UFC President Dana White was so disgusted by the lame-duck performances during last week’s “Contender Series” event, which is supposed to showcase hungry, up-and-coming fighters battling for a spot on the UFC roster, that he hastily bailed on his interview with host Laura Sanko to go stew in the corner.
Watch the replay here.
That may explain why White was so elated to hear of promoter Mairbek Khasiev, who blew a gasket during the Rashid Magomedov vs. Ali Bagov co-main event at Absolute Championship Akhmat (ACA) 141 last weekend in Sochi, Russia, and canceled the bout mid-fight to send a startling message to his roster.
Watch it:
The ACA founder Mairbek Khasiev just disqualified Ali Bagov and Rashid Magomedov for being too boring.
MMA continues to be wild.
pic.twitter.com/5NvW5tDV8I— MMA mania (@mmamania) July 22, 2022
“That is f—king awesome, props to that guy,” White said during the “Contender Series” press conference. “Highly, incredibly, unprofessional but fucking awesome at the same time. Was it really a boring fight? Well, that gives me some fucking ideas for next Tuesday!”
The self-proclaimed “crazy” White has done some event tampering of his own, once removing a cageside judge at UFC Macau because he didn’t agree with how the fights were being scored. Not surprisingly, that hasty decision came back to bite him on the ass and force a subsequent apology.
“Believe me, there’s been days that I wanted to throw a chair in there,” White continued. “But yeah, you’ve just got to sit there and take it, or get up and go to the back and sit in your room. One of those two things is probably what the guy at ACA should have done. But good for him.”
Good for him, not so good for the sport.