UFC President Dana White recently revealed that the UFC’s big break on NBC was stopped in its tracks by none other than WWE’s Vince McMahon. In an interview with Steph McMahon, the UFC executive explained the scene. with Vince McMahon playing the ultimate heel. According to White, the UFC was on the verge of a game-changing partnership with NBC back in 2011, only to have the rug pulled out from under them by none other than the WWE boss himself.
Vince McMahon Stalled NBC Deal with the UFC
In a story that sounds straight out of a boardroom soap opera, Dana White described how the UFC was “about to sign the deal and do all the stuff” with NBC, only for the network’s executives to discover a catch: McMahon had the right to decide if another combat sport could air on USA Network, thanks to WWE’s contract.
Dana White
“We can’t believe this, we didn’t know this, we just found out. McMahon has the right to determine whether another combat sport can come onto USA,” White recalled the NBC execs saying. So, what do you do when the boss of pro wrestling holds your fate in his hands? You fly to WWE headquarters, of course. Dana White and his team met with McMahon, who, in classic Vince fashion, didn’t mince words: “I don’t want you on the network.” And just like that, the entire NBC deal was “blown up,” Dana White said.
“We’re about to sign the deal and do all the stuff and NBC executives were like, ‘We can’t believe this, we didn’t know this, we just found out. Vince has the right to determine whether another combat sport can come onto USA.’ We fly out, go to the WWE offices, we go meet with your father… We lay it out to him. He’s like, ‘I don’t want you on the network’… So that blew up the whole NBC deal. So then we fly out to L.A. and we do the Fox deal.”
Instead, the UFC brass, with Dana White, headed west to Los Angeles and struck up a new partnership with Fox, which turned out to be a pivotal move for the promotion. UFC became a mainstream sports juggernaut, and both UFC and WWE now find themselves under the same TKO Group Holdings umbrella.
Vince McMahon has recently been engulfed in a serious controversy involving multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and trafficking by former WWE employees, most notably a lawsuit filed in early 2024 by ex-employee Janel Grant accusing him of abuse and coercion at WWE’s Stamford headquarters. These allegations led McMahon to resign from his executive chairman role at TKO Group, the parent company formed after WWE’s merger with UFC, though he remains a major shareholder.
The scandal also triggered investigations by the SEC, resulting in McMahon agreeing to pay over $1.7 million to settle charges related to undisclosed hush-money payments. Despite denying all accusations and vowing to vigorously defend himself, McMahon’s reputation has taken a significant hit amid ongoing legal battles and public scrutiny.
