Dana White dismissed claims by PFL co-founder Donn Davis that a recent PFL event outperformed UFC viewership, asserting that even his Power Slap league surpasses PFL in various metrics and expressing skepticism about Davis’s business acumen.
Dana White was more than ready to respond to a few statements made by PFL co-founder Donn Davis during a town hall session held on MMA Fighting just 24 hours earlier. He didn’t hold back.
During the hour-long Q&A, Davis tackled numerous inquiries from fans. Among the topics was the recent PFL: Battle of the Giants pay-per-view, headlined by Francis Ngannou’s return to MMA. Ngannou bludgeoned Renan Ferreira with punches for a first-round finish in the main event. Davis couldn’t reveal how many pay-per-view buys the card generated, but he did make one eyebrow-raising claim when comparing PFL to UFC.
“This event by our research beat every viewership number of every UFC event this year and was very, very close to Ring of Fire,” Davis boasted. Bold claim, right? Well, White wasn’t buying it.
When asked about that statement following a Power Slap event in Abu Dhabi, the UFC CEO gleefully pulled out a sheet of paper filled with metrics comparing PFL to his slap-fighting league rather than the UFC. He had receipts!
“The PFL should keep the UFC out of their mouth,” White said. “They can’t even deal with Power Slap. Power Slap destroys PFL. It’s weird that you asked me that question because I just happened to have some papers here.”
White rattled off numbers with enthusiasm: followers, video views, Instagram interactions—you name it. Power Slap seemed to trump PFL in each category. “Power Slap has 19.2 million followers, PFL has 10 [million],” he noted.
While he didn’t spend much time pitting the UFC against PFL directly, White tossed out one claim that a UFC Fight Night card held back in January actually pulled in bigger viewership numbers than the PFL pay-per-view. Shots fired!
“I could keep going on for a f*cking month here,” White said. “Then if you want to get into what he said about the UFC, I have a laundry list here but let me just start with this: UFC Vegas 84 at the APEX beat them.”
White didn’t stop there; he took another jab at Davis’s credibility and business acumen. “He sounds like Kamala [Harris], talks a lot but says nothing,” White quipped. “I would hate to be one of that guy’s investors.”
Rarely does White miss an opportunity to dunk on anyone coming after him or the UFC. He reveled in firing back at Davis following his statements on Wednesday.
“That guy shouldn’t even mention the UFC,” White continued. “He’s not even in Power Slap’s [league]. Then he was talking about ‘there’s all kinds of combination packages and how all this works.’”
White also addressed comments from current Bellator champion Usman Nurmagomedov, who stated plans to eventually join the UFC roster after his friend and teammate Islam Makhachev was done with fighting.
That didn’t surprise White at all. He expects Nurmagomedov and other major fighters in the PFL would prefer competing in the UFC—except for maybe one person.
“I mean all their good people want to be over here anyway so I would imagine that eventually yes, they will be here,” White said. “Nobody wants to fight in the f*cking PFL except for Francis.” Ouch!