Dana White has addressed how fans will factor into his plans for the UFC event at the White House.
Earlier this month, the UFC president visited the United States capital to begin putting plans in place for a one-of-a-kind event.
With the White House event now set to take place in June, we’re starting to find out more information about what this remarkable spectacle is going to actually look like.
There have been many questions since the event was first announced regarding the people who will be in attendance for the card.
After White recently revealed how he intends to “take over” Washington DC that week, he responded to a concern about how it will look and feel.
Dana White says the crowd and energy aren’t a priority for the UFC’s White House event
While Dana White isn’t booking fights for the White House until early next year, this event requires a level of planning that the promotion won’t have had to deal with before.
Obviously, the White House lawn isn’t set up for hosting sporting events, which comes with a lot of difficulties.
During a recent appearance on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, the WWE star made reference to the recent boxing event in Times Square and how it didn’t make for a great viewing experience due to the lack of atmosphere.
White made it clear that this is not his priority, pulling off a once-in-a-lifetime event by any means necessary is.
“There will be less than 5,000 people there. I don’t give a f— if there’s one person there and it’s him. I’ll do this with no crowd, you know what I mean. To be on the White House lawn, with the backdrop being the White House, I don’t care.
“This isn’t about the crowd for me, it’s about being at the White House. If it was about the crowd, I’d do it at the park that’s connected to it. I’d do it at the park, we could put, probably if I built bleachers and s— like that, we’d probably do 30,000 people over there. I can do that anywhere, at any park, at any time.”
White went on to say that his attitude towards this event may have been impacted by what the UFC has been able to do in recent years.
“Pre-COVID, I probably would have thought differently about that. Some of those fights, we had nobody there for COVID, you know what I mean. This isn’t about the gate, the people, the energy.”
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Dana White shares how he believes the people in attendance for the event should be set up
Dana White went on to say during the podcast appearance that the 5,000 people who will be in attendance won’t be decided by him and the UFC.
Anyone that’s going to be at an event of that magnitude and exclusivity is going to have to go through rigorous background checks, which takes the decision out of their hands.
White did add a suggestion for how he believes the 5,000 should be selected, which could also help to improve the overall energy of the crowd.
“I think what the President should do, you have the army, navy, air force, marines, you know. You just have military guys there.”