War of Words: Dana White vs. Gary Shaw

It seems that Gary Shaw and Dana White just don’t like each other. In the latest salvo Gary Shaw did his best Dana White impersonation by dropping several expletive adjectives. This was in response to Dana White saying that Kimbo Slice couldn’t beat B.J. Penn.

Its so refreshing during the current economic downturn to see two executives act like four year old brats. All kidding aside there is a method to their madness.

Dana White’s goal is pretty obvious. Keep the UFC as the elite brand of MMA. For those of you studying for an SAT the analogy section would be this: UFC is to MMA as Kleenex is to tissues paper.

The UFC and Dana White are fairly media savvy so these comments clearly have a purpose. All of Dana White’s negative statements are intended to devalue and de-legitimize their competition’s product, which tends to be their fighters (thus Kimbo can’t beat B.J.). We saw the same thing with Dana White’s comments towards PRIDE (some ended up being true others weren’t). By making outlandish comments you become the story as oppose to the competition’s upcoming network event on May 31st. The goal is to ultimately cast your brand and product as the superior one.

There is a risk with such vocal attacks. Dana White jeopardizes becoming the story instead of their product i.e. UFC 84 and their fighters. In doing so Dana White risks becoming Don King (someone he is on record saying destroyed boxing). Also by negatively attacking a similar product you risk devaluing your own product (if you call a fighter awful and worthless and then sign him you’ve hurt your own PR machine).

On the other hand, Gary Shaw is defending his product with equal voracity and he should. Gary Shaw’s goal is to put the EltieXC into a strong #2 slot of the U.S. MMA market and best case scenario make it a legitimate rival to the UFC. Perhaps these war of words help sell everyone’s product because it brings in outside attention. Creating storylines for fights and organizations has long been a selling point of combat sports.

So while these guys act like 14 year olds arguing about whose better at Halo 3 on Xbox Live, there is a real business strategy behind the expletives.