Dana White’s UFC Press Conference – Tito Yes, Fedor No

First off, thanks to Luke Thomas @MMANation on Twitter for tweeting his play by play of the press conference. Follow him immediately.

Here are some of the highlights:

Vitor Belfort has been signed to face Rich Franklin at UFC 103, which goes head up with Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez. Looks like I’m watching the boxing live and DVRing the UFC show.

Tito Ortiz is back with the UFC as we all pretty much figured. He says that he wants to fight near the end of the year. He also said that his back is healthy.

Dana White conceded in not signing Fedor. He said that they tried everything they could, including offering an “assload” of money to he and M-1 Global.

They signed a three-year deal with ESPN in the UK and supposedly are close to a deal that would change the UFC forever. But he didn’t go into it any more.

UFC 100 did at least 1.5 million buys as White said he was going to jump off the Mandalay Bay hotel.

So what does it all mean?

Well, our own Duan thinks the initial proposed main event for UFC 103, which was Rich Franklin vs. Dan Henderson was a smoke screen because it didn’t make much sense in the aftermath of UFC 100. I pretty much agree, though White says they changed it because the people weren’t feeling it.

But now it looks like this sets up Henderson to get his rematch with middleweight champion Anderson Silva, after Silva is done with Forrest Griffin.

Dana said that Tito could fight Mark Coleman in his first fight back since he hasn’t fought in over a year, but I’m not sure that’s really a fight people would be interested in.

As for Fedor, they basically threw him under the bus, but didn’t seem to be done negotiating. Well, they didn’t really throw him under the bus, but M-1. But the casual fans won’t really know the difference.

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