Tom Brady’s Role in Sparking Dana White’s Vision for UFC 306 at the Sphere
Tom Brady, NFL all-time great, played a piece in the UFC booking the Las Vegas Sphere for its UFC 306 event. UFC president Dana White was on the fence about this until a phone call from Tom Brady convinced him.
Tom Brady and Dana White
September 14 the UFC will host Noche UFC, a Mexican Independence Day Celebration live from the Las Vegas Sphere. It will be headlined by Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili and Alexa Grasso vs. Valentina Shevchenko. A stacked event with two title matches for UFC 306.
However, the UFC was originally not interested in hosting an event at The Sphere. According to Dana White, he saw a U2 concert there with his friend Tom Brady, notable for his NFL career, and then changed his mind. In an interview, he said:
“Had Tom Brady not called me and asked me to go to U2 with him, I would have never even gone to the Sphere, and would have never seen it … Every day, when I wake up, crazy s**t goes down, and we have to deal with it on the fly, and it always leads to something bigger, or some other storyline, or something crazy that goes on.”
The reason they were hesitant to book at the Sphere was because of a prior bad relationship with the company MGM. Dana White explained:
“Like, look at this thing that happened with UFC Noche. The way that this played out is we’ve been treated like absolute s**t for the last 20 years by the MGM, and because of that, they allowed (Al) Haymon, God bless him, to slide in and steal that date after I had it and I flipped out.
Football star Tom Brady is certainly a long-time fan of the UFC and a friend of Dana White. When all-time great Jon Jones was making his heavyweight debut, Tom Brady sent him a message and said:
“Hey, Jon. I wanted to say welcome back to the main stage. It’s great to see the GOAT doing what he does best and doing what he’s meant to do. So I thought seven titles was a lot, you’ve doubled it, man! I know tonight’s not gonna be easy, Ciryl Gane standing on the other side of that octagon, he’s a bad man. It’s gonna be an incredible fight, Dana knows how to put on a great show, as always, and I wouldn’t miss this one for the world.”
