Hi, I'm The 'Piece Of Shit' Dana White Has Been Ranting About

Or Hey, Maybe Attack The People Who First Reported The UFC Was Going To Have Layoffs

Apr 03, 2020

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Today I discuss ranting Dana White.

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I have mixed feelings about writing this one. On one hand, I should probably just roll with it and ignore it. On the other hand, I think I am being attacked out of convenience.

The “it” I’m referring to is Dana White lashing out at me for an article I wrote for Forbes that was aggregated from a Variety piece. White also ranted about a tweet I sent.

The issue began on March 25 when Variety published a story that Endeavor was laying off 250 people, including some from the UFC. I tweeted this story and wrote something about how Dana White should check with his bosses before saying he’s not laying off employees. I also aggregated the story for Forbes, writing the headline “Layoffs Hit UFC.”

Not long after I published the story on Forbes the editors deleted it. The main beef was that I didn’t cite the Variety source story as a “Report” in the headline. I’ll own up to that mistake. However, my feeling is that’s the only mistake I made as far as aggregating a story from another source goes.

Below is a screenshot of the original Variety story, which I believe the publication updated to excise the UFC reference shortly after the story hit the site. It needs to be noted that Variety did not indicate it updated the story, which I think is an important thing to remember for this tale.

On that day, White fumed during an Instagram live chat:

“This scumbag posted a story that says ‘UFC hit with layoffs,’ and he was literally gloating about it. First of all, it’s not true. I’m going to tell you guys again: Most of what you read is not true. Literally these scumbags write lies and this guy was gloating about it and saying stuff like, ‘Hey Dana, you have bosses now. You should check with them before you whatever.’ No I don’t. You don’t know anything about this fucking situation, and you definitely know nothing about the sport, you jerk off.”

“And for somebody who’s supposed to be a reporter to be gloating about people losing their jobs … I said it before, you piece of shit: Nobody will lose their job at the UFC. Nobody is getting laid off. It’s not gonna happen. The other side of Endeavor laid some people off. I’m not laying anybody off. It’s not gonna happen.”

I was not gloating about the layoffs. If I gloated about anything it was that White has bosses to answer to, something he has never been accustomed to in the past. White can deny that the co-CEOs of Endeavor are his bosses, but I still believe that to be true. Any corporate organization chart has the CEO over any subsidiary’s president. If the UFC wants to publish an org. chart that proves me wrong, I’ll gladly apologize for that statement. But the couple times I asked the UFC for that document, it has refused to provide its org. chart.

White raged against the story a couple more times without referencing the source or the writer, but that changed earlier this week when he went off during Frank Warren’s Heavyweight podcast:

“You have some of these scummy, slimy, weasel motherfucking media guys out there literally saying…so the other half of our company, Endeavor, laid some people off, so this guy wrote a story for Forbes. You would think that a story in Forbes would be correct and there would be fact checking and all this other kind of stuff. No, he wrote, ‘Dana White was gloating about not laying people off and now he has to lay people off.’ No I’m not. No fact checking, no calls, no nothing. Basically, this guy wrote a story that was false that I was laying people off. And he was happy about. He was happy about. He was excited that he could write a story that I was going to take jobs away from people and it wasn’t fucking true. You’re a piece of shit. These are the type of people we are dealing with in the media these days. It‘s unbelievable. It’s disgusting.

Okay. I wrote the story for Forbes. I wrote nothing about White gloating. I don’t know how White could say I was happy about writing a story about layoffs. I don’t want to see people lose jobs, so that’s his imagination that I was happy. Perhaps that was a little bit of guilt getting the best of White, since you know, he’s definitely been happy when people have lost their jobs.

I should also note that every time I ask the UFC for comment I don’t get a reply. I don’t even get the courtesy of a “no comment.” Just silence.

Now, I couldn’t care less if White’s rants against me were justified, but they’re not. One thing he has not done during any of his tirades is attack the source of my aggregated story, Variety. He did not mention that magazine once and I think I know why.

If White ranted against Variety it wouldn’t help him paint all MMA media in a negative light. Since he has a target to attack in the MMA media, a target who did not write the original article, it’s easy for him to point at me and scream about how shitty I am and since I’m MMA media, well then, all MMA media are shitty.

Like I said, I’ll own the fact that I made a mistake by not citing the Variety story as a report, but White’s attacks on the MMA media for the Variety story are unwarranted. He should go after them, but he won’t because I’m just a single freelance MMA writer and it serves his ends to attack me and not a more powerful entity like Variety.

Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest and point out that White is out of line on this one.

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