UFC President Dana White has never been shy about making bold predictions. For the past several years White has told anyone that would listen that MMA will be the biggest sport in the world one day. With each passing month, that statement seems to gain momentum, and it’s very likely it will one day come to fruition.
After the recent UFC press conference in Toronto, White continued to talk about the expansion of the sport around the world. He even threw out an idea that seems a bit crazy, even for White: he expects that one day the UFC could run 100 events a year.
“Right now, what we’ve used to go into Europe and even Australia is our U.K. office,” White said. “But we’re looking right now – and here I go jumping ahead of myself and saying stuff before we do it – but we’re going to open an office in China.”
“We bought this company, and we were doing five fights a year. If you would have told me six or seven years ago that we’d be doing 34 fights a year, I would have said, ‘That’s impossible. It’ll never happen. That’s crazy.’ We’re probably going to end up doing 100 fights a year.”
“We could have a show [in the U.S.] on Saturday night and five more going on in five other countries. That’s what’s going to eventually happen.”
“I’ve been saying for years that we’re going to be bigger than the NFL, and people were laughing at me. Well, it’s starting to look like a reality now.”
Obviously no one should ever discount anything White has to say, but for the UFC to average two events a week seems almost ludicrous. If this were to ever happen, it would likely not take place for several years, perhaps more than a decade in the future.
