Dana White Is A Genius

UFC president Dana White has been bombarded with the same question for the last 3 months: what's next for heavyweight star Brock Lesnar?? Well yesterday, the suspense ended with one of the smartest business decisions ever made by the undisputed leader of the UFC.

White announced yesterday that the coaches for the 13th season of UFC's reality series "The Ultimate Fighter" will be Junior Dos Santos and the former Heavyweight Champion himself, Brock Lesnar. This also means that Dos Santos will be Lesnar's next opponent during the live finale of "The Ultimate Fighter," which is preliminarily set for sometime in June. White has said that the Lesnar-Dos Santos fight will be considered the fight that will determine the new top contender for the Heavyweight Title.

In my mind, this is one of the greatest business decisions that Dana White has ever made. Here he was with a guy that was frustrated and disappointed with losing the Heavyweight Title to Cain Velasquezin October, as well as feeling shown up a bit by WWE superstar The Undertaker after that loss. The rumors started swirling about Lesnar wanting out of the UFC, so the former champ could go back to pro wrestling and fight at WWE's mega pay-per-view Wrestlemania in April.

So what did Dana White do? He warded off all questions about Lesnar, denied all the rumors about his star fighter's contract situation, and then blows everyone away by saying Lesnar will now be a coach on a weekly reality TV show. One word can summarize how White handled this entire situation: brilliant!

WWE owner Vince McMahon is one of the best (and possibly dirtiest) businessman in the sports and entertainment world, who has hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around at whatever and whoever he wants. Yet despite the antics of someone wrestling fans arguably call McMahon's biggest attraction of the WWE, Dana White was able to somehow put together a dream situation to get Lesnar to stay put in UFC.

The fact that White pulled off this victory over Vince McMahon is huge for not just UFC, but for the whole sport of mixed martial arts. In ten years, we may look back and call  this the singular move that officially launched UFC and MMA into mainstream America once and for all. Be afraid Vince McMahon, be very afraid!