Although most of the MMA community is well aware of Alistair Overeem’s suspension, one man who has been out of the loop is Dana White. The UFC president first found out about the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s ruling while speaking to Jim Rome.
Obviously, White wasn’t too optimistic about Overeem’s chances and chose to take the No. 1 contender out of his scheduled title match before an official ruling came down. Although White was surprised by the commission’s ruling.
“Nine months? Nine months isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I thought he would get a year easily,” White said. (JimRome.com)
Rome presented Overeem’s defense to White, and the UFC president gave his initial thoughts on the matter of anti-inflammatory medicine causing the elevated testosterone levels.
Here’s the rules. If that’s the case, if he was on anti-inflammatories meds, whatever the deal was, you’re supposed to disclose that to the commission before the test whatever you’re taking. You’re supposed to disclose that to the commission before the test not after the test. (JimRome.com)
As one can tell by listening to the ongoing comments from White about the Overeem saga, the UFC President has been a bit rattled by the drug test failure. Perhaps White feels slighted on a personal level, as he shared an interesting conversation he and Overeem had prior to the failed test.
Before he went in there he sat down to lunch with me and my partner looked us in the face and said ‘I’m the most tested athlete in all of sports they can test me whenever they want to.” Well he flew in for the press conference, they tested him and now he’s on a 9 month suspension.(JimRome.com)
When presented with the question of whether or not he feels the heavyweight contender lied to him, White was quick to answer with a resounding “I know he lied to me.”(JimRome.com)
White has been very vague in discussing whether Overeem will have a future with the UFC once his suspension is over, but he did perhaps show his hand a bit by indirectly saying Overeem isn’t a guy with whom he wants to do business.
You know you sit down and you have these guys that you do business with and you say let’s sit down, be honest with me and let’s figure out how we can work together. And then they sit there and lie to your face. I don’t know. Not the kind of guys I want to do business with.(JimRome.com)
Stay tuned to BleacherReport.com for all the news regarding Overeem, White and the upcoming UFC 146 PPV.
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