All right. Tonight was the highest attendance for a UFC event in Abu Dhabi history. Highest gate. We broke the arena record. We now hold four of the five top gates here at the arena. And over 50% of the fans came from outside UAE. Fight of the night, Yan versus Merab and Volkanovski and Khamzat. They all won the bonuses tonight.
Go ahead, Dana. We'll start with the main event. I think we're going to be asking this every time Volk fights from now on, but for him to be at this age fighting the younger, better guys or up-and-coming guys, what does it say about him?
Incredible. I mean, the guy is an absolute stud. You know, coming in and beating undefeated younger guys, and the guy's built like a, you know what I mean? Volkanovski is incredible.
Would you say it's even more impressive that it's not only that he's going out there and fighting these guys and beating these guys, but he's going out there clearly looking to stop them? He was throwing big right hands right from the beginning and he wants to put these guys away rather than even play it safe.
100%, couldn't agree with you more. I mean, he was the aggressive fighter. He was the one really going after him and trying to finish. And yeah, he's just, this guy's built different.
Yeah, he has made it clear that he wants to still spend the rest of his career doing special things, right? He's looking at moving up to lightweight, maybe fighting Justin Gaethje. We're obviously not booking fights, but is that something you would be open to for him to do? Move up to lightweight and fight for that second belt?
I think when you've accomplished what he has accomplished, there's not much we're going to say no to with him. So we'll see how, you know, see how this whole thing plays out.
Right. Fight of the night was Yan-Merab. Unbelievable five-round war between those two. What were you thinking as that fight is going back and forth in the way that it was?
Incredible. Well, what I was thinking is like, 'Holy, it's already the fourth round.' And there was like a minute 20 left of the fourth round. I was thinking, there's only one more round of this. It was an incredible fight. I think pretty much everybody had it scored the same, two to two going into that last round. And yeah, in the first round I was like, man, Merab looks fast as hell and Yan looks like a stick in the mud right now. His footwork looked weird. His stance was weird, everything was sort of weird in the first round. And then, you know, here he comes in the third round and I think that that kick to the body definitely turned the momentum in the fight, too.
Yeah. What did Merab say to you and Hunter right after the fight? So he jumped straight out of the cage to talk to you guys. What did Merab say to you?
Yeah, he was just saying, 'Ah, I'm sorry. I wish I...' You know, but I was like, 'Sorry? You're crazy. The fight was incredible. It was an incredible fight.' I mean, he couldn't have looked better. He couldn't have fought a better fight than he did. I think that, you know, Merab has nothing to be disappointed about. He couldn't have fought any better than he did. It was an incredible fight.
What advice would you give to Merab to do now? Right? Because he had already run that division himself for a while. And I would say that Petr and him are like 1A and 1B. They're the two best in the division. So what do you do with Merab? Because he beat every contender on the way up.
I mean, you could do that fight every weekend. People would want to see it. And the fans were so into that fight. It was incredible. You couldn't fight a better fight. I don't know what to tell him other than you are just like you said, 1A and 1B, and you couldn't have fought a better fight. There's nothing more you could have done than what you did. First of all, the fact that he ate that shot to the body and kept coming forward and then just, I don't know, it was flawless. I know he lost, but it was flawless. It was an incredible performance.
Outside of tonight, you announced the Toronto main event and co-main event. What exactly is the issue with Islam? And why does that have to be an interim fight?
Well, Islam, you know, on average, Islam fights like once a year. And he was slated for January and then said, 'I don't want to fight until after Ramadan.' And you just, you can't hold up divisions like this. You got to keep moving. And this fight makes sense.
Did he give a reason why? Because he had already said he wanted to fight before Ramadan, right? And then he just changed his mind.
Okay. Last one for me. Shakur Stevenson has been released by Zuffa Boxing. He said he asked for his release and you granted it. Can you tell us what happened?
Well, I offered him his release. I offered him the release.
Was that because he was being difficult to work with? Why would you offer him the release?
Listen, man. I think everybody involved, they're happy, you know, with it. I have nothing bad to say about him or his team, but I offered him the release and they accepted.
