UFC President Dana White is a man who wears his emotions on his sleeve and doesn’t have much of a filter. He continually snipes at fans and reporters on Twitter over the silliest things, and his mouth has gotten himself in trouble before (most notably, when he ranted about a report from MMA reporter Loretta Hunt on video years ago).
One frequent target of White’s is Ariel Helwani of Fox Sports and MMAFighting.com. Helwani is a fixture on Fox’s UFC coverage, both breaking news and conducting interviews in studio and at live events.
Last week, Helwani was reporting about UFC 197, and dropped this nugget about the card, which Anderson Silva said would be moved from Brazil because of the country’s economic crisis.
As of now, talk is a couple big fights for 3/5 but nothing finalized just yet. Hopefully by this weekend. Until then, peace and love #mystic
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) December 29, 2015
That tweet apparently pissed White off.
@arielhelwani you are full of shit and guilty of click baiting too.
— danawhite (@danawhite) December 29, 2015
Well, that settles things. I guess that means the show will be in Brazil after all, right?
Of course not. Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter reported on Thursday that the card on March 5th would be…in Las Vegas. With a couple big fights at the top of the card – Holly Holm vs Miesha Tate and Conor McGregor vs Rafael Dos Anjos. Yes, those would qualify as “big fights”.
https://twitter.com/jeremybotter/status/685288570525859841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Both MMA Fighting and ESPN would confirm Botter’s report, noting that neither of the fights were officially signed yet.
I understand that Dana White feels the need to defend his company and their business practices, but blasting a reporter as respected and connected to your company as Helwani seems like the wrong way to go about things. Could you imagine something like this happening in any other sport? Rob Manfred isn’t blasting reporters from Fox or ESPN. Adam Silver isn’t calling out anyone from Turner or ESPN.
What does this prove aside from “Dana White is overly sensitive”? Nothing. It’s ridiculous and juvenile, and maybe White’s New Year’s Resolution for 2016 should be to relax and not continually snipe at the media that is promoting his company.
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