Brock Lesnar recently chose to turn down a massive UFC title fight in favor of sticking with WWE. Now, the UFC president is explaining why.
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Dana White sat down with ESPN this week to set the record straight on why Lesnar chose to turn down that blockbuster UFC match against Daniel Cormier and instead remain in pro wrestling. According to White, the move had nothing to do with UFC moving into a partnership with ESPN+ and a restructuring of their traditional PPV points system for fighters. Instead, it’s very simple: Brock got a better deal from WWE.
“That’s not why Brock Lesnar didn’t fight,” White said (in regards to the ESPN+ restructuring). “Brock Lesnar got a better deal is basically what happened for Brock.”
There has been a lot of discussion in the MMA industry that UFC’s PPV model changing has lead to uncertainty when it comes to payoffs for fighters, which could have scared Lesnar (and Conor McGregor) away from returning. However, White says that is not so.
“That’s absolutely false,” White said. “And if you really look when we were on pay-per-view, we were on traditional pay-per-view, everybody was talking about how the pay-per-view business was dying. It’s dying and nobody can pull numbers anymore.
“Really? We were still pulling five to seven million pay-per-view buys a year when we were on the dying, traditional pay-per-view. You can’t listen to any of this noise.”
Wrestling fans know that WWE changed their PPV model five years ago when they changed over to offering all of their traditional PPVs on the WWE Network for a lower cost. While there was an initial hit to revenue for WWE, the company eventually recovered and evolved with their new model.
Time will tell whether UFC, a traditional PPV juggernaut, will be able to do the same. Without traditional weekly television like WWE has, UFC relies on big PPV payoffs for their stars who may fight just a couple of times a year. These stars certainly do not want to see their financial incentives take a hit due to the new PPV model.
With the Lesnar fight off the schedule, Cormier will now defend the UFC Heavyweight Championship against Stipe Miocic at UFC 241 in August.
