UFC president Dana White has responded to a Melbourne mayor’s call to remove Octagon girls from the upcoming Australia event.
UFC 243 takes place in Melbourne, Australia and will be headlined by a massive middleweight title unification fight between Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya. However, earlier this month, Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp called for the UFC to move on past the outdated practice of having ring girls.
“It’s 2019, do we really still need scantily-clad women to wander around the middle of a fighting ring between rounds?” Capp said. “Grid girls are no longer part of Formula One, walk-on girls are no longer part of professional darts — surely it’s time to move on.”
That obviously didn’t go down well with White who recently clapped back:
“Our Octagon girls, they’re as much a part of the UFC brand as anyone, they’re ambassadors for our sport,” White told The Daily Telegraph. “So for someone who has absolutely no education whatsoever about who these girls are – about what they do, what they mean to the UFC – to start going off, it’s ridiculous.”
White pointed to how some of the Octagon girls like Arianny Celeste and Brittney Palmer have used their jobs to go on to bigger things:
“So you can look at any sport you like, nobody treats women better than we do,” White added. “And I’d suggest these people calling on them to be banned go have a look at what these girls do with the company, the type of money they’re making.
“Do that and you’ll realize these girls are as important to our brand as anyone else in the company. And that’s exactly the way we treat them.”
Do you agree with White?
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