NATE BURLESON:
00:00:01
Yeah, look at that thing. It is going to be a wild month for the UFC. You are looking at the title belt for the White House event next month, and we'll talk about that in the future. But tomorrow night, there's not one, but two titles on the line. In the main event, undefeated champ Khamzat Chimaev will defend his middleweight belt against former champion Sean Strickland. And who better to break down the UFC than UFC President and CEO Dana White? Hey, Dana, what's up, man? How you doing? All right good morning. So Is this your excited face? Yeah. Look at you. Look at you.
NATE BURLESON:
00:00:33
So these two fighters, they have made it clear that they do not like each other. Yeah. Khamzat even kicked Strickland at the weigh in, I believe it was. What is it about this match-up, and what's the beef? They used to train together, so who knows where it really all stems from. They started training together, and sometimes, this happens. It's been a long time since I've had a fight with this much heat on it and this much dislike, I guess, we'll call it. But when that happen, they're fun. They're fun when they happen.
GAYLE KING:
00:01:04
You like it.
NATE BURLESON:
00:01:05
He's there on stage. There's a sinister smile on his face. He wants to break it up, but not really.
DANA WHITE:
00:01:11
If we had one less guy there on stage yesterday, it could have been bad. The problem with when all that stuff goes on is, we are run by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the New Jersey State Athletic Commission, New York State, and they don't like that stuff as much as the fans. Because there's so much security now, extra security for this fight. Oh, yeah. And Saturday, there will be a ton of security there. Yeah. But Khamzat is undefeated, but people are saying don't count out Sean Strickland. Who are you thinking? How do you think this is going to end?
DANA WHITE:
00:01:44
That is very true. I think that Sean is-- he looked incredible in his last fight, and he's definitely being underestimated. The key to this fight is the wrestling. Khamzat Chimaev is an absolute beast of a wrestler. And I think, his average takedown time is six seconds. He can get you on the ground in six seconds.
VLAD DUTHIERS:
00:02:05
Look at him. Wow.
DANA WHITE:
00:02:07
And he's got good hands, too.
NATE BURLESON:
00:02:09
And he can let them hands fly. Listen, the UFC is a global sport, but the co-main event, there's an opportunity for first-time champ out of Japan? Yes. And he's very good. He's a very talented kid. So it's been a while since we've done a fight in Japan, too. There's not a lot of talent coming out of Japan like there was back in the late '90s, early 2000s.
VLAD DUTHIERS:
00:02:31
Why is that?
DANA WHITE:
00:02:33
I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. But if this kid wins and becomes a world champ, we could go do a fight in Japan again, which is a lot of fun. The fans over there are incredible. And these guys were selling out the Superdome over there when fights were happening.
NATE BURLESON:
00:02:53
Now, what about this White House 250 event? We hear about it. Are you guys close to building out infrastructure? Are you ready. Are you ready to rock and roll? How do you feel about the card? What's going on? Yeah, we're down to crunch time here. We're about a month away. So the lighting grid that we're calling "The Claw" starts to go up next week. So when we started to do the renderings for the White House, if you think about the typical UFC or boxing event, you have that lighting grid. I said, no, that's not going to work. I don't want to see one light. All I want to see when the fight is happening in the background is the White House. So my head of production, Craig Borsari, found this thing in Belgium that they built called "The Claw," and it basically looks sort of like a spaceship that will go over the top of it.
NATE BURLESON:
00:03:37
Over the top of it.
GAYLE KING:
00:03:38
How will the tickets work for that? How does that work? Tickets? Yeah, how do tickets. Well, the president has 1,000 tickets, I have 200 tickets, and Ari Emanuel has 200 tickets, and the rest are all going to the different branches of the military.
GAYLE KING:
00:03:51
Oh, nice. So there'll be 4,000 people on the South Lawn watching the fight. And then right across the street is the Ellipse, this massive park. There'll be 85,000 people there. How much are the tickets?
DANA WHITE:
00:04:02
Tickets are free. Free for the--
DANA WHITE:
00:04:03
Yeah. That's nice.
DANA WHITE:
00:04:04
It's on federal land so the taxpayers aren't paying anything. We're flipping the bill for this whole fight. And I can't sell a hot dog, a T-shirt, or a ticket. Nothing can be sold on federal land.
GAYLE KING:
00:04:16
Dana, I know you were at the White House Correspondents Dinner when the incident happened. I didn't see you hiding under the tables. Were you afraid? No. No, I wasn't afraid. It was actually a very crazy, unique experience. To be able to experience something like that and have nobody get hurt--
GAYLE KING:
00:04:33
Yeah. --was pretty incredible. But, we're sitting there. We're having dinner. And all of a sudden, all I heard was glass breaking and tables getting flipped over. I turn around. There had to be 50 guys with their guns out running through them. We don't know what's going on. You don't know. Is there a shooter in there or is there a bomb? They got the president.
VLAD DUTHIERS:
00:04:52
But I saw you. You were-- I was crouching down, and I saw you were just sitting around looking. It's like Dana said, what can I do? That's for sure. Dana White, thank you. We appreciate you, man. Now, you can watch tomorrow's double championship fight event, UFC 328 at 9:00 PM Eastern, streaming only on Paramount+.
