By Edward Chaykovsky
Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), made some very surprising comments regarding the boxing battle between network giants HBO and Showtime.
In 2012, White had a bad falling out with Showtime over their business relationship connected to UFC's Strikeforce brand.
During the post-fight press conference to UFC's pay-per-view event on Saturday night, White discussed the split with Showtime and now believes the network moved away from MMA in order to place those budgetary funds into boxing.
Not long after Showtime completely backed away from Mixed Martial Arts, they closed an exclusive multi-year deal with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Because of the past friction between White and Showtime, it was certainly surprising to hear him praise the network.
For the moment, White believes Showtime is producing the better boxing product on their network. He caught portions of both televised shows on Saturday night and felt the Showtime broadcast was superior.
"I'm not the biggest Showtime fan on Earth, but I'll tell you what - Showtime blew HBO out of the water tonight," White stated when speaking with Bleacher Report. "With the presentation and all the things that they did, I never thought I'd see the day where I would say Showtime is actually looking better than HBO. It's crazy."
"I think they didn't want to be in business with us. Now that I look at it and see what they're doing - their plan was to take over boxing. Their plan was to get everybody that they could get away from HBO into Showtime and they're kicking HBO's ass right now."
