UFC boss Dana White slams soccer as the ‘LEAST talented sport on earth’ and claims there’s a ‘reason that three-year-olds’ play it in resurfaced video
- The 53-year-old said that only ‘untalented’ people play the world’s biggest sport
- The man whose net worth is said to be around $500 million said hockey’s better
- A reporter fired back at the UFC president, saying he wouldn’t say that in Brazil
- The US team averaged 12.2 million viewers on Fox during their World Cup run
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UFC boss Dana White has claimed that he ‘can’t stand’ soccer in a resurfaced clip in which he also labels the world’s most popular pastime as the ‘least talented sport on earth.’
The 53-year-old, who’s served as UFC’s president since 2001, was comparing hockey to his least favorite sport, which he further downgraded by claiming that ‘there’s a reason three-year-olds’ can play it.
‘Soccer? Whole other ball game,’ White told reporters in a clip that has resurfaced during the World Cup. ‘I can’t stand soccer, I think that it’s the least talented sport on earth.’
UFC president Dana White has slammed soccer and said ‘there’s a reason three-year-olds’ play it in a resurfaced clip that’s gone viral since the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar
‘You run around a kick a ball,’ the American added before a reporter interrupted to tell him that he wouldn’t have such a hot take if he were in Brazil.
‘Dude, I say this in every country where you’re playing a game where the net is this big, right, and the score is three to one,’ White replied.
The man whose net worth is believed to be around $500 million then compared the size of a rather large soccer goal to the tiny, six-by-four feet goal in hockey, asking reporters if they know ‘how untalented you have to be to score’ three points on a net that’s this big.’
‘When you’re playing a game where the net is this big right, and the score is 3-1, are you s***ting me right now?,’ White further said. ‘Now in hockey, you have guys on skates, right? With crooked sticks, where they have to hit a puck into a net that’s the same size as a goalie, ok? That’s a sport where the score should be 3-1.’
A reporter said the UFC boss wouldn’t have such a hot take if he were in Brazil
White said that ice hockey is a much tougher sport to play than soccer due to the size of the goals
While some may agree with the UFC’s president, many Americans seem not to.
During their 2022 World Cup campaign in Qatar, where they lost 3-1 to Holland in the tournament’s round of 16, the US team averaged 12.2 million viewers on Fox. Their 27 games on rated English-language networks from the beginning of 2020 through this fall averaged 668,000, according to Nielsen.
‘Soccer has become the most bewildering sport to follow on television,’ ex-ESPN president John Skipper, now CEO of Meadowlark Media, told the Associated Press.
He cited various networks for the US national team, the Premier League, the German Bundesliga, the Spanish league and the Champions League, some drawing more viewers than Major League Soccer.
Many Americans have picked up on soccer since the US’s run in Qatar to the last 16
‘Can you imagine European basketball being somewhat more popular than the NBA?’ Skipper said. We as Americans are just used to thinking that we are the world leaders in the sports that we like. And here, we’re not the world leaders.’
Soccer is seen by just a fraction of the audience of the NFL, which said it averaged 17.1 million on television and digital for the 2021 regular season and drew 42.1 million alone for the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game on Thanksgiving.
An average of 1.6 million viewers tuned in to watch NBA regular season games across ABC, ESPN and TNT in the 2021/22 season.
In baseball, the six games of the World Series, in which the Houston Astros achieved a six-game series win over the Philadelphia Phillies, were watched by an average of 11.8 million viewers.
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