STOCKHOLM — It’s not that UFC president Dana White would prefer not to talk about the Alistair Overeem situation, he told reporters both during and after the UFC on FUEL TV 2 press conference early Sunday morning. It’s that he feels like he can’t, for his own health and well-being.
“I will snap and freak out and I don’t want to do that,” White told reporters following the conclusion of the press conference. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m too upset about it. Seriously, I can’t talk about it.”
In case you couldn’t tell, White’s a little stressed about what’s going on with the former Strikeforce heavyweight champion at the moment. Can you blame him?
With a main event title fight between Overeem and UFC heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos originally slated for UFC 146 on May 26, things were thrown into question after Overeem’s recent drug test with the Nevada State Athletic Commission came up positive for elevated testosterone levels. Now he’s looking at the possibility of being denied a license, and the UFC is looking at losing its highly anticipated main event.
So yes, that irks White just a bit. Which is why he’s trying to hold his tongue until the matter is settled by the NSAC, he explained.
“Everybody gets due process,” White said. “Alistair Overeem will have his due process with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. We’ll see what happens and we’ll go from there. When it all goes down, somebody else will speak about this. Not me.”
But as the Overeem situation has forced drug testing and testosterone use in MMA under the microscope, it seems more and more to be an inescapable topic. White maintained that the drug testing done on MMA fighters is the best and most thorough in pro sports, saying, “The [expletive] testing in this sport is insane. It is literally the gold standard in all of sports.”
And as for the guys who get caught by that testing? White had some words for them as well.
“You’re grown men. You’re [expletive] adults. You’re professional athletes. How many times do you have to be told not to do this? To the point where you just completely blow you’re entire [expletive] career?”
Yeah, probably best that White doesn’t get too deep into this one at 1:30 a.m. in Stockholm. It’s already been a long night.