When Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White casually brought up a proposed fight/wrestling match Vince McMahon laid on the table for him some time ago, details were sparse. He was awfully vague about the situation, though he did say Vince wanted to do something in either UFC or WWE.
A few more details quickly came out via the Wrestling Observer that revealed McMahon had hoped to put the match together for WrestleMania 27 as the main event of that year's show. Now, even more details have been revealed thanks to a sudden curiosity in the story.
White was asked about it at the UFC 158 post-fight press conference last night in Montreal and gave this explanation:
"Vince and I were talking -- and you never know what's serious and what's not with Vince -- but Vince literally said to me 'we can do a match in the WWE or we could fight in the UFC or we could fight in the WWE.' That's basically what he said.
"I said, 'you're crazy. I laughed and said 'you're crazy.' No (I didn't think he was joking). He's a competitive maniac. Maybe (it was personal). Maybe he wanted to kick my ass on national television, I don't know. No, it didn't come out like that, that's not how it was, but you never know with him. When you talk to him, when you sit down and talk to him, you don't know what the fuck, you don't know where you're at or where you stand."
That's not saying much we didn't already know, especially the part about Vince being a crazy person who you can never tell where you stand with.
Thankfully, Dave Meltzer made sure to clarify the entire ordeal on last night's episode of Wrestling Observer Radio (click here to listen and/or subscribe and if you haven't already, you really should):
"This conversation took place in October of, cause Dana doesn't remember when and I haven't talked to him in detail to refresh his memory, but this conversation took place in October of 2010 and it was about a match for 'Mania in 2011.
"It was actually the same conversation (where WWE was trying to put together both a match between Undertaker and Brock Lesnar and Vince McMahon and Dana White).
"Vince wanted to do a professional wrestling match. Yes, they would split. The idea would be Undertaker beats Brock and he figured the only way he could get Undertaker to beat Brock was for Dana to beat him. That's where Vince was coming from. I don't even know if Dana understood that but that's where Vince was coming from. Because it's like, how are you going to go and negotiate with this guy -- you gotta remember, this is before the Cain (Velasquez) fight and Brock is still the heavyweight champion of the UFC -- so how are you going to get ... this guy to agree to let Brock Lesnar lose to Undertaker? How do you do it? So that was Vince's idea of how to do it.
"Unfortunately, the thing was Dana told him right away that he can't be involved in something that's fake, he just couldn't do it. That's when Vince did the 'well, we can always do it for real' thing, which was completely nutty because if you're going to do it like that ... where are you going to do it and now you're talking about sanctioning if you're going to do something like that and who is going to sanction Vince? It's ridiculous. I don't think Vince even thought this out.
"The whole thing was just ludicrous. There was no chance of this happening. It was just a Vince idea. As far as why, that's why. And also because you gotta remember, their pay-per-view business in 2010 that's when it was rock bottom and they were looking for something to jolt their business and Vince will do anything for business. He thinks outside of the box and that's good. Thinking out of the box got them the original WrestleMania to put the company on the map. Thinking out of the box got them (Mike) Tyson when (Eric) Biscoff turned down Tyson thinking he was too expensive and it ended up being a turning point in the history of WWE and the turning point in the wrestling war. The (Donald) Trump thing was thinking out of the box and that was the biggest show they've ever done. So that's what it was, that's how it happened."
That's one hell of a story and it's something of a shock that it hasn't been told until now, a full two years and some change after the fact.
There were rumblings at the time that WWE wanted Lesnar for WrestleMania so he could lose to Undertaker, which is why they shot the impromptu angle at UFC 121 immediately after Brock lost the heavyweight championship to Cain Velasquez. That obviously never came to fruition, much like the proposed meeting between White and McMahon.
At least it has made for one hell of a story, though, huh?