10 Dream UFC Fights Dana White Wanted To Promote

1. Brock vs. Fedor

fedor_lesnar A clash of the titans. The greatest heavyweight of all time against the monster who rose quickly to stardom in the UFC after crossing over from the WWE. West vs. East, America vs. Russia, Monster vs. Monster, however you want to market it, it would have been huge. Dana White envisioned this fight as taking place at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas, Texas. He felt it would be been the biggest fight the promotion could have ever put on. How close did this come to happening? In 2013, Dana White revealed the following about the potential match-up: "I told you guys that story before, we were in deep talks with him we were that close to signing him... ...recently, right before his dad died... we were right there. When I was talking about doing that big Dallas Texas stadium show it was going to be Brock Lesnar versus Fedor. Remember when I met with him and I said it didn't go well? It actually did go well. It went well and then Fedor's dad died, he (Brock) wanted to fight Fedor....Fedor was done, he said €˜I want to spend the rest of my life with my family.' We were negotiating for months. And then after his dad died he said, €˜That's it I'm done,' or whatever and then Brock said, €˜I'm done too.'" This wasn't the first attempt at landing the Russian heavyweight. According to a Yahoo News report in October 2013, White and UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta actually flew to Venezuela in 2009 in one of many attempts to sign the Russian heavyweight - but none of them would come to pass. "When I tell you we did everything, someday I'll tell the story of how much we offered.... It made no sense. It was one of those type of deals like, you know that these networks, the NFL does $9 billion in television revenue. It makes no sense for the networks. The network doesn't make a dime off that. But you have to have the NFL, right? The NFL pulls ratings like anything." Over the years, rumours of Russian promotion M-1 wanting to co-promote the fight, and to have the UFC foot the bill for building a stadium to hold it in, floated around. No wonder White couldn't seal the deal. This fight will always be considered by UFC fans as the biggest dream fight to never happen.
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Primarily covering the sport of MMA from Ontario, Canada, Jay Anderson has been writing for various publications covering sports, technology, and pop culture since 2001. Jay holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Guelph, and a Certificate in Leadership Skills from Humber College.