Dana White reveals “UFC on Fox” premiere information – liveblog

At 1 PM Est today, UFC President Dana White will be making a “major announcement” during a conference call in regards to the first show of “UFC on Fox” on November 12. Many fans are speculating that this will be the reveal that Alistair Overeem has signed with the big boys, and will fight either Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin or Frank Mir. White could throw us a curveball completely and give us something completely different for the event, but the one thing we do know is that this call does pertain to the “UFC on Fox” event. Stay tuned as live updates will begin here at 1 PM with info about what’s happening!

1:02 PM EST – Dave Sholler is joined by David Hall and Mr. Shanks from Fox, and Dana White kicks things off immediately by discussing his excitement to be on Fox on November 12. White has made it official – Cain Velasquez will take on Junior Dos Santos on that event for the UFC heavyweight championship!

1:05 – Sergio Non of USA Today asked about other fights for the event, and White said he wanted to deliver to the fans and to Fox and kick things off with a bang. White said there were other matches they were kicking around, including one with Anderson Silva, but the heavyweight title fight was a “no-brainer”.

1:07 – Kevin Iole asks if the San Jose card is still on, which DFW says is going to happen. White also claims that this event will be the most watched MMA event in global history. The telecast on Fox will be one hour long and ONLY be Cain VS JDS.

1:09 – DFW speculates that if Cain can get JDS on the ground, it could get very interesting since we have never seen JDS on the ground before. Tickets for the show will go on sale next friday through Ticketmaster or the box office of the arena.

1:10 – Ariel Helwani asks about why the event is only an hour, which White said was a decision Fox made and that a five-round fight could be very long. New fans will need to be educated during the fight since it will be the first time that many viewers have seen MMA. There will be other preliminary fights, but no word on how they will be shown.

1:12 – Franklin McNeil from ESPN pops on and says hi. That’s all.

1:13 – White is working on how the show will air internationally, but there is no definitive answer on how yet.

1:14 – Dave Meltzer of Yahoo! Sports asks the elephant in the room, which is what happens if the title fight goes only one round. White is still discussing how they will handle that situation, which could be a full replay of the fight or a “best of” highlight reel from what happened during the night.

1:16 – Ron Kruck from HDNet asked how the fighters reacted to being on Fox, and White said it was the easiest deal he ever made. Both fighters were honored to be put on the show since they know how huge it was going to be. Kruck also asked about the production quality for this event from Fox, and the Fox execs said that the UFC will have control over the production because they do a fine job as is. They will, however, be launching a superbowl-style, red-carpet party outside of the event.

1:18 – James Bryden asked if White was worried about the fighters not being well-known enough to headline this show, but White counters by saying MMA is not mainstream yet so the purpose of this deal with Fox is to become mainstream. “Now is the time to deliver” says White, “Believe me when I tell you. You guys are going to see a lot of changes in how the shows are run and the production. We are taking it to the next level… This will be the event of all events… Just to be in Anaheim and to watch it in a bar, you will feel the atmosphere and the buzz going on in SoCal.”

1:21 – Mike Chiapetta asks about the promotion leading up to the fights and how they will market this event. White says that even though this deal does not officially start until January, Fox was already promoting UFC during NFL events. The Fox execs said the original plan was for two fights, but DFW went back and suggested one title fight. Since then, the Fox production team has been making promo vids for this event with Cain VS JDS and ads will start airing for it tomorrow on all of its entertainment properties.

1:24 – Fox execs say that getting Cain VS JDS is like Ali VS Foreman for them. White also notes that Cain Velasquez is trending on twitter now.

1:26 – White says they are not sure how they will educate the fans to explain what the techniques are during the show. The Fox execs say that much of that will come from the commentary during the show and they do not want to “muck it up” with illustrations of graphics illustrating the techniques.

1:27 – Spencer Kyte of Heavy.com asks about why they chose heavyweights as the first fight. White replies that you go with your best foot forward when you go on the biggest network in the world, and these heavyweights are “going to go at it” and perform. White is “literally betting everything” that they will not have a boring fight. White expects that this show will blow the Proelite show with Thompson VS Kimbo out of the water.

1:30 – Kevin Iole asks about the rumors of Brock Lesnar retiring. White says his surgery went great and he is getting back into training and will not be retiring.

1:31 – Since being on the phone with this call, JDS’ manager has texted White “57 million times to say how excited they are”. When it came to matchmaking, White and his team started with a big white board and wrote down names to see what made the most sense, and ultimately Cain VS JDS made the most sense. “This is our Forrest Griffin VS Stephan Bonnar on a huge platform.”

1:33 – Enrique Gutierrez of Univision asked how the Pacquiao fight might affect their ratings amongst Latino fans. White says it will affect his numbers “big” because his fight is free, and the UFC show will go off before the boxing event goes live and charges $65 to watch it.

1:36 – David Hill has a very hearty British laugh. He hasn’t stopped chuckling for a full minute now. And that is basically how this conference call ends.

So much for the prediction of Ubereem joining with UFC today. What is your reaction to this news?