By Mark Vester

According to a recent report by Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, HBO stated on Friday that a proposed deal between the network and the UFC is dead in the water. The two companies have been in discussions for more than a year.

HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg released a statement which said;

"After lots of discussion, it became apparent that the business model doesn't make sense for either one of us," Greenburg said in his statement. "So, we've agreed to go our separate ways. You never know what the future holds. We have enormous respect and admiration for the executives we dealt with at the UFC. We wish them well."

UFC and HBO battled for months over which of the two will handle the production of the proposed UFC programming. UFC handles all of the production for their pay-per-views and Spike TV programs, but HBO wanted their own people to handle the production of the shows that would air on their network. 

UFC president Dana White told Iole that he feels a deal will still be made with HBO in the future and he is not bothered by Greenburg's comments.

"We'll come to a deal with HBO, I'm 100 percent confident of that," White said. "Ross is probably pretty happy now, but we'll get a deal done with them. Believe me, we will. They want the deal, I want the deal – and when two sides want the deal, it gets done. There's a lot of stuff to this and these things take time. Deals are never easy to get done. They take a lot longer than I'd like."

White said that an announcement would be a made for new TV deal for UFC. A deal that will blow people away. Some insiders say the deal could be with ESPN.

Send News Tips and Comments To Mark Vester @ boxingscene@hotmail.com