What UFC 310 revealed: Dana White's PRIDE nostalgia trip

He helped kill the corpse of his enemy and now romanticizes the good old days.

It’s not much of a surprise that there was more news made outside of the cage than inside of it at UFC 310.

It was a surprise that Dana White admitted that, as part of their need to control the public relations narrative, that he didn’t know what to say about the Conor McGregor liable verdict in Ireland. The implicit observation one can make is UFC didn’t publish a response because if he (and Endeavor) knew how to handle the public relations crisis, they would have done so already.

It was a surprise to see how down-in-the-dumps the UFC front office was about claiming a $5 million gate with 18,000+ fans for a fight card that would have been lucky to draw a tenth of that gate a generation ago.

But the biggest, and largest, surprise by far at the UFC 310 post-fight press conference with Dana White was his romanticism about the good old days of MMA when PRIDE was around.

“There's such a rich history of MMA in Japan and some of the best days of my life were our rivalry with PRIDE and it was a really fun time in my life,” Dana White

How did Kai Asakura headlining UFC 310 bring up such memories?

You’re not alone in wondering why Dana White would care about the Japanese MMA scene in late 2024 — but there were several hints from the UFC front office that, yes, the scars of the past and how the reconstruction of the Japanese MMA scene in a post-PRIDE world has gone is something that Dana White really does care about.

Most rational people would call this a necrophiliac obsession of a promoter who was all too willing to kill off his greatest rival.

PRIDE, with its financial and political muscle, and front-man Nobuyuki Sakakibara helped set the promotion on fire in an ugly scandal. One of the largest modern sports-related tabloid scandals in the history of Japan.

And UFC was right there to buy the distressed assets to help cement their multi-billion dollar fight monopoly. Once PRIDE died, so did the last major-league rival to the UFC machine under Frank & Lorenzo Fertitta.

So why is Dana White still thinking about PRIDE after all of this time? What did PRIDE have to do with the UFC 310 fight card? A card with exorbitant ticket prices that was not promoted very well in a shocking display of contempt for their home town market?

Dana White’s UFC 310 post-fight press conference revealed two very harsh truths about where his head is at heading into the 2025 UFC campaign — and why he can’t stop thinking about his role in killing big-time MMA in the Japanese marketplace.