You probably heard about the historic multi-year partnership between the UFC and FOX earlier this week. However, it appears that all is not cool on the home front with one of FOX’s main competitor’s in ESPN. Dana White sounded off on his twitter account about ESPN as he replied to fans that tweeted questions to him:
“ESPN always hated us and now they hate us more now that we are on FOX. They canceled my int next week for UFC Rio Fuk ESPN. @jimrome is the only good thing about ESPN.”
White is referring to the upcoming UFC 134 event that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It will be headlined by a middleweight championship bout between Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami. White appears on ESPN at times to promote ‘major’ PPV’s that are about to take place, but it looks like those days could be coming to an end.
Jim Rome almost routinely has MMA fighters on his “Rome Is Burning” show that airs on ESPN. ESPN has covered UFC events sparingly over the years, but does have a show that airs on the network entitled “MMA Live” that airs on ESPN2. It’ll be interesting to see if ESPN will continue to post UFC event results on its news ticker, as well as continue with the “MMA Live” show that is often delayed because of programming running over its time slot.
Let’s see how it all shakes out.