out to the WWE workplaces to fulfill with McMahon in hopes of putting a deal so the promotion may ink the take care of NBC.
“So me and Lorenzo stated we’ll fly out to Connecticut, and we’ll meet with Vince, and we’ll see if we will get this achieved,” White defined. “We fly out, we go to the workplaces, we go in with [Vince] and we sit down, we lay it out to him, inform him the story and he’s like ‘yeah, I don’t need you on the community.’ We’re like why? [He said] ‘I simply don’t need you on it.’
“In order that blew up the entire NBC deal. We have been really going to purchase G4. We have been shopping for G4 and all this different loopy [stuff]. So then we decide up the telephone and we name Eric Shanks and we fly out to L.A. and we do the FOX deal. The remaining is historical past.”
G4 was a community devoted primarily to video video games with sequence akin to Assault of the Present the place future stars like Olivia Munn bought her begin.
As soon as McMahon nixed the deal, the UFC clearly didn’t find yourself shopping for G4, by no means ended up working with NBC and as an alternative landed at FOX for the subsequent seven years.
If there was a silver lining to that entire scenario, White says he believes shopping for G4 would have been one of many worst concepts in UFC historical past.
“Life is loopy in these methods,” White stated. “You don’t know what we’d have achieved or how it might have performed out however we imagine that if we purchased G4, it might have killed us.”
Barely three years after the UFC was compelled to go on shopping for G4, the community ceased operations and went out of enterprise with NBC shutting it down.
The UFC’s take care of FOX labored out for either side earlier than the fight sports activities large left in 2018 to then signal a brand new seven-year take care of ESPN that was value round $300 million per 12 months. The UFC is now again in negotiations on a brand new broadcast rights take care of the group reportedly in search of round $1 billion per 12 months for the brand new contract.
So far as McMahon selecting to tank the take care of NBC, White believes that was simply his nature and he determined that the UFC was going to be a rival reasonably than an ally.
“I feel that [Vince McMahon] had this factor the place he needed to create that [rivalry],” White stated. “It was his factor
Humorous sufficient, McMahon later praised the UFC, and the brand new house owners at Endeavor, when WWE offered to the corporate led by Ari Emanuel, which merged the 2 organizations into one powerhouse conglomerate now often known as TKO Group Holdings. McMahon ultimately resigned from his place in TKO after an explosive lawsuit was filed towards him by a former worker alleging sexual abuse and trafficking amongst different offenses.
