The UFC and Dana White got a lot of heat online when they announced the long-awaited return of Conor McGregor at UFC 329 via an Instagram Live video at the exact moment that former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou began his walkout to fight on MVP MMA’s first card.
Back in the day, the UFC used to counter-program events like MVP MMA ruthlessly. Back in 2008, the UFC booked an Anderson Silva fight on SpikeTV for free to counter Affliction MMA’s first big pay-per-view. These days, the promotion
doesn’t respect it’s competition enough to bother with such behavior. But it sure seemed like an attempt to suck the oxygen out of Francis Ngannou’s fight that McGregor’s return was announced just as Big Fran made his walk.
UFC CEO Dana White is well known for his anti-Ngannou opinions, but insisted that all the speculation surrounding the timing of the announcement was bulls–t.
“Not a coincidence, I had a f–king fight here that night,” White told Fred Talks Fighting. “Anyone who thinks I gave a s–t what was going on anywhere else was out of their minds. We announced it as soon as we got it done and we were in the middle of our event.”
“I could give a f–k what those guys were doing, are you kidding me?” White concluded.
If the UFC was trying to take some shine off Ngannou’s fight at MVP MMA 1, it didn’t work. If anything, announcing McGregor’s return during a generic Instagram Live announcement from Dana White made the return of “The Notorious” seem less impactful. Maybe way back in the day when White first started doing Instagram Live announcements, it felt like the ink wasn’t dry on freshly signed contracts and we were getting special news.
These days? White can’t do the announcements without a printout in front of him, and he still messed up Gable Steveson’s name while reading the UFC 329 announcement. Fans wondered why there was no big event trailer … not even an AI one! Nothing from McGregor but a few tweets. No presser, no interview on a major outlet. Just a suspiciously timed Instagram Live video.
If it was at least a petty jab at MVP MMA, at least there’d be some reason to undersell McGregor’s return. As it stands, it’s just more lazy par for the course from the comfortable giant untouchable atop the MMA mountain.
