Conor McGregor – Dana White STUN UFC FANS

By Barnaby Kellaway

At the New York stop of the UFC 189 World Tour, Ariel Helwani checked in with UFC president, Dana White and featherweight challenger, Conor McGregor. Both were positive about UFC 189 being one of the biggest in UFC history.

Incredibly, before tickets have even gone on sale, the president has confirmed that the event will break the record for highest ever gate and fastest selling event in company history.

We are used to McGregor making bombastic comments about anything he’s involved with but White’s assured vision for the event mean it will be massive. The president did not play down the magnitude of 189, when asked about ticket sales he said, ‘this is gonna be the fastest selling fight ever, the thing’s gonna go in seconds’. He went on to say, ‘it’ll do a seven million dollar gate’ and on pay per view numbers, ‘this thing will do over a million’.

McGregor was unsurprisingly even more ambitious in his prediction. He claims that he’ll, ‘make more than the gate’ and ‘walk away with three times more than Jose’. If these outlandish assumptions are true then he would surely become the highest paid fighter in MMA history.

Whilst that seems unlikely, records are being broken left and right this week, McGregor reminded us that the numbers for the UFC Embedded Vlog series (the Conor McGregor show) on this tour are higher than ever before. Considering the Irishman plays the starring role this comes as no surprise.

Even though UFC 189 also features the Lawler/MacDonald title fight, it is solely McGregor who is driving this runaway train. He brings unprecedented levels of marketability to the table and the UFC are doing an excellent job in utilising his skills; the prospective numbers prove that.

Whatever records the July 11th event break, it will be down to Conor McGregor.