Dana White reveals he sank a deal between UFC and HBO over concerns about the company's production values. Screen grab: Fox News’ One Nation

While Dana White might not have the final say, he obviously possesses a significant amount of sway when it comes to UFC.

And the UFC president used that clout to help get the company out of a deal that he was concerned would make it “stale and old and like boxing was.”

Appearing on Fox News’ One Nation earlier this week, White discussed a media rights deal that UFC had agreed to with HBO, which would have put fight cards on the pay television network. But despite that deal having already been agreed to, White reversed course once HBO insisted on taking over the MMA promotion’s production.

“We did a deal with HBO. I don’t know if you know that, but we did a deal with HBO where we were going to put fights on HBO,” White told Brian Kilmeade. “HBO came in and started going, ‘We’re going to have to turn this music down, this is going to have to’ — and I said, ‘No. You guys are not running our production and telling us what to do.”

“We had already signed the deal. We were done. So I literally called [former UFC CEO] Lorenzo [Fertitta] and said, ‘Yeah, we can’t do this deal.’ He’s like, ‘What do you mean we can’t do this deal? The deal is done. We have a deal.’ [I said,] ‘We have to get out of this deal.’ And [Endeavor CEO and super agent] Ari [Emanuel] got us out of the HBO deal.”

Asked by Kilmeade if he was concerned about missing out on the prestige of being associated with HBO, especially considering it’s storied history with boxing, White made it clear he had no regrets.

“No. I believe that if we had let HBO do what they wanted to do, it would’ve hurt us and hurt our brand,” he said. “It would’ve made it stale and old and like boxing was.”

The timeframe of UFC’s dealings with HBO are unclear, although Fertitta’s involvement suggests that it was before the MMA giant was sold to Endeavor in 2016.

White proceeded to reveal later in this interview that in addition to the HBO media rights deal, he also previously torpedoed a deal that would have seen CBS purchase the UFC for $1 billion. That further demonstrated his sizable say in the company’s biggest decisions.

[Fox News]

About Ben Axelrod

Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.