Dana White: All UFC main events to be five rounds

Following Wednesday’s UFC on FUEL TV’s headliner between Jake Ellenberger and Diego Sanchez, UFC President Dana White acknowledged that the promotion had made a mistake in scheduling the fight for just three rounds.

“We blew it,” White said. “It should have been a five-round fight.”

In fact, the UFC had previously announced that all main events would be five-rounds—whether a title was on the line or not. Likely as a result of the many fans and media that questioned why such a significant main event was scheduled for only three rounds, White asserted that the fight should have been a five-rounder, and was a mistake that wouldn’t be repeated.

“I was sitting here again tonight looking at the fight going, ‘Yeah, this should have been five rounds.’ I think that if Ellenberger and Diego went back in there for a fourth round the place would have went crazy. People were ready for it at home,” White told Ariel Helwani after the event.

White also noted that the decision to restrict Ellenberger vs. Sanchez to three rounds wasn’t a mandate from FUEL TV, but rather a choice made by the promotion.

“FUEL would have let us do 33 rounds if we wanted to,” White said. “I’m not gonna throw anybody under the bus but we blew it, we should have done it.”

The only potential exceptions for the UFC’s universal five-round main event regulation would be pre-existing contractual limits. “There will be five round fights from here on in…other than contracts that have already been signed,” White said.

After first hinting at the possibility of holding non-title, five-round main events in April of 2011, the UFC had officially announced the change by June. The increase from three to five rounds for main events is a welcome change for both fighters and fans: five rounds reduce the chances of indecisive endings and their subsequent controversial judging, as well as adding some measure of grandeur to main events.

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