When speaking with the media after the UFC 136 press conference, UFC President Dana White provided more details about the company's network television deal with Fox as well as plans to make Fuel a must have channel for UFC fans. He also spoke about the possibility of running multiple shows on the same day and the extremely busy schedule the UFC has planned for 2012. Some of the key points of interest:
- "I still control all of the production. One of the things about Fox, those guys are the best network in the country because they’re good at what they do. They’ve revolutionized football, NASCAR, and all these other things. So believe me, they’re still involved in the production and we’re working together to pull this off and make it great. And take it to the next level and make it better."
- "The people watching tv spend $45 for the pay per view. People who come to the events spend hundreds to thousands of dollar. Why should they not get a show? I think that’s one of the reason why when we come back to Houston, that we break these records even in these hard economic times. We put on a show for the people who come to the live event. It’s a completely different experience being there live than what it is on television. We’re now working to make the live event better and the production better for television viewers over the next seven years with Fox."
- "It’s a work in progress. We’re still working on this thing. We’re still trying to figure out how we’re gonna do it. I don’t know the answers to that yet. You guys know how it is with us. We want to bring the fans as many fights as we possibly can and one of the big deals about doing the deal with Fox was that we have so much content and we’re doing so much stuff that we needed enough platforms. So we’re gonna be on Fox, we’re gonna be on FX, and then the amount of programming, the crazy programming that we’re gonna do on Fuel...Fuel’s gonna have...you’re not gonna not want to have Fuel, let me put it to you that way. We’re gonna be doing new shows, live fights, and Ultimate Fighter from different countries. English speaking countries will have the Ultimate Fighter from there on Fuel. There’s gonna be a lot of crazy cool programming on Fuel for UFC fans."
- "The undercard for UFC on Fox is the last thing on my mind. We’ll figure it out and we’ll get it up there at some point. I’m more concerned about the production on the big Fox show. They can’t air it on Fuel. Our deals are not up until January. That’s when we’re really in business with Fox. This November 12th fight is just a bonus fight to kick off the relationship. In our Spike deal we can do broadcast on network television."
- "We have our schedule for next year and it ends up being something like 34 fights. This year was 27, next year is 34. That’s how crazy that’s gonna be. I don’t know if you heard me say last week or a few weeks ago but I said my weeks blend together too. There’s gonna be days when we do two fights on the same day. The way that we’ll do that is from different countries. If we’re doing a fight in Japan, we’ll do it in Vegas too. If we’re in London then we’ll do it in Vegas too or somewhere in the United States. We’ll lead in with the fight from another country and then go live on pay per view."
- "We aren’t locked into Japan. If we do it, I’m assuming that will be the first time that we try and pull that off. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen yet but that’s the one that we’re talking about. People have been criticizing me for the past 10 years. Every move that we’ve made has been wrong for the past 10 years saying it was stupid and would never work. I’m gonna continue to make stupid decisions that don’t work."
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