A mini controversy arose when Makhachev’s comments from an interview he did in Russia were translated.
The defending champ talked to an RIA Novosti correspondent where he discussed the main event, his future endeavors, and his retirement.
The interviewer asked him if the upcoming event doesn’t have the hype that it should. He laid emphasis on it being the first bout between the top two P4P best in the UFC.
Islam replied by saying that Dana White is dealing with his own set of issues, so he’s not doing much to promote the show. However, he still feels like everyone in the city is excited about it.
“I see that there is not such a big promotion. White himself has bigger problems, so he does not pay much attention to this event.”
“Here in Perth, everyone knows about the matchup and is looking forward to it.”
“And in terms of pay-per-view (PPV), yes, more could have been done. I only saw Volkanovski once, in Sydney. A tour could be organized around the world, a conference could be held in America.”
Both UFC president Dana White and Makhachev’s manager Ali Abdelaziz were upset. While White was clearly irked with Makhachev (and Khabib by proxy), Abdelaziz attempted to blame the media.
Dana White initially pretended to forget Makhachev’s name and even went so far as to pretend that he couldn’t remember Khabib’s.
Makhachev addressed the comments during UFC 284 presser saying:
“You know, I say something in the media this fight not promoted, but Dana send me a message and show me all their rankings, all the like, you know, all this stuff, how they promote, how they sell. Now, I understand because I don’t follow this game, how they promote what they did, but they promote the world. That’s why we don’t have tickets.”
“And Dana say pay per view, it’s high, you know, maybe, oh, like it’s going to be maybe maybe number two, three.”
UFC PPV record is held by UFC 229 which pitted McGregor against Khabib – with 2,400,000 PPV buys.