Dana White pushed back on the idea that the UFC gives soft matchmaking lanes to marketable names, then used Paddy Pimblett, Conor McGregor, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva, and Georges St-Pierre as his examples.
❌🤩 Dana White says the UFC are never making favorable matches for their stars:
“Let me tell you what we don’t do. Favorable matches. Everybody had to fight through their way to the top in the UFC, including Paddy Pimblett, Conor, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva and the list goes on.” pic.twitter.com/HZfLq97jQR
— Home of Fight (@Home_of_Fight) July 18, 2026
White made the comments during a Spinnin Backfist interview. The clip started with the criticism that followed Pimblett before his latest surge.
“Our guy Paddy, what a night for Paddy the Baddy. Absolutely unreal win. And I feel it was a win that may have put a lot of people on notice and it felt good to be a longtime Paddy supporter.”
The setup then moved into the fan complaint that Pimblett had been moved carefully.
“We got a lot of pushback in the beginning. Oh, he’s getting favorable matchups. Oh, he’s not UFC caliber this, he’s not caliber that. And then he goes in there and has a fight here against Gaethje. And then Benoit Saint Denis puts out 50 seconds.”
White cut in before the thought could go much further.
“I’ll tell you what we don’t do. Favorable matchups. Okay? Everybody’s had to fight their way to the top in the UFC, including Paddy, including Conor, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva. Yeah. Go, you know, Georges St-Pierre. Go through the laundry list of guys who have been here, nobody had favorable matchups.”
White grouped Pimblett with former champions and long-running UFC headliners while rejecting the idea that any of them were moved through protected matchmaking.
Pimblett Follow-Up Got Specific
The same exchange then turned to Pimblett’s loss to Justin Gaethje and the way that performance has been viewed differently since Gaethje later beat Ilia Topuria.
“You see after his last couple fights, even the Gaethje loss, I feel like the Gaethje loss, especially after Gaethje goes and beats Topuria, has aged very well where people are like, yeah, he went in there and traded with Gaethje for five rounds and was still on his feet at the end of it. And he was winning rounds at the end of that loss.”
White answered with numbers instead of a rankings argument.
“He gained 2 million followers that weekend.”
He said the crowd reaction after Pimblett’s next win showed how much the loss had failed to cool him off.
“He comes out the other night and the crowd is responding to him like he’s defending his title for the [expletive] 25th time, right? Everybody’s going crazy.”
“He wins in [expletive] unbelievably spectacular fashion and he gains 300,000 followers in the win.”
White also said Pimblett’s profile had already reached entertainment companies outside the cage.
“I’m laying in bed. My phone starts ringing the next day on Sunday and it’s the producers of MobLand. They’re like, ‘We want Paddy Pimblett.'”
“Get the [expletive] out of here.”
The full interview video is below.
White Put Pimblett In The Star Group
Asked if Pimblett had become one of the UFC’s biggest stars, White did not hedge.
“Definitely one of the biggest stars.”
When the follow-up narrowed it to top five, White again answered directly.
“Definitely.”
White then named other fighters he sees in that high-visibility group.
“I mean, Jon Jones is still around. You have Ilia. Merab has done very well. Islam. Absolutely.”
Arman Tsarukyan also came up during the star discussion, with White crediting how much attention he has created outside fight night.
“Arman definitely is. That guy’s done a great job of getting out there and getting himself a lot of attention and a lot of Nina Drama work. You know what I mean?”
“If you look at the people that have been built, you know, it is impossible to deny that Nina’s built some of these guys, from Merab to Sean Strickland, Arman, and these guys are smart. They lean into the relationship with her.”
McGregor Is Still A Separate Problem
McGregor was part of White’s no-favorable-matchups answer, but White did not frame McGregor’s next booking as something the UFC is close to solving. Asked about McGregor again wanting Max Holloway, White said the injury timeline comes first.
“Not even thinking about it.”
“Conor still has to have knee surgery and go through everything that he’s gonna have to go through. And I understand. Listen, he’s very unhappy with the way [expletive] played out, but you’re a human being. You’re older. You haven’t fought in five years. And your body, listen, Father Time is undefeated. Okay?”
White said the promotion can only talk about another McGregor matchup once McGregor’s rehab produces a real training timeline.
“So, who the [expletive] knows what’s going to happen with Max over the next, you know, year and what’s going to happen with Conor over the next year. So, I don’t even think about that type of stuff until it becomes a reality.”
“When Conor reaches out and says, ‘Finished all my physical therapy, leg’s in good place. They told me I can start training full-time now,’ then you start thinking about what’s next.”
The follow-up asked whether the UFC would hesitate to build McGregor into another major main event after the latest injury ending.
“I don’t know. It’s, you know… I’m just not even thinking about any of that stuff cuz it’s so long and so far away it doesn’t matter.”
White was also asked about a possible Floyd Mayweather rematch if McGregor decided to box again instead of returning to the Octagon.
“Here’s my problem with the Mayweather McGregor fight. First of all, the first one, you know, was leading into it, I was just like, this is crazy. But, you know, we’ve seen that fight before.”
“When you talk about the Max fight, right, Conor won the fight with Max when they first fought. Max wins this fight. You have like a trilogy there. Whatever. There was nothing about the Mayweather fight that makes me say, you know, if we did that again, there might be a different outcome.”
White later addressed the pre-fight-injury claim around McGregor and said people who saw the warmup did not believe McGregor entered the cage already hurt.
“According to people that saw Conor in his dressing room warming up, you know, they’re like, ‘There’s no way he was injured. He was kicking the [expletive].'”
White said McGregor told him the opening kick was part of the camp, not an improvised risk.
“Dana, I worked on that kick my entire camp and I landed it. I hurt a lot of guys with it.”
“I can’t believe he threw that kick to open the fight. I know he throws crazy kicks to open the fight, but you’re off a five-year-off injury and you’re like, I’m throwing a jumping switch kick. You’re like, holy [expletive], you’ve got balls.”
The lightweight picture is crowded enough without a McGregor guess. White said the division already has several possible directions after Pimblett’s rise and the latest movement around the top contenders.
“It’s a traffic jam at the top. There’s so many great fighters at lightweight where it almost seems like you could put together a bunch of different matchups that would make sense right now.”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, if you look at coming into this summer, we knew we launched on Paramount and we knew we were going to do some big stuff in the summer. And then every year as we go into October and November, we end up having some great fights. So it’s going to be a hell of an end of this year.”
White’s answer leaves the UFC with a busy lightweight board. Pimblett has momentum, McGregor remains tied to a knee-surgery timeline, and the promotion is still sorting contender movement around the top of the division.
