Dana White isn’t about to apologize for fighter bashing.
Dana White has never been shy about what he thinks. It’s his natural environment — whether it’s him lampooning the way Steve Mazzagatti refs, or calling out a journalist’s sources in completely obscene (and absurd) ways.
Sometimes his blood boiling bluster can be almost charming; like he’s not a stiff suit, but just a guy who “tells it like it is.” His rant against Elite XC was fun (and correct). “Season 9 motherf—kers!” always gets a chuckle out of me. And I’m forever jealous that he got to see Rage Against the Machine live.
But when the fighters themselves aren’t exempt from Dana’s wrath, at what point do you betray the essence of active promoting? It’s one thing to call out a fighter for legitimately screwing up. I don’t know the point of calling out a fighter for being guilty of what most have: an ego. Or the point of being publicly skeptical about fighters with actual injuries.
Or whatever the heck the Bad Blood series (the once scheduled lead-up to a potential boxing match between Dana White and Tito Ortiz) was supposed to be.
So it should come as no shock that Dana White is doubling down on his trash talk. Speaking with FOX news (via MMA Weekly).
“Well guess what? This isn’t the fun business. You don’t get to go out and put on a terrible performance and act like you just did something incredible,” White said when speaking with FOX News recently.
“The guys that I went after and the guys that I did that to, if you watched their performances and what happened that night, most of them deserved it.”
For better or worse, Dana tells it like it is. Even his version of what “it is” might be a series of presumptions, and guesswork.