I attended the UFC press conference at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on Wednesday. They have done a whole week tour going to places like Los Angeles, Montreal, and Chicago amongst other places to promote their title fights through the last four months of the year. It was a very smart idea to do that so they can hype the four big title fights even more to several cities, while giving the fans an opportunity to interact with the fighters.

A live look into the UFC press conference in New York

It was my first time being a part of the media and it was a fantastic experience. From the minute I saw a line stretching out five blocks to get into the theatre, it made me feel fortunate that I’m working in the media role. I’m sure that many people watched the hour-long press conference from Wednesday and followed everything that transpired. I’m going to review each fighter and what they said that stood out to me the most. Also, I’ll include Dana White since he is always being constantly asked questions by the media and fans.

Dana White

The attention of the Fox Sports 1 debut affected UFC on Fox 8 to an extent. They are very focused in making Fox Sports into their new home.
He is still flabbergasted on why MMA isn’t legal in New York. He blames Sheldon Silver, who is considered to be the most powerful politician in New York. After seeing him constantly turn it down, he has lost interest in talking about MMA in New York. He doesn’t take place in the talks for MMA to be in New York.
The fact that Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate hate each other so much makes their fight so polarizing. The fight between both of them in Strikeforce made him a fan of women’s MMA and made him start becoming interested in female fighters. Rousey still remains to be the biggest reason why he allowed women to fight in the UFC.
White embraces the movie and media roles for his fighters, as long as it doesn’t conflict with their fighting career. Media roles have allowed Dominick Cruz and Brian Stann to continue to be involved with the sport.
Fallon Fox needs to earn her way into the UFC regardless of how much attention she brings to the sport. It would be on the athletic commission to make a decision if a transgender fighter is allowed to fight in the UFC.
He’ll always respect Mirko Cro Cop and is happy that he’s still healthy.
Still continues to say that Ellenberger versus MacDonald was a complete disappointment and doesn’t think Ellenberger’s head showed up. Ellenberger threw only five punches in two rounds, which is very uncharismatic for him to do.

Cain Velasquez

He doesn’t plan on changing his game plan in the trilogy fight against Dos Santos. After having so much success with his wrestling and outworking his opponents, he plans on continuing to do the same again. It will all come down to execution if he wants to remain champion.
The trilogy is considered to be a great chapter in his fighting career and he is excited to fight in a new city like Houston.
In one of the biggest highlights of the press conference, he had a stare down with Jon Jones. Everyone was cheering at the sight of that, since it could very well be a potential fight at some point in 2014 or 2015. He was interested in fighting Jones and would have no problem facing him.
Tyson Fury’s comments don’t bother him. He says he needs to work his way up to face him, if he were to make the switch to MMA. In another boxing question, he is supporting Canelo Alvarez and thinks he’ll defeat Floyd Mayweather.

Junior Dos Santos

Similar to Velasquez, he doesn’t plan on changing too much. He believes that some work on his cardio and wrestling will make him more of an all-around fighter. He believes this will be the best fight between them.
He plans on training with his mentor Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, as soon as he recovers from his elbow injury. They will train in Salvador, Brazil where he resides in now.
Doesn’t mind doing the media tour and loves meeting new fans. He says all the attention towards his fight, the better.
I had the chance to interview him for a few minutes, which you can view right here. He discussed how he’s evolving as a fighter, his respect for Roy Nelson, and working on his cardio.

Jon Jones

As a fan, he’s still bummed out about Anderson Silva losing to Chris Weidman. He really wanted to test his skills against the greatest fighter of all time.
Still plans on proving more at light heavyweight and continuing his historic reign with the title. Glover Teixeira and Daniel Cormier are two fighters that he would like to face before he would move up to heavyweight.
His dream fight is to face one of the Klitschko brothers’ in a boxing event in the future. The opportunity of being a dual champion in both MMA and boxing would mean so much to him. He knows it’s highly unlikely but he would like to do it down the road.
He picks Lyoto Machida to defeat Phil Davis due to better footwork and counter striking. His belief on the fight is that it’s coming too soon for Davis and he isn’t on Machida’s level.

