Matt Mitrione
The Ultimate Fighting Championship promotion has suspended heavyweight fighter Matt Mitrione (6-2) following negative comments made towards transgendered fighter Fallon Fox on Monday during an appearance on The MMA Hour.
The promotion was quick to react posting this statement on their website effectively suspending Mitrione’s contract pending further investigation.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship organization released the following statement this afternoon:
“The UFC was appalled by the transphobic comments made by heavyweight Matt Mitrione today in an interview on the ‘MMA Hour.’
“The organization finds Mr. Mitrione’s comments offensive and wholly unacceptable and — as a direct result of this significant breach of the UFC’s code of conduct – Mr. Mitrione’s UFC contract has been suspended and the incident is being investigated.
“The UFC is a friend and ally of the LGBT community, and expects and requires all 450 of its athletes to treat others with dignity and respect.”
During the interview on The MMA Hour, Mitrione had been making jokes regarding Fox during the segment and responded with this rant when host Ariel Helwani asked him what he had against the fighter.
“She’s not a he. He’s a he,” Mitrione said. “He’s chromosomally a man. He had a gender change, not a sex change. He’s still a man. He was a man for 31 years. Thirty-one years. That’s a couple years younger than I am. He’s a man. Six years of taking performance de-hancing drugs, you think is going to change all that? That’s ridiculous.
“That is a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak,” he continued. “And I mean that. Because you lied on your license to beat up women. That’s disgusting. You should be embarrassed yourself. And the fact that Florida licensed him because California licensed him or whoever the hell did it, it’s an embarrassment to us as fighters, as a sport, and we all should protest that. The woman that’s fighting him, props to you. I hope you beat his ass, and I hope he gets blackballed and never fights again, because that’s disgusting and I’m appalled by that.”
Mitrione earned a fist round knockout victory this past weekend in Sweden after stopping opponent Phil De Fries via KO at the UFC on FUEL TV 9 event.
This whole situation feels very akin to the Miguel Torres situation from December 2011 when the fighter had posted a comment on Twitter about a “rape van.” Torres was released by the promotion but found his way back shortly afterwards by making amends.
Mitrione will have to perform his own damage control if he wishes to stay with the UFC. It will be interesting to see where this takes the former TUF competitor.