We've seen guys like Jon Jones, Strickland, Paulo Costa ask for their release from the UFC in the past. What's different about this one than those guys and that situation?
Well, we never even did one fight with the guy. We were in business with him for a couple months.
Did you try to book fights? Like the Haitian fight is obviously what everyone was talking about.
Listen, I'm not going to get into any of that stuff. I'm not going to say anything negatively about him or we tried to do this or we tried to do that. Just, we got to a position where we both agreed we were cool with the release.
Thank you. Hi Dana. What do you say about Volkanovski's performance tonight? And are you going to give him a title shot next?
Um, yeah, look, he had a good performance tonight. And we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what happens next.
During the press conference before the fights, Volkanovski came and he asked to join the UFC. At that moment, frankly, did you recognize that this is Volkanovski or you thought he's someone who came and asked you that question?
Yeah. No, of course I knew it was him. And if I didn't know it was him, Volkanovski said it to me three times. He said, 'You know who that is, right?' I said, 'Yeah, I know who that is.' I thought he was, you know, that isn't the first time that a fighter has gone up there and done an interview or asked a question or done... I thought it was like a shtick he was doing and I was waiting for the punchline and it never came. You know, we only did the co-main and main, and I'm assuming that he thought he would be able to be a part of the press conference and say, 'Hey man, I want my title shot.' And that's what that was, not some type of shtick he was trying to do. So, yeah.
Last question for me. Tonight was one of the best nights I have ever attended for UFC. Congratulations for such a big event. It lacked any Arab fighters. So are there any plans to have Road to UFC? Maybe we have now UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia to have more Arab fighters joining the UFC.
Yeah, we have really big plans coming up here in the next... I don't know when we're going to announce our new big plans. What's the plan with that? Not yet. But yeah, we are about to make some big announcements here soon.
Thank you, sir. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much for the event. May I ask you in Russian? It's okay. We have champions from Russia. Islam Makhachev, Petr Yan. Is there a way that we can have an event in Russia? And what needs to be done for there to be an event in Russia? And are there any talks about an event in Russia?
There hasn't been, no, but it's a good question. We have not talked about doing an event in Russia, but yeah, we probably should.
Thank you very much. And such a cool event. You talked about all the records that have been broken today. For the people from the former Soviet countries, this probably was the most important event ever. But for you, perhaps the White House must have been, because you've said before that that was the coolest event you've ever been to. So, is there anything else? Is there another step up? Can the UFC do anything else that you will say, 'Okay, this is now the coolest'?
Well, I think that every event we go into, I feel that way. That, you know, we always want to come in and deliver for the fans who, you know, over 50% of the crowd in here tonight was from somewhere else. So, you know, they spent money to come here, flights, hotel rooms, everything. You want to deliver. You want to have an event like we had tonight. Obviously, the White House is insanely different and special and very unique, a one of one that will never happen again. I plan to have lots of great events here in Abu Dhabi again. We're running a record. We're like Madison Square Garden. I have eight of the top 10 all-time gates there. In two years, I'll have 10 of the top 10. And I want to keep knocking that out here in Abu Dhabi, too, and end up with 10 of the 10. But I've been telling you guys, we're working on an event right now that will be very unique and people from all over the world want to come see. I already started to see renderings of what we could possibly do before I flew to Abu Dhabi. And I look forward to announcing that soon.
Oh, okay. So you were talking, it's called UFC White House, and how important is that your last name appears on the...
Yeah, it took me a moment to figure out. So, does this thing work? Well, after what you just said, after what I said, I can't believe you nailed all of that. Congrats on that one. No, it didn't mean much that my last name is White and that it was at the White House. But the fact that, you know, we talk about this all the time, being there that night was really incredible, especially if you know all the that was going on and that the event was about to get hit with a really bad storm and the storm ended up going around us. There was 85,000 people on the Ellipse. It was just, you know, I've done a lot of events in my life and never been a part of something like that. And hopefully I'll do something again that feels the way that did that night, but I highly doubt it.