Alexander Gustafsson/Johny Hendricks

They weren’t asked many questions so I’m going to combine both of their quotes into one section.
Hendricks isn’t sure about wrestling St-Pierre and would be much more comfortable standing up. He doesn’t fear going anywhere with him in this fight, but sees a knockout as his best option of winning.
Despite the comments about St-Pierre possibly ducking him, Hendricks has nothing but respect for him as a champion and this was his ultimate dream fight that he’s worked for.
Gustafsson always looks to evolve as a fighter and keeping a steady training regime. He did some work in Sweden, but now will finish the rest of his camp in San Diego at the Alliance Training Center.
I was a part of Hendricks’ interview scrum for a few minutes, where he talked about his fight with St-Pierre, looking back on his success, and working on his jujitsu. You can view that right here.
Unfortunately this wasn’t recorded, but backstage I had the chance to talk with Hendricks for about fifteen minutes with another fellow journalist. He talked about the fight with Carlos Condit and how painful his left hand felt after the first round. We talked about other welterweights like Robbie Lawler and possibly Paul Daley coming back. From a personal note, Hendricks was the biggest highlight of my first day working as media. He was down to earth and wasn’t afraid to say anything that was on his mind. Hopefully someday we meet again and I can a full solo interview with him.

Georges St-Pierre

Anderson Silva losing motivated even him more as a fighter. Even though he trains with Chris Weidman and expected him to win, he realized how no champion is invincible.
He respects the fact that Hendricks earned this fight by beating all of the competition at welterweight. His knockout power concerns him and he’ll continue to work on his agility even more.
After not being a fan of women’s MMA, he became a fan after watching Ronda Rousey versus Liz Carmouche. The fights involving Cyborg Santos punching her opponents repeatedly in the head made him dislike women’s MMA. Then he saw Ronda lock in a perfect juji gatame and started to embrace it.
One of the other major highlights from the press conference was St. Pierre hugging Rousey, which got a huge reaction. She was happy someone as great as him has embraced women’s MMA.
Las Vegas was the place where he started his career. He doesn’t have any problem fighting there, despite his last four fights being in Canada.
He plans on bringing boxers in like Jean Pascal to help him prepare for his next fight. This isn’t his first “rodeo”, he doesn’t care about trash talking and prefers to be unique. Not once in his mind, did he ever feel that he was ducking a fight with Hendricks.
A standup fight doesn’t bother him at all. He likes to work to his strengths, but understands that the fight can’t always be on the ground.
Unlike most people, he felt that MacDonald did a great job in utilizing his jab and not brawling with a brawler like Ellenberger. He stuck to his game plan and earned the win, while Ellenberger didn’t change anything up until the end of the third round.
A fight with MacDonald doesn’t interest him. He fights with him on a weekly basis in training and considers him a close friend.

Ronda Rousey

When the fight begins, she is always emotionless and narrows it down to always coming out on top. Her competitive nature will always exceed any sort of personal emotion.
The personality clash with Tate is what makes them hate each other. She believes in being honest upfront, while Tate will just smile in your face then talk about you behind your back. That drew a major reaction from the crowd.
She will always respect Tate’s ability and actually shook her hand after her performance against Julie Kedize last year. When she sees an amazing fight, she’ll always acknowledge it regardless of her personal hatred for someone. It’s her way in relating to the fighter.
Taylor Stafford is the best female fighter not in the UFC according to her. She was supposed to be on “The Ultimate Fighter”, but blew out her knee before it began. Once she recovers, she’ll begin to fight professionally and have a great career.
Every fight to her is like the Olympic final. She appreciates her role in the Expendables 3, but will always make sure it doesn’t get in the way of fighting.

Miesha Tate

The first fight with Rousey was tough for her. Her emotions became too high and it affected her performance. She won’t let that happen again.
Once Rousey called her out for a title shot after winning only three professional fights, she found that completely disrespectful. She had no idea who she really was and from that day on, they began to dislike each other.
There was a glimmer of hope of squashing the beef with Rousey. Now she doesn’t see it because of their constant back and forth criticizing one another. The lack of respect she has gotten has made her forget about squashing the beef.
Leslie Smith is the best female fighter not in the UFC according to her. Her performances in Invicta have really caught her eye.

The experience working media was very enjoyable. At first, I was a little lost because it was my first time and you see so many journalists running around to different fighters. That was surreal and I realized that it was time to get to work. The fans were very rowdy asking for autographs from Rousey, Jones, and Velasquez. It was tough to talk at times from their crowd noise, but they deserve to have their fun for coming out to attend the event.

The tour ends today but if they ever do a press conference or weigh-in near your area, you should go. They make it very fun and interactive with the fighters, not to mention it’s free. I give a big thanks to Jeremy Brand in giving me the information to attend this event as part of the media. Hopefully there will be more to come in the future.

You can follow me on twitter @Allen_Strk and be sure to follow @MMASucka for all breaking news/updates.

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