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Dana White has insisted that no part of the Ultimate Fighting Championship is for sale despite conducting a video interview on Bloomberg in which the UFC president indicated a willingness to take on a limited partner.

White said he was asked at least "50 (expletive) times" by reporter Greg Miles whether he'd be willing to sell a share of the company.

"This is (expletive) bad; it's not what I said," White said of the Bloomberg report. "Here's the bottom line: Basically, it was a longer story and he kept asking if we would sell this thing or not.

"I kept saying 'No. No, we won't sell it,' and I'd go through this whole (expletive) thing about how we're all 40 years old and we're young and we're the visionaries for this thing.

"We know where we're taking this thing. We know where it's going. We have no interest in selling it.

"And going public? We don't need the (expletive) money. You go public when you want to raise cash. You raise capital to do something bigger. We don't want to do that. We're not looking to do that."

In the brief interview, White said, "For what we value this thing at, you'd have to find somebody with a lot of cash laying around, somebody who has got a lot of cash who wants to come into this business, get a piece of it and just sit over there and not tell us what to do."

White said that not only was the clip shown out of context, but he said he had repeatedly told Miles the UFC was not for sale.

Miles, though, kept asking the same question, White said, and White said he finally answered the way he did.

"He kept (expletive) pushing and pushing," White said. "He said, 'okay, hypothetically speaking, would you ever sell a piece of it?' I said, 'I guess we'd sell a tiny little piece. We'd probably sell a tiny little piece.'

"But, here's the thing: I want it to be known that this guy kept pushing me and pushing me. I said 'No, we wouldn't go public. No, we wouldn't sell it.'"

He said later that the only way he and partners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta would ever consider selling a piece of the UFC would be with the right strategic partner who would further their goals of supplanting football as the world's most popular sport, getting the sport sanctioned worldwide and standardising the rules.

When asked for an explanation as to why he would give in when being pressed by Miles, White again was emphatic the UFC is not for sale.

"Me and him were going back and forth," White said. "We are not selling a piece of this thing to anybody. The bottom line, the reality is it would have to be a serious, big-time player who would be a good strategic partner.

"We're not interested in selling a piece of this to anybody. Me, Frank and Lorenzo are the three owners. We have an awesome relationship. Everything runs smoothly. It's perfect.

"And for us to even offer somebody a piece, it would be the biggest compliment in (expletive) history because they'd have to be a serious strategic partner. It's the only (expletive) way we'd do it.

"Why would we do that?" White asked rhetorically. "We have this incredibly successful business. We know exactly where we want to go with it. And the only way we would do this, if we did sell a piece of it, it would be with some serious, serious player, a big-time strategic partner. That's it.

"So the thing was really taken out of context because the guy was pushing me and pushing me and pushing me about, What do you mean? You'd never sell it? You'd never go public? How about a piece? Would you sell a little piece?'

"The guy kept pushing me, you know what I mean, and that was my (expletive) answer."

Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports / Eurosport