Dana White has revealed that he and UFC co-founder Lorenzo Fertitta walked away genuinely relieved after Fedor Emelianenko’s team rejected what he described as a massive financial offer to sign with the promotion.
The UFC president made the admission during a recent appearance on The Pivot Podcast, when the conversation turned to whether White had any regrets about negotiations that never came together.
When asked if there were any deals he wished he could have back, White was candid about the one that got away, and his surprising reaction to losing it.
“We never got a deal done with Fedor,” White told the hosts. “But when me and Lorenzo got on the plane and left wherever we were, we looked at each other and said, ‘Thank God they said no.'”
The reason for that relief? The sheer scale of what the UFC had put on the table.
“We offered them so much money,” White said. “You get in that room and you’re just trying to get the deal done. We didn’t fly all the way out here for nothing. Let’s get this deal done.”
At the time of negotiations, Fedor Emelianenko was widely considered the best heavyweight athlete on the planet. His reputation in Pride FC had made him a must-have name for the UFC as the promotion worked to establish itself as the definitive home of mixed martial arts. The matchup White had envisioned was a potential blockbuster.
“We wanted to do him versus Brock Lesnar at the time,” White said.
That match, had it happened, would have been one of the most anticipated heavyweight bouts in MMA history, pitting two of the most physically imposing and credentialed athletes of that era against one another. Lesnar had become a legitimate UFC heavyweight champion, and Fedor’s mystique was at its peak.
Despite the ambition behind the pursuit, White made clear he has no lingering regret about how it played out.
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “And that’s really the only match off the top of my head that I can think of that we didn’t make that we wanted to and that we tried to.”
The admission is notable given how aggressively the UFC reportedly pursued Fedor during that period, with multiple rounds of negotiations that ultimately went nowhere.
