My gosh the ‘he said, she said’ in this Golden Glory Zuffa situation. Zuffa says one thing and Golden Glory says the complete opposite. We need to get both Dana White and Bas Boon in a room at the same time t answer the questions-maybe then we will get a clearer idea on what really happened and what is really going on. Let’s keep it one hundred guys. Bas Boon has been pretty quiet about the whole situation–the Golden Glory fighters have been the ones giving us the scoop on their side of this story.
Early this morning though, Bas released a statement saying he doesn’t agree with Dana White’s statements about the manner in which Golden Glory fighters were paid and that despite all this tomfoolery, Alistair Overeem is still open to an exclusive contract with the UFC. He also blames issues with Scott Coker and Strikeforce arrangements as part of the problems between Zuffa and Golden Glory. MMAFighting.com posted some of Bas’ comments in an article this morning:
“We just want to be able to produce great fighters and create great fights for the fans. We have no intention for co-promotion deals and are even willing to make an exclusive deal for Alistair Overeem to fight in the UFC, if the terms are right.”
“The payment was done how the UFC wanted, I do not understand why Danna claims we did not agree? We did not have a choice and never said we would not fight in the future or that we would refuse to work like this in the future (we worked out that problem with the Zuffa lawyer in the Vancouver and even agreed with their new sponsor policies). Maybe there is a miscommunication and Danna was not well informed that the direct payment issue was solved and no longer an issue.”
“I introduced Scott (Coker) through a partner of mine in LA to some powerful people in the U.S. (Scott was very surprised after this meeting and exited and mailed me after his meeting with these people how impressed he was). I never could have guessed that at the same moment I was talking to Scott to make a massive move for becoming a real competitor to the UFC, Scott was already talking with the same UFC for selling Strikeforce. I trusted Scott with some business plans. … The problems with strikeforce was that we made some agreements with Scott which were creating headaches now Zuffa took over.”
Hmmm, sounds like Scott Coker is getting thrown under the proverbial bus and into the mix as part of the reason for the problems between Zuffa and Golden Glory. Maybe Scott Coker needs to be in that room with Dana and Bas to really understand what went wrong with this siutation. [source]
