First of all, I like Miguel Angel Torres, and I’ll always respect him despite his often-ridiculous tweets, but even I’ll say I can see why Torres got released from the UFC.
Yes, MMA is popular right now, but it’s not yet at a stage where it can handle a lot of negative publicity or any sort of negative attention, so for that, I see why Dana White might have followed through as per his standard and opted to cut Torres.
After all, Torres is a professional athlete and, given the past history of athletes taking to Twitter to tweet eventual nuggets of controversy, keeping surprise vans and rape to oneself is common sense.
However, so is not being the same hypocritical “holier-than-thou” type of person that one claims to be unable to stand, whether on or off Twitter.
If watching one’s Tweet content is common sense, then shouldn’t it be common sense that a draw like Torres be reprimanded for his tweet before apologizing, as opposed to being cut when Forrest Griffin and Rashad Evans have said considerably worse or similar things and are still on the roster?
I understand Forrest has helped support charities that teach others about the dangers of rape, and I know Rashad Evans said he talked to Dana White about the Penn State comment he made at Wednesday’s UFC on FOX 2 press conference, but for them to get fined while Torres gets cut is an abominable act by a man who is living by a double standard.
While it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, it’s sickening on all accounts from a personal standpoint, as Torres has followed suit with Griffin and Evans, who were noted for saying things in the general category but were not released.
Maybe the statement of Torres not knowing about Griffin or Evans is what caused the release because as a person in the same profession as both TUF winners, you have to pay some attention to the situations around you, and Torres, like Evans, trains with the all-star assembly-line of fighters known as The Blackzillians. But let’s not forget one thing:
Torres quoted a TV show, “Workaholics” (earlier, it was thought to be a quote from Danny Devito’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”).
Evans, on the other, knocked on Phil Davis by saying he’d touch Davis worse than Jerry Sandusky or Joe Paterno did to those boys at Penn State, and the Penn State sex scandal has been an increasingly hot topic for a month now, and this issue is not one that has gone away yet.
Evans claims—or at least Dana says—that he made the mistake of letting his mouth go, but if he were truly sorry, wouldn’t Evans have found a way to diss Davis?
I mean, it sounds like that’s Dana’s current reaction to Torres’ tweet is all-in-all saying “If Torres were really joking, he’d have kept that to himself, even if it did come from a TV show,” right?
Whatever the case, Dana’s double standard is ridiculous and atrociously inconsistent. If one fighter is fined or reprimanded in some way for a tweet concerning rape vans but he is NOT cut, then that is a trend that should stay consistent, and while there’s no real excuse for Torres’s initial tweet, there’s are few more and much less excuses for Dana White hypocrisy in this case.
If he has any issue with the consensus opinion which favors a re-signing of the former WEC Bantamweight Champion, he can either choose to refuse to give the fans what they want, as he’s already done by releasing Torres, or he can do the right thing, stick to his word about having the best fighters in the world instead of feeding us low-grade chumps, and get Torres back where he belongs.
Dana White has given us Karo Parisyan’s return and he gave us Nick Diaz vs. BJ Penn at UFC 137, even though he knew that we knew that he wanted to axe Diaz for missing those pressers.
So now, Mr. White, it’s your turn to give us what we want … that is, of course, unless you’ve finally stopped caring about the consumers that took the time to give a damn about your product.
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