LAS VEGAS – Dana White put his business hat on when selecting his MMA Mount Rushmore.
White’s decision to have Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor on his list was questioned by many, with his other two choices of Jon Jones and Georges St-Pierre widely accepted.
The UFC CEO explained that the impact these four former champions had changed the sport.
“If you look at Ronda Rousey, which I’m sure everybody goes crazy, ‘Uh, Ronda Rousey,’ women aren’t fighting here,” White told MMA Junkie and other reporters Tuesday at a post-fight news conference. “The knockout that happened last weekend doesn’t happen without Ronda Rousey. Ronda Rousey opened the door for all women and became a huge superstar for us and the biggest superstar in the history of female fighting. As far as the gates, pay-per-views, attention, all of it, nobody was bigger than Ronda. She started it all.
“Conor McGregor took this sport to another level when he became not only the biggest star in the sport but one of the biggest stars in all of sports. You had NFL and NBA and soccer players mimicking Conor McGregor during the games. If you guys want to get into the Jon Jones sh*t, we can get into that. I’m obviously going to have a different criteria when you ask me who I think are because of things I know that happened inside the business and how it changed the game.”
White’s 2020 MMA Mount Rushmore included Amanda Nunes instead of Rousey, as well as Jones, Royce Gracie, and Chuck Liddell. White said he was looking at a different criteria when making his updated list.
White said even Season 1 “Ultimate Fighter” winner Forrest Griffin could make someone’s MMA Mount Rushmore based on his iconic ‘TUF Finale’ fight with Stephan Bonnar that arguably saved the UFC.
He spoke about his final choice in St-Pierre, and the kind of impact he had on Canadian MMA – pointing to the 55,724 fans who attended his UFC 129 title-fight headliner vs. Jake Shields in Toronto.
“My other one was Georges St-Pierre,” White said. “In the evolution of this company, when you think back, anybody who was around – a lot of people weren’t around then, but the people who were, when you went up to Canada with Georges St-Pierre, I’ll never forget the time we were up there. I got stuck in a corner. I’m not kidding you: thousands of people.
“That’s when I was tweeting tickets. Remember those days? When I had video blogs and I was tweeting tickets, we literally almost got killed up there one day. By killed, I mean trampled by people looking for tickets. How big that was up there at that time was absolutely insane, and it was all Georges St-Pierre.”
