As if UFC 199 wasn’t crazy enough, highly respected MMA journalist Ariel Helwani has reportedly been ‘banned for life’ from all future UFC events for reasons not yet confirmed.
Helwani alerted the MMA community via Twitter that he had been escorted out of the arena by Zuffa staff, following the conclusion of the co-main event bantamweight title bout between Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber.
Earlier today Helwani took to Twitter once more to thank fans and fighters for their support, and stated he would address the issue on The MMA Hour tomorrow:
Thank you. I sincerely can’t thank you all enough. I’m still here. All will be addressed tomorrow on #themmahour, as well as other outlets.
It’s hard to wrap my head around all of this, but to everyone fan, fighter, manager, friend who reached out: thank you.
And to every journalist/media member who tweeted or reached out: I’m eternally grateful to you. Thank you all very much. Until tomorrow…
FTR, I will forever be proud to be an MMA journalist. I am proud of that title and take the responsibility that comes w/ it seriously.
Helwani also spoke to Yahoo Sports for a brief period of time, describing the incident that went down Saturday night:
“I was brought to the back by UFC [public relations] and told by Dana White that I had to leave the arena,” Helwani said. “Dana mentioned that from what I recalled that Brock Lesnar was upset the news was released early and that this could have ruined their deal.
It was then, Helwani said, that UFC President Dana White accused the journalist of having a ‘mole’ on the inside feeding him information:
“He repeatedly said, ‘Go cover Bellator. We don’t want you here.’ … I said, ‘What did I do wrong?’ He said, ‘You’re too negative.’
“I never go off one source anyway, so I guess they’re saying now there are two moles,” Helwani said. “But with God as my witness, there is no ‘mole.’ Honestly, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I’m almost embarrassed because people are saying, ‘You’re standing up for journalism.’
“I’m not doing any great investigative journalism here. This is not ground-breaking stuff. I’m not going to win a Pulitzer for this.”
You can check out Helwani’s Tweets from today bellow:
The MMA Hour will stream live on MMAFighting.com tomorrow (June 6, 2016) at 1 p.m. ET
The post Dana White Reportedly Accused Ariel Helwani Of Having A ‘Mole’ appeared first on LowKick MMA.