Rumbles have been made in the MMA media that Dana White has crossed a line in regard to his handling of the Georges St-Pierre situation.
For those who somehow missed it, the long-reigning welterweight champ scored a controversial decision win over challenger Johny Hendricks. After the decision was read, St-Pierre poured his heart out in a way rarely seen in sports, never mind MMA. On the verge of tears, he choked out that he needed to take a leave of absence due to undisclosed personal issues and the toll his sport had taken on his body and mind.
I’ll defer to Jonathan Snowden’s summary of White’s reaction (which you can find the full version of here):
To say UFC promoter Dana White didn’t take this news particularly well is an understatement of somewhat epic proportions. White was furious, directing his anger at the Nevada State Athletic Commission, reporters who scored the fight for St-Pierre and even the champion himself. Despite St-Pierre’s clear personal and physical struggles, White had only one thing on his mind: getting his unraveling champion back in the cage.
White is known for his intense, emotional, off-the-cuff reactions to basically everything. It has, on numerous occasions, landed him in hot water. But after an intense night of fights, White said what is perhaps the most ludicrous thing of his career.
He said that Georges St-Pierre owes the UFC.
If you can read that without either rolling your eyes at the audacity of that statement or chuckling at its ridiculousness, then you probably haven’t been watching MMA very long. GSP has done so much for the UFC that it is beyond ungrateful to even ask him for more, never even publicly demeaning him the way White did when he wasn’t around.
GSP isn’t alone. The UFC “owes” many fighters, not the other way around. Most of those fighters, though, have been been vilified and blackballed over the years. Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture, for example, are two of the most successful mixed martial artists to ever compete in the promotion, and they were by far the biggest draws during the the early days of the UFC’s Zuffa era.
That isn’t to say they didn’t do anything to deserve it. Ortiz constantly barbed White as a means of self-promotion, and to this day hasn’t stopped in spite of the fact that he is with Bellator. Couture bounced from the UFC, heavyweight strap in hand, in 1997, then tried to do the same again in 2007.
That, really, is what makes St-Pierre unique. He is one of the few champions who has given the promotion no trouble.
The UFC has relegated many of its should-be legends to the fringe of MMA’s spotlight over both real and perceived slights. Pat Miletich, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Murilo Bustamante, Tim Sylvia, Brock Lesnar, Jens Pulver and Andrei Arlovski have all found themselves on the wrong end of incomprehensible White rants and been conspicuously shoved out of UFC lore.
St-Pierre has separated himself from that lot. Remarkably, it doesn’t even end there.
It’s worth remembering that during GSP‘s time in the UFC, Anderson Silva once hurt his own drawing power so badly that he found himself in the co-main event of UFC 101 (BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian headlined). Lyoto Machida twice turned down main event fights (once at UFC 133, then again at UFC 151). BJ Penn had a bitter divorce from the company after taking the belt from Matt Hughes.
St-Pierre, though?
He has been an ambassador for the sport, an almost unrivaled box office and pay-per-view draw, the bread and butter for one of their most successful markets and possibly the biggest company man the UFC has on roster. All of that on top of his willingness to sacrifice his time and body for the entertainment of others.
So, make no mistake. When White or anybody else says that St-Pierre owes him, Hendricks or the UFC anything, it is absolutely untrue. St-Pierre doesn’t owe anyone anything when it comes to his combat sports career.
He certainly doesn’t owe anything to the company that he has helped carry for seven years now.
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