After Justin Bieber sent out a tweet to publicly challenge Tom Cruise in a fight inside the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) fighting ring, UFC president Dana White revealed that he received a secret phone call confirming the fight could actually happen.
According to TMZ Sports, the co-CEO of the William Morris Endeavor agency that owns UFC, Ari Emanuel, spoke to Bieber’s manager over the phone, then dialed up White and added him to the call.
Scooter Braun, Bieber’s manager, apparently insisted that Bieber “would absolutely fight if Tom wanted to do it,” reported the news outlet on June 20.
“I wanna challenge Tom Cruise to fight in the octagon,” Bieber wrote on Twitter on June 10.
To try to encourage Cruise to accept the challenge, Bieber appealed to his pride.
“Tom if you don’t take this fight your scared and you will never live it down,” he added. “Who is willing to put on the fight? @danawhite ?”
I wanna challenge Tom Cruise to fight in the octagon. Tom if you dont take this fight your scared and you will never live it down. Who is willing to put on the fight? @danawhite ?
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) June 10, 2019
TMZ Sports then met up with White to inquire about his thoughts on Bieber’s challenge.
The interviewer mentioned Bieber tagging White in his tweet, and White interjected in order to reveal the secret phone call he received.
“I’m going to tell you something interesting, okay?” White said. “So obviously this thing came out, lots of people will, you know, talk about fighting somebody in the UFC and things like that, whether it’s NFL players or celebrities or whatever. It happens a lot.”
“So obviously I saw it like everybody else did and you know, I didn’t pay much attention to it,” he added. “It picked up a lot of steam and was everywhere. … I got a phone call from a couple of real guys who said that they really do want to do this fight and they believe that Tom Cruise would do the fight.”
“And I told them, ‘Well I’ll tell you this if that’s true, if that’s true, and everybody involved in this thing really wants to do it, we can talk.'”
The interviewer expressed his disbelief when he discovered that White would actually follow through if everything lined up.
“Let me tell you what, I would be an idiot not to make this fight,” White replied.
When questioned about the probability that a fight like this would ever happen, White said he was open to any possibility.
“I didn’t think the Floyd and Conor was going to happen and it did. So let me tell you what, anything is possible these days. Anything is possible.”
On the question of advertising the fight between Bieber and Cruise, the interviewer wanted to know if White could pull off the promotion well enough for it to be successful.
“That would be the easiest fight to ever promote in the history of my career,” White said.
Social Media Response
After this interview, social media users gave their thoughts on this fight in the comment thread.
“Everyone wants to see this circus match. I’d watch it.. lol,” one user said.
“Real life celebrity death match ????????,” said another.
One user started calling for fights between other celebrities.
“Nicki Minaj vs Cardi B make it happen Dana! ????”
Meanwhile, others doubted the fight between Cruise and Bieber was a good idea or that it would ultimately happen.
“I don’t think Tom Cruise would want to hurt anybody. And I don’t think J.B. CAN hurt anybody. Fight won’t happen.”
