Randy Couture believes UFC President Dana White got his business model straight from Vince McMahon of WWE.
Over the years, people have compared MMA and the pro wrestling industry. While outcomes certainly aren’t predetermined in MMA, many fighters have honed their “promo” skills in order to gain popularity in the way that top pro wrestlers do.
Speaking to Wrestling Inc., Couture said that Dana White certainly learned a thing or two from McMahon.
“It just wasn’t my deal. Some guys have gone the other way. Look at Kurt Angle, look at the Steiner brothers, they had all real, genuine amateur wrestling careers and then jumped into pro wrestling as a way to make a living. For a lot of us amateur wrestlers, there were no professional outlets to be a professional athlete or to continue to make a living using the skills that we’d spend most of our lives developing.
“So pro wrestling was certainly an option for some of those guys. Brock Lesnar obviously came from a NCAA Championship in Minnesota and then went into pro wrestling, and then dabbled in mixed martial arts as well. There is definitely some some crossover. I think if you look at the model that Dana White and the UFC is using, it’s absolutely the Vince McMahon pro wrestling model.”
White recently said that McMahon couldn’t have scripted a better story than Ciryl Gane winning the interim UFC Heavyweight Title and facing main champion Francis Ngannou in the future. Former referee and current Bellator color commentator, “Big” John McCarthy believes White stole everything from McMahon.
