Former UFC referee “Big” John McCarthy doesn’t quite like how Dana White is trying to rewrite the promotions history. Particularly, their rise in the early 2000s.
Before UFC Noche, Dana White had a sit down interview with Piers Morgan. The newly announced CEO of the UFC, White had an uncensored long interview where he talked about the merger of TKO and about the history of UFC. During the interview, he credited the late senator John McCain for helping sanctioning the sport. Senator John McCain once famously called this bloodsport a “cockfighting”.
Dana White Praises John McCain
Dana White had similar comment back in 2008 when he was Sports Illustrated.
“I consider John McCain the guy who started the UFC. If it wasn’t for McCain I wouldn’t be here right now,” Dana White continues. “What people don’t understand about mixed martial arts and the UFC is, what [McCain] was saying to the old owners is that you cannot put on fights in states that aren’t sanctioned. It’s illegal. You can’t do it. You have to be sanctioned by an athletic commission, which we agreed with him on 100 percent. John McCain wasn’t saying this thing shouldn’t happen, or it shouldn’t be running. He was saying, if ‘You’re going to do it, it has to be sanctioned by an athletic commission.’ We agree.”
John McCarthy Doesn’t quite agree with Dana White
According the “Big” John McCarthy, it is not all accurate. He spoke about this on his “Weighing In” podcast.
“What has got me in trouble with Dana… I was there from the beginning […] Before there was the sport. I know everything that happened, I know who created things…they create their own history, and that’s one of the things that bothered me about Dana was, he was rewriting history. When people didn’t know, he would just insert his form of ‘Well, we did this, we did that’, and it’s like, no you didn’t… You can only go so many times until you say ‘Alright, you’re just going to lie about it’.
John McCarthy explains the late senator made these comments prior to Dana White and the UFC. The sport was already changing before the UFC arrived.
“He was honest [in the Piers Morgan interview]. He talked about what John McCain said before he was part of the sport. [Dana] said ‘He kinda did us a favor because his big thing was to get this regulated’…from Dana’s point, I can understand why he says that, but that’s not completely the story…[Dana White] was honest with everything he said in the interview, I thought he was great”
Quotes taken from mmanews.com
UFC Merger With WWE
John McCarthy had the chance to talk about this since Dana White was with Piers Morgan to talk about the UFC and WWE merger. This formed a new publicly trading company, TKO. This gave the UFC a 12.3 billion evaluation just seven years after the sell to Endeavor for 4 billion dollars. TKO, bringing the worlds leading sport of MMA and professional wrestling, WWE, under the same roof.
Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Image
