18 Questions for John McCarthy: Part 2

Sherdog: Going back to Dana White. He called you an enemy. I think part of that was the fact you did some commentary on the first Affliction card. Were you employed by Affliction?
McCarthy: No, I wasn't employed by Affliction. I was employed by The Fight Network, who made a deal with Affliction for the rights to broadcast in Canada -- the rights to broadcast Affliction “Banned.” They gave Affliction the rights to use me. I never made a dime from Affliction. I made my normal salary from The Fight Network. Yeah, I was offered a job, decided it wasn't the right thing for me to do, and that's my decision. But as far as me working for Affliction, the second Affliction show came up, I refereed it. Why did I referee it? Well, the California State Athletic Commission gave me a license. They call me and ask me to work this show, and I accept it as though it's any other show, and who paid me? The California State Athletic Commission. Dana can look at it that way, but he'd be wrong.

Sherdog: Affliction and maybe Strikeforce are really the only competition for Zuffa and the UFC here in North America. What are the roles of those companies in MMA? And do you think that they are serious competitors with the UFC?
McCarthy: When you're saying competition, I don't know that anyone is competition for the UFC. A good fight is a good fight, so me personally, I will go and watch anything that's a good fight. The UFC is definitely the brand. Affliction has come out and put on two shows and done a remarkable job if you ask me. That's off of two shows.

People talk about losing money, and I'm sure they have, but you look at the history of the sport and how promotions came up. When the UFC first started, it made money right away and that's why they stayed doing it, then went into some bad times and Zuffa ended up buying it for next to nothing. When they bought it, they put a lot of money into it and started losing money. They were trying to get people to understand what the sport was and trying to get people hooked on it, and they were failing miserably, losing a lot of money, but that's because Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta have a lot of money. No one wants to lose money, but they were able to sustain a lot of losses most people couldn't sustain.

Look at the pay-per-views the UFC is doing. They're doing remarkable numbers -- 800,000 buys, a million buys. That's remarkable in today’s economy. But when they started out, they were getting 35,000-40,000 buys, and it was horrible. Finally they put together UFC 40, Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock fought, and it bumped it up to 150,000 buys and it was a huge thing at the time. In their first show, Affliction did that -- 100, 110, 115,000 and the second show did more than that. When Pride came to the U.S., they put it on live for people to watch, and they did terrible numbers -- 35,000, 40,000. No one has done great numbers except the UFC, and now Affliction comes out and does very respectable numbers. You've got to give them credit.

Strikeforce isn’t using that pay-per-view format. You're going to see a difference in Strikeforce from the UFC in the fact that the UFC is a self-contained bubble in their matchmaking, their commentators, their fighters; everything is housed within the Zuffa sphere. It's not like NBC buys the Super Bowl and so NBC brings in their commentators and they talk about what they want. Well, that's what you're going to see with Strikeforce because with them being on Showtime, they'll be able to put on the commentators they want, but if they get on CBS, they're going to have a different view journalistically covering the sport than Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan. And I think Mike and Joe do a phenomenal job. I love listening to them, but it'll be a little different because of the complexity of who is in control.