Dana White isn’t too happy with The New York Times.
The UFC President fired back in response to a report by the newspaper that questioned the company and their compliance with their own safety protocols from its “Jacksonville Event Operations Plan” during recent events.
The article mentioned the company stating there would be no face-to-face interviews, even though Joe Rogan did exactly that during UFC 249 last weekend and Daniel Cormier did the same during UFC Fight Night.
The UFC’s no-handshake rule was broken several times.
When posed with that question about the piece, White lost his freaking mind.
“F–k that guy. F–k that guy,” White said during the post-fight news conference, via MMAJunkie. “You know what happened with that guy? That guy who’s never covered the sport was writing a story about Endeavor (UFC’s parent company) and then the UFC was one of the Endeavor … you know. And what happened when this guy and this paper covered the UFC – when they’ve never covered it before? What do you think happened?
“This f—ing story was huge. They did killer traffic. Now they’re writing stories, three a week, and they’re posting live results. I don’t care give a s–t what that guy thinks or what he has to say, what he writes. Good for him, he’s pulling traffic.”
White couldn’t care less about the repercussions the article could have on business.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral MMA stories via Google! Follow Us
“I don’t give a fuck,” White said. “Don’t give a fuck.”
White doesn’t plan on seeing this as a success until Saturday’s UFC on ESPN 8 happens.
“A lot of criticism coming into this week, the fact that we wanted to go, and this d*ck head from The New York Times that found out MMA was popular,” White said. “We’ve had two events now, all the testing that we’ve done, (and) we’ve had one positive. And I don’t know, you guys (reporters) sit in a different position than I. I don’t know how you feel how the whole thing has gone or how it’s felt, and if you’ve felt safe here, if you’ve felt comfortable, but it’s worked.
“We did what we said we would do. I don’t want to shoot my mouth off – we still have one more to go – but so far, so good. I think what you see now is now you see all the other sports leagues talking about, ‘We’re going.’
“Somebody had to get out and be first. I knew we would be, and I knew we could pull it off safely. Like I said before, health and safety is something we worry about all the time. So far it’s been super successful.”
