UFC TV Channel "Makes Sense" to Dana White

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has grown exponentially over the past decade. Buying promotions such as the WEC, Pride and most recently, Strikeforce.

Now with all the fighters and footage they have, they could possibly expand MMA onto TV with it's own TV channel. Like the NFL Network or MLB Network.

"It's a different world out there right now," UFC president Dana White said to Mike Straka on HDNet's Inside MMA. "Going out and starting your own channel isn't as easy it was six or seven years ago. It's a lot tougher than it used to be."

White certainly didn't say it wasn't a plausible idea though.

"But does it make sense? Yeah, it makes sense," White said.

White has talked about this topic before, most recently, last October. It's a prospect that people everywhere would love to see happen.

"Sports Business Journal just came out with a survey asking big names in the industry which sport could start its own network, and four out of five said us," White told Broadcasting & Cable in an interview last October. "They are right. I agree. That will happen within the next couple years."

White has also read online and all over about having TV networks bidding for his programming. With the purchase of Strikeforce came a deal with Showtime. The UFC also obtained the WEC's contract with Versus and have aired some free cards on the network. But is he trying to pit the networks against each other for the exclusive rights?

"It makes me laugh sometimes when I'm cruising through the Internet and I read some of the stories that some of the reporters write," White told Straka. "Nobody knows what we're doing. We know what's going on. We're the ones that built this industry. We're the trailblazers that are out there making all these things happen."

The UFC has come out of relatively nowhere. Now it's kind of surreal for White to be thinking about a network for the UFC and where it is now in the mainstream world.

"To be where we are right now in such a short amount of time?" White said. "We bought the company literally 10 years ago, so to be sitting here now and talking about all this stuff and to be where we are today is pretty amazing in 10 years."