Dana White On The Flyweight Division: ‘It Just Never Caught On And People Didn’t Care’
A UFC flyweight title fight was officially announced this morning with UFC bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw moving down a weight class to take on the current 125-pounds champion Henry Cejudo.
Rumours have been doing the rounds about whether the UFC flyweight division will cease to exist following the fight at UFC 233 and challenger Dillashaw recently stated in an interview with ESPN that he’d been paid “a f*** load of money to kill off the division.”
Speaking on the UFC Unfiltered podcast this week, Dana White was asked whether he could confirm Dillashaw’s claim that the flyweight division would be closed down if he defeated Cejudo at UFC 233. White wouldn’t confirm or deny, but he did imply that the flyweight division may have run it’s course.
“Who said I said I would pay them a f*** ton of money to kill the division?” White said. “I don’t even know what that means, but yeah, here let me say, TJ Dillashaw didn’t do f*** to the flyweight division. The flyweight division just never took off and never caught on, even with a dominant champion like Demetrious. It just never caught on and people didn’t care.
“I battled for a long time to keep it going on, and it’s still going on now, we still have fights going on in that division, but we will see. We will see what the future holds for it.”
With former champion Demetrious Johnson being traded to ONE Championship in a deal involving Ben Askren coming the other way, White was asked whether more trade deals could happen in the future. Again, White wouldn’t lay all his cards on the table, but he said this was a very unique situation where this sort of deal was the most appropriate.
“No, there’s nothing else going on,” White said. “This was the only way to get this deal done and it made sense. I’ve made offers to other organizations too, I’ve made offers that haven’t panned out.
“It’s something that we can do and in this scenario it worked out really well.”
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
