UFC 200: Adult Swim rolls out new Jones-Cormier commercial

Dana White doesn’t have a lot of free time on his hands, but the UFC president devotes what little he does to watching The Cartoon Network.

OK, to be fair, White has become, in his words, “a crazy, huge fan,” of Adult Swim, a cable network that airs from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET/PT on The Cartoon Network.

He sits in front of the television every evening laughing at shows like “King of the Hill,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Family Guy,” “The Cleveland Show,” and “American Dad.”

The commercials on Adult Swim are, again in White’s inimitable style, “crazy [expletive] up stuff that is targeted at the younger generation.” All the blockbuster movies are advertised on the network, though in a non-traditional way.

White got so into the network that he began to research it, as well as its ratings and its audience. What he learned in essence was that Adult Swim’s audience and the MMA audience is eerily similar.

The demographic for the channel is 18-to-34-year-old males which, coincidentally, happens to be the UFC’s primary demo.

“I learned that their audience is like 40-something-percent white, 40-something percent African American and like 11-12 percent Hispanic,” White said. “They’ve got two million viewers and they’re totally engaged and committed to this. I just kept going deeper and deeper into it and it was fascinating. For a year, a year-and-a-half, I was watching and studying and learning about it. It was really fascinating and I learned a lot.”

Like most fight promoters, White allows In Demand, which represents the cable companies, as well as DirecTV and Dish, to place his ads. They’ve never advertised on Adult Swim.

As White learned more about it, he decided to change that. But he did it in a very Dana White way.

He reached out to Mike Judge, an animator, actor, writer and producer who created “Beavis and Butthead,” and wrote and directed the movies “Office Space” and “Idiocracy.”

White pitched Judge his idea, to do a cartoon-based commercial about UFC 200 that would be for Adult Swim. Judge was into it and brought on animator John Kricfalusi, who created “The Ren & Stimpy Show.”

“Those guys are absolute legends in the business,” White said.

They’ve created an animated spot that features light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier and interim champ Jon Jones. You can watch the commercial here.

White thinks he may have found a new spot to court potential MMA fans.

“That whole Comic-Con crowd, they’re super loyal and passion and its demographics are a lot like ours,” White said. “I’ve had a lot of fun with this and I think it makes a lot of sense to try.”