Former UFC play-by-play commentator, Mike Goldberg has revealed he ran into UFC president, Dana White by chance during an appearance at his son’s hockey tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada — describing the situation as “awkward“”.
Goldberg, who spent time under the UFC’s banner as a play-by-play commentator between 1997 and 2017, recently parted ways with the Scott Coker-led banner, Bellator MMA as their play-by-play lead between the summer of 2017 and April of this year, until the promotion’s debut on Showtime Sports.
Following the sale of the UFC back in 2016 to William Morris Endeavor-IMG for a cool billion, Goldberg left the promotion following UFC 207 — with his last fight on the promotion’s broadcast coming in the form of Amanda Nunes’ stunning first round knockout win over the returning, Ronda Rousey — scoring the first defence of her bantamweight championship.
Speaking with Heavy.com recently, Goldberg revealed that he had met with promotional leader, White during a hockey tournament in Las Vegas, where he was coaching his son’s team — describing the encounter as awkward. When spotting Golberg at the tournament, White was claimed to have asked, “what the f*ck are you doing here?“
“I walked up, and I said, ‘Hey, Dana (White), how are you?” Goldberg said. “We shook hands. I said I’d love to stay in touch. He said we should do that. And there you go. After that amount of time, it was just an awkward situation. It was a fluke, but then again maybe it was meant to be.“
Following his departure from the UFC, Goldberg revealed that there had been contact or communication from White regarding the decision to let him go.
“No conversation, no contact, nothing,” Goldberg said. “It took 15 years to build this wonderful family, and it felt like it took 15 minutes to destroy it. I love the UFC brand, and I represented it in the way that I was asked to for two decades. …It was somewhat of a bummer, to say the least.“
Following his final broadcast at UFC 207, the promotion didn’t air some form of tribute to Goldberg following his years as a play-by-play commentator, which resulted in some notable outbursts from the MMA community.
“Now that I’ve stepped back, I’m kind of glad they (the UFC) didn’t, because what turned out to be the tribute was everything that we’ve talked about and everything that I’ve read and that’s been posted all over the world for the past month,” Goldberg explained. “And you want to talk about a tribute? That’s the most powerful tribute that I could ever ask for.“