The long-running public standoff between MMA reporter Ariel Helwani and UFC president Dana White is well-known. But now, White is in business with Helwani’s former employer at ESPN and rolling after a lucrative merger with the WWE last year. Because of that platform, the issues Helwani has highlighted that led to his ban from UFC and run-ins with White are impossible to ignore.
Just this month, fighter Sean Strickland brought a ton of negative attention to the UFC over his views on LGBTQ people and women. Vince McMahon stepped down last week from WWE and the parent company TKO’s board of directors over sex trafficking allegations.
In an interview on Pablo Torre Finds Out released Tuesday, Helwani explained why getting a job at ESPN was actually the worst chapter of his relationship with White. As the UFC began a partnership with ESPN, Helwani was hired to cover the sport for the worldwide leader. Because of ESPN’s stature, White saw Helwani as an enemy of the UFC even more than when Helwani worked at Fox.
“After the banning (at UFC 200) and the unbanning, actually it was a pretty good existence for me,” Helwani explained. “We just sort of accepted that we’re not going to speak to each other. I would see him walking down the hallway, no problem. I would ask questions at press conferences. Yeah, there were times he would get annoyed by my presence or whatever, but it was totally fine.”
Helwani explained that there was no going back once he stood between White and a successful ESPN partnership.
“The worst thing to happen for our relationship actually was me going to ESPN,” Helwani told Torre. “Because for Dana White, getting to ESPN, that was his North Star. That’s what he always wanted. It was huge for them, and he gets there and me, I’m standing there. I’m the new MMA reporter that they just hired … he freaked out.”
While Helwani was at ESPN, UFC leadership seemingly made it their mission to make his job as hard as possible.
“They tried to make my life at ESPN so difficult,” Helwani said. “They were obsessed with getting all the scoops away from me, and making my life difficult, making me feel unwelcome … It drove them nuts that I’m at the event, representing ESPN with that microphone.”
In recent years, White has survived a public domestic violence incident. He has become a vocal proponent for his fighters sharing their social and political views, even at UFC press conferences.
And Disney has rarely, if ever, held him accountable as a partner or covered him at ESPN with the scrutiny a sports executive deserves.
“This is what the fight business is all about,” Helwani said. “Whatever is good for business is what they want.”
After leaving ESPN in 2021, Helwani continues to cover MMA at Vox Media and The Ringer, but he understands many will not like his work.
“I get it when people say, ‘I don’t want to be bothered with the minutiae, I don’t want to be bothered with the negativity.’ And guess what, I don’t want that either,” Helwani told Torre. “But if I’m going to cover this sport, and if I’m going to devote 23 years to cover this sport, I’m sorry but I have to talk sometimes about the good, the bad and the ugly, the business … otherwise I’m a sham like so many other people.”
While Helwani has not interviewed White since 2016 and is a persona non grata in UFC circles, he clearly isn’t going away.
[Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube]
