The UFC has famously negotiated some “almost deals” that never quite got done, and it turns out disgraced ex-WWE owner Vince McMahon was at the center of personally sinking one of the biggest.
Back in 2011, the UFC was working towards a new broadcast rights deal after outgrowing its previous home at Spike TV and there were more than a few interested parties involved. In the end, UFC CEO Dana White says that it was NBC that came to the table with the best offer, and the two sides were just hammering out a few final details before ultimately signing a contract.
“So I’m on the 1-yard line, we’re about to get a deal done with NBC,” White said on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story podcast. “One of my big deal points was that The Ultimate Fighter had to be on USA [Network]. We’re literally in New York for days hammering it out with all the executives over there. Finally they come back and say ‘we’ll do it, we’ll put The Ultimate Fighter on USA.’
“So the next day we come back, and we’re about to sign the deal and do all this stuff, and they’re like ‘we can’t believe this, we didn’t know this, we just found out — Vince McMahon has the right to determine whether another combat sport can come onto USA.’ I’m like what? How is that even f*cking possible?”
At the time, WWE was one of the biggest programs airing on the USA Network with its flagship series Monday Night Raw. McMahon wielded complete control over the promotion , but it turns out he actually had the power to nix any other combat sport from appearing on the same network.
That forced White and former UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta to fly out to the WWE offices to meet with McMahon in hopes of striking a deal so the promotion could ink the deal with NBC.
“So me and Lorenzo said we’ll fly out to Connecticut, and we’ll meet with Vince, and we’ll see if we can get this done,” White explained. “We fly out, we go to the offices, we go in with [Vince] and we sit down, we lay it out to him, tell him the story and he’s like ‘yeah, I don’t want you on the network.’ We’re like why? [He said] ‘I just don’t want you on it.’
“So that blew up the whole NBC deal. We were actually going to buy G4. We were buying G4 and all this other crazy [stuff]. So then we pick up the phone and we call Eric Shanks and we fly out to L.A. and we do the FOX deal. The rest is history.”
Dana White reveals how Vince McMahon personally tanked UFC signing with NBC
Dana White reveals the UFC was nearly done with a deal to sign with NBC when WWE owner Vince McMahon tanked the deal and prevented the promotion from going there before ultimately signing with FOX.
