MMA Red Ass For Week Ending Sept 1.
Random thoughts on the week that was in the world of MMA
I'm thinking this is going to be a weekly thing where I throw down random stray thoughts that don't require a full blog. And with that short intro, here is the first edition of "The MMA Red Ass."
ESPN MIA:
One of the bigger stories this past week was the fact the UFC Hall of Famer B.J. Penn was in not one, but two street fights in a single night. TMZ provided videos of the scraps and the incidents were widely covered by the MMA media — as they should have been. However, one major outlet did not provide even a brief mention of either of the street scrums. That was the UFC's broadcast partner, ESPN.
Penn was also involved in a brawl outside a strip club in June. That clash went unreported on by the "Worldwide Leader in Sports." I found it hard to believe that these incidents didn't warrant even a brief mention from ESPN.
Let's not forget ESPN is the same network that backed out of a partnership with PBS in 2013 regarding "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis," after 15 months of work on the project.
ESPN not covering Penn is a bad look. The network's coverage, or lack of coverage, of stories that could reflect poorly on the UFC bears watching.
ESPN MIA II
Speaking of keeping an eye on ESPN's coverage. On Aug. 27, ESPN announced that retired UFC fighter Anthony Johnson is planning on returning to the UFC in 2020. You may remember Johnson for losing to Daniel Cormier on two occasions. Or you might recall that Johnson has had multiple domestic violence cases against him over the past few years. Those cases include an active restraining order and a charge that he settled with a plea just last week. However, you won't find any of that information mentioned in the ESPN story on Johnson's return.
ESPN MIA III
I'm not picking on ESPN here, but one of the biggest stories of the year went down last week when the antitrust lawsuit against the UFC heated up. The plaintiffs and the UFC were in a Las Vegas courtroom for most of the week. Bloody Elbow, The Athletic, Forbes and MMA Payout were on hand to cover the case in detail. However, ESPN did not cover the story at all. MMA Fighting did cover the goings-on but cribbed most of its story from the work that John Nash, Paul Gift and Jason Cruz reported from the courtroom. Only after an online uproar erupted did that site credit Gift for the work he put in from Vegas.
Some might say that a court case doesn't warrant in-depth coverage, but the amount of money involved in this case could be in hundreds of millions of dollars. Look at it this way. If the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR or PGA were involved in an antitrust case with that kind of money on the line, you can bet ESPN would have that case covered from a multitude of angles.
Oddly, ESPN did cover the suit when it was first announced in 2014.
An Easy One
In one of the weirder USADA suspensions, UFC fighter Thibault Gouti received a six-month suspension after a failed drug test was traced back to a supplement that contained ostarine and other banned substances. The kicker in this case is that ostarine was actually listed on the label of the supplement that Gouti used for two days before returning the product.
The UFC and USADA tell fighters to be careful when using supplements. However, if a fighter uses a product that literally has a banned substance on the ingredient list, well, there's no excuse for that. In my view, Gouti should serve the maximum penalty for not even bothering to check what was in the supplement. You don't get out of a DUI with the excuse that you didn't read what was in the bottle you just drank from, so Gouti shouldn't get out of his suspension.
It must be noted that the fighter also provided "substantial assistance" to USADA to get his reduced suspension. Which, if the UFC had a fighters association, would be something that would be very much discouraged.
Say What?
Dana White got caught either just saying stuff or straight up bullshitting on Wednesday. When MMA Junkie's John Morgan asked White about the NY Times report regarding an ongoing investigation of Conor McGregor for an alleged sexual assault, White dropped a doozy of a reply.
"I know zero about that, to be honest with you" White said (via MMA Junkie). "The back-and-forth that I've had with him about that (is) that it's not him, that it's somebody else. You know? So I don't know."
You catch that? The UFC president allegedly knows zero about a NY Times report that the promotion's biggest star is under investigation. But he also had a back-and-forth with McGregor on the subject and the fighter has assured him that it was someone else that allegedly committed the assault.
As far as Dana White spin goes, this one falls way short of his usual obfuscation. It's as if he didn't even try to cover up the fact that he was lying to the media. Perhaps he was counting on his Trumpian wordplay confusing the press?
WME PR
The UFC seems to be pushing the fact that some folks are fans of newly crowned strawweight champion Weili Zhang. The promotion tweeted about Tom Brady, The Rock and Ronda Rousey being part of Zhang's "growing fan base." What the promotion failed to mention is all three of those folks are represented by WME, who just happens to own the UFC. So…yeah.
Code of Conduct About to be Ignored…Again
More on Anthony Johnson. His past should be a barrier to returning to the UFC. But let's not forget, this is the promotion that's trying to paint Greg Hardy as a sympathetic figure worthy of a second chance