No White flag

It's been a quite a month for UFC president Dana White.

A fight for the ages, a historic show, and an unprecedented turn of events that led to one of the craziest post-fight press conferences in recent memory.

And that's just three Saturdays. Add to that everything that he deals with behind the scenes on the other six days of the week leading up to each of those fight nights.

It started with UFC 137 in Las Vegas. After doing something he'd never done before -- pull someone from a title fight for not showing up to a press conference -- White saw Nick Diaz defeat B.J. Penn in a main event that had twice been changed and then call out welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre for being injured. Now he had to deal with an irate GSP (of all things) and Diaz who, despite the win and now an unexpected immediate title shot, went on a long, and sometimes inexplicable, tirade on why he was still unhappy.

And this was two weeks before the biggest event in the organization's history, when the UFC had its first ever primetime fight on live network TV. (Not to mention they made a trip to England in between.)

One couldn't blame White if he was a little burned out. Well, he almost was.

"I'm a wreck," White admitted during one of his usual scrums with reporters following a pre-fight press conference the Wednesday before the UFC's first show on FOX. "I haven't slept in four days. I feel weird."

What was impressive about his availability to answer questions on this particular occasion was that he had previously told some other reporters that he wasn't going to be doing those open-ended scrums anymore because he just didn't have time.

But one of the great things about White is that he's always been very accommodating -- with the media and with the fans -- and knowing the show's importance, he stuck around and gave what he could.

Two weeks earlier he spent a couple hours after the UFC 137 pre-fight press conference answering the media's questions in Las Vegas.

At one point, he was asked why the workload and pressures are so different nowadays. "It's the same game as before," the reporter said. Indeed what we see in the arena and what viewers watch on TV looks the same, whether it's a show on cable, pay-per-view or the first one broadcast free to millions of Americans watching on network TV.

His response: "It's a whole other level now. The amount of programming we're going to be putting out over the next couple of years, it's crazy."

That leads to more questions: Are there enough fighters on the roster to fill the shows? Will the schedule of events oversaturate the market? Will the talent pool be watered down?

"No, people have been asking me that for years," White insisted. "There's people training all over the world. The Ultimate Fighter, the new format is going to be awesome. This is what we do. We build stars. Nobody knew who the hell Rashad Evans was a couple of years ago. Nobody knew Forrest Griffin. The list goes on and on of guys who were unknown that are the stars that you're talking about now."

Having said that, the possibility for there to be too many shows for any one fan to consume on an annual basis does exist. But then the UFC could become like other leagues. An NHL fan, even the most hardcore one, doesn't watch every single hockey game on the league's schedule. They pick the teams they like and choose the games they want to watch.

The UFC might be the same. There's already been talk of simultaneous UFC events in different cities. That's not a bad thing. That's getting your product to the masses. Because there are many masses asking for it.

But with that comes the ever-increasing workload for the boss.

"We have crazy plans," White said. "If you look at what we're planning in the next two years, you'll be like, 'how the hell is that even humanly possible?'"

For now, some of those plans are still to be revealed. But one of them for sure is to expand their presence on FOX.

Yes, future events will have more than one fight. And as accommodating and fan-friendly as White's been in the past, he had a slightly different tone in the past two post-fight press conferences, when he delivered a message to anyone criticizing the approach they had with the UFC on FOX debut.

"This show was not even part of the deal. After we signed the deal, FOX said to us let's just do this one fight. For anyone to bitch and (be upset) about not getting to see all the fights, shut up. Buy a ticket if you don't want to watch (the prelims) on Facebook."

A little harsh, yes. But he had a point. We were given a free fight. What was there really to complain about?

And for those who thought a one-hour show filled with explanations, commentary and then a 64-second knockout wasn't the ideal showcase for the sport, White had another (slightly softer) message.

"We're trying to educate those who had never seen (the UFC) before," White said. "Now we're on a mainstream platform, and people don't realize the battles we have behind the scenes.

"We here in the MMA community live in this bubble. It's a world of triangle chokes and armbars (that others don't understand.) We have to ease our way into national TV, because we aren't what they think we are."

A week later, at the UFC 139 post-fight press conference this Saturday night in San Jose, after a five-round classic between Dan Henderson and Mauricio (Shogun) Rua that White called one of the "three best fights" in history, the suggestion was (naturally) again posed whether that would have served as a better debut fight on FOX. He reiterated basically the same thing he said the week before.

"Those of us who are in this room and people who have been watching this for a long time just incredibly appreciate what those two did tonight in there, and you can understand what they went through and what's going on. The rest of the world would go, 'Oh my God. What was that?' … Those of you that think we didn't do the right thing on the first FOX fight do not understand what it takes to build this sport beyond national television.

He paused, then added, fully aware of the previous week's rant: "So shut up again."

Yeah, comments like that make him sound a bit boorish. (Actually, "shut up" is a bit tame compared to the "f-bombs" he often drops on Twitter, sometimes directed right at a fan who has tweeted him a "critique" on the way he does things).

But we're okay with that.

Does any other sport's president/commissioner get a much criticism as him? Absolutely. Does any other personally relate to fans, both in person and through social media, as much as him? Nope.

Because as off-the-wall as he can be at times, he's still level-headed and knows what drives this sport. Ultimately, it's not him; as he is apt to say all the time it's the fighters who make it happen in the cage, it's the fans who are so passionate and, yes, it's the media that provides the access.

And he took the time to express that appreciation as well.

"Tonight was a big night for sport," White said to close off the UFC on FOX press conference. "And I just want to say thanks to all the fighters who always deliver whether it's a big night or a small night. And thanks to the media as well, who come to all these events and travel on the same schedule that we do, which we know is not easy."

This is not meant to be a love-in piece on White. I've been critical of his decisions in the past, and will likely be again.

But we'll excuse him if he can be a little blunt sometimes. He's been quite busy lately.

James is a writer, editor and MMA enthusiast. His nickname, "Big Game" was given to him in the tradition of former Laker James Worthy and current Rays pitcher James Shields.