Dana White Digs In His Heels
Or yeah, it is time to get rid of the octagon girls
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When a company is bought, one of the first things to happen is the new owner looks to make cuts to maximize its investment. For instance, look at the new ownership of Sports Illustrated. Earlier this week, TheMaven Inc., who cut a deal to license SI publications from Authentic Brands Group, announced it would eliminate 40 positions at SI and hire 200 contract workers (read: underpaid and no benefits) to pump out content for SI.
Like TheMaven, Inc., when WME-IMG purchased the UFC for a cool $4 billion, some cuts were made to the UFC's staffing. One cut the new owners could have made at the time was to do away with the octagon girls. In 2017, the New York Post reported that these women earn between $30,000 and $75,000 per year. That's a drop in the bucket for WME-IMG, but when a company is looking to cut any extraneous spending it can, any little bit helps. I once worked for a company that made you turn in a spent pen before you could get a new one.
Earlier this month, with the promotion heading to Australia for Saturday's UFC 243, Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp called for the end of the "tradition" of UFC octagon girls.
"It's 2019, do we really still need scantily clad women to wander around the middle of a fighting ring between rounds? Grid girls are no longer part of Formula One, walk-on girls are no longer part of professional darts - surely it's time to move on," Capp told the Herald Sun.
Look, this isn't a hill I'm willing to die on, but it is one I'll climb up and once I get to the top, I'll take a look around and nod knowingly in appreciation of the view of a world sans octagon girls.
Instead of engaging in some type of discussion, human blood blister Dana White dug in his Adidas and spoke out about the contributions and importance of the octagon girls and the excellent work they do in the community and all the charitable efforts they spearhead.
Nah, I'm just kidding. White just took another step toward his inevitable rage aneurysm.
"Our octagon girls, they're as much a part of the UFC brand as anyone, they're ambassadors for our sport," White told The Daily Telegraph. "So for someone who has absolutely no education whatsoever about who these girls are – about what they do, what they mean to the UFC – to start going off, it's ridiculous."
White didn't offer a single example of what the octagon girls do for the brand.
White could have stopped there. Instead, he took one step further and put his foot straight into an incredible pile of bullshit.
"So you can look at any sport you like, nobody treats women better than we do," White told The Daily Telegraph. "And I'd suggest these people calling on them to be banned go have a look at what these girls do with the company, the type of money they're making. Do that and you'll realize these girls are as important to our brand as anyone else in the company. And that's exactly the way we treat them."
Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess that LPGA and WTA treat women better than the UFC.
Let's also pause here and reflect on the way the White treats and speaks about women.
In 2014, White was in my hometown of Baltimore to promote UFC 172, an event that I could not cover since I was working for Bloody Elbow at the time, a site that White will not credential, but will use clips from to promote UFC fights. Anyway, during a media scrum at that event, White dropped this beaut when speaking about Cris Cyborg.
"I said, when I saw her at the [World MMA Awards], that she looked like Wanderlei Silva in a dress and heels. And she did," White said. "Did she not? Who wants to dispute that she didn't look like Wanderlei?"
White then stomped around the stage in an apparent pantomime of Justino.
"Walking up the stairs, jacked up on steroids beyond belief," he continued. "And looking like Wanderlei Silva in a dress and heels."
So, yeah, no one treats women better than Dana White, who also has a gross ass history of calling women members of the media "honey" and "sweetie."
Speaking of dumb traditions, Dana White is the same guy who stubbornly refused to remove the horrid “Face the Pain” from UFC pay-per-view broadcasts.
Like I said, this is not a hill I'm willing to die on, but I do think it's time for the octagon girls to go and if White's bosses want an excuse to end the "tradition," all they have to do is call it a cost-cutting measure.
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