GSP wrote:Terrible take that shows a lack of knowledge on early Ufc. Dana wanted to sell the company when they were millions in debt and didnt want to do Tuf. Without that first Tuf season and Forrest/Bonnar it never gets as big as it got in North America and very well mightve been bankrupt. Ufc success was far more the Fertittas than it was Dana, not only them lending him money to start but basically most of the operations that didnt include being a tard on the camera was them.
Ufc consistently sucked at promoting their best fighters. Anderson pre Chael, Demetrious, Aldo etc. were some of the most dominant fighters ever and did terrible in terms of their draw power. The only guys they ever promoted greatly were Tito, Chuck, Conor, Ronda, Brock and Gsp and all of those guys basically promoted themselves and Brock had his Wwe background and Gsp had an entire country backing him up every fight. Chuck built his name off Titos promotion and Dana did do the bulk of promoting him really only fell flat when he entered him into the Pride tournament and he got crushed
Even Bones who does well as a draw complains about Dana and their promotion. Most champions have. They had to **** trade Demetrious Johnson for Ben Askren
Blah blah blah
Dana White > David Stern
Fact of the matter is Dana White was and still is a SIGNIFICANTLY more hands on leader/commissioner while having had WAY less resources to work with and no previous foundation to build on (we can argue how successful the NBA was before Stern took over, but there's no debate there were decades of already established foundation he could started tweaking... he didn't built anything from ground up... Not to mention he inherited a league where the Lakers/Celtics rivalry was in full effect, basically promoting itself, spearheaded by Magic playing showtime basketball in the biggest market in the league and Bird being arguably the most skilled white player playing for the most winningest NBA market in league history... AND that's without acknowledging MJ's arrival being right around the corner). Like, the stars couldn't have aligned any more perfectly...
Obviously, Dana isn't perfect, far from it, but like i said... as a leader/commissioner... he's FAR more involved and hands-on in terms of UFC than Stern was with the NBA. You mentioned TUF, big part of the reason why people watched that was because of Dana and his personality and the role he filled in that. Every big fight the UFC has, Dana is there promoting it, doing press conferences etc... When have you ever seen Stern go live before the NBA Finals, and talk to the press about how Michael Jordan and the Bulls are about to face the Jazz for the 2nd consecutive year in the Finals etc. etc... He doesn't. EPSN and outsourced Sports outlets do more promoting than he did. He just came to hand over the trophy when it was all said and done, and the next time you saw him was a couple of months later saying ''With the 1st pick, in the NBA draft...'' and repeated that 60 times.
Dana is actually in the frontlines... he puts himself on the line and allows himself to be scrutinized and torn apart for the growth of the UFC... Not to mention he's doing this stuff on a global level. Trying to balance all these different personalities, cultures and host events in every corner on the World... WAY more difficult to run and control an operation like this.
Stern's biggest achievement is telling Iverson to stop dressing like a thug.
Magic/Bird made him a warm nest and MJ carried him all the way to retirement... He created a one-and-done rule, which was dumb... Citing players would benefit from being in college longer and getting some more 'maturity' under their belt... yeah, because COLLEGE is the perfect breeding grounds for acquiring real life maturity... give me a break. What else did he do? He said, ''hey there's this thing called the Internet... maybe we should start putting NBA content on there...'' What a genius proposition... it's not like everybody else was doing the same thing... It took too long for NBA League Pass to reach its potential and NBA.com has always been one of the most horrible sites i've ever visited coming from an organization as big as the NBA. What else? He somehow gets credited for the Dream Team existing, even though he wasn't the one involved in the decision-making process and FIBA was way more advocate about allowing professionals to participate.He supported a move from the 14th biggest market in the US to Oklahoma City, he was responsible for 2 lockouts in his tenure, he cost Chris Paul rings because 'basketball reasons'. Dana White > David Stern
i rest my case.
Edit: I forgot i had a point to make about Bones. A lot of the reason why Bones is 'under-promoted' is due to himself and the controversy surrounding him personally. Not Dana's fault this dude is busted every year doing immoral illegal activities. He's also not really the most interesting man character-wise to be honest... Same goes for Mighty Mouse. No one cares about a serious scrawny dude fighting other sacks of potato in the lowest division. He's the Tim Duncan of UFC, except Duncan didn't perform in a division nobody cares about with abysmal competition.
