The UFC White House card on Sunday could go down as one of the biggest cards in history, but Dana White still has to play promoter to sell the fights.
Perhaps the best example was the UFC CEO talking about the magnitude surrounding the co-main event where Alex Pereira attempts to become the first ever three-division champion when he moves to heavyweight to challenge Ciryl Gane for the interim title. Pereira is already a massively popular superstar after winning belts at light heavyweight and middleweight,
but he would accomplish something no one else has ever done by capturing a third title.
“If he wins the third world title that night, he jumps over Jon Jones and becomes the greatest of all-time,” White told Forbes ahead of the event.
Retired welterweight Matt Brown, who spent 15 years in the UFC, understands White has every right to sell his events however he chooses but anybody who knows the sport should understand immediately that nothing he’s saying is true in this instance.
“It’s promoter talk,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “It’s pretty simple, and we can just narrow it down to that and that’s Dana talking what he’s supposed to talk.
“No one’s really buying it. Maybe some Brazilian fan of Alex Pereira that doesn’t really watch UFC is buying it. But I don’t think any halfway knowledgeable person is buying it.”
Brown argues that Pereira becoming a three-division champion is a huge accomplishment and that should be celebrated.
But that also doesn’t mean he’s surpassed somebody like Jones, who won titles in two divisions, but he’s mostly remembered for his long reign as light heavyweight champion and effectively remaining undefeated throughout his 16-year career.
“Sometimes what gets confused is most accomplished and greatest,” Brown explaind. “It terms of most accomplished, I guess if [Pereira] wins a third title, you could make that argument. I still wouldn’t think it’s the case, but I could see where you could make that argument. He’s got three titles. No one else ever did it.
“That’s like Floyd Mayweather. No real boxing historian puts him down as the greatest ever, but is he the most successful ever? By a large margin he is. A lot of times when people talk about these greatest ever [debates], they get them mixed up with other ways of describing their greatness.”
As amazing as Pereira has been since first arriving to the UFC with just a 3-1 record in MMA, Brown says it can’t really be compared to Jones or the long list of legends he’s defeated throughout his career.
That’s why Brown says Pereira could win that third title, and he’d still be sitting behind legends like Jones or even Georges St-Pierre when it comes to debates about the greatest of all-time.
“It’s pretty straight forward,” Brown said. “Alex, I don’t think he’s going to be considered by anybody who knows much of anything to be the greatest of all-time if he goes up and wins this fight. There might be some people saying it. I wonder if Dana will even say that after the fight if Alex goes up and wins? Because it feels to me he’s pumping it up now, but I don’t know how you make that argument. You could say most accomplished. He did something no one else has done.
“Again, I think it terms of promoting a fight, that’s what he’s doing. If you’re Alex, you’ve got to love the fact that he’s saying this stuff. It’s helping your brand massively. What do you do? It’s what a promoter is supposed to do — promote the fight. That’s what Dana’s doing. Good for him. I’m not sure what he’s trying to accomplish with it. Obviously, he’s trying to promote the fight, I get that, but I’m not sure what the point of it is?”
Until Conor McGregor became at two-division UFC champion back in 2016, only Randy Couture and B.J. Penn had won belts in two different weight classes. Since McGregor became lightweight and featherweight champion a decade ago, the UFC has added eight more fighters to that list.
It doesn’t necessarily diminish the accomplishment, but Brown believes it puts the UFC in a similar position as boxing where athletes routinely jump around weight classes just trying to add championship belts rather than winning and defending a title.
And honestly, that’s the last thing Brown wants to see happen in the UFC.
“What really sucks is it starts to really feel a little boxing-ish,” Brown said. “Where so many guys are moving weight classes, this guy moving a weight class fighting for an [interim] title, not even the real title. It just reminds you of boxing with guys moving all over different weights, finding the right matchups for their weights, finding titles to win at different weights. I’m a boxing fan … we don’t mind that, I don’t hate on that, but it’s always been cool the way the UFC has been separated from that. The way they’ve always promoted themselves to be separated from that. The best fight the best, we don’t have too many belts, and all this bullshit.
“But that’s what it feels like another step towards. If that’s the path [the UFC] wants to go down, I just think it’s just a slippery slope.”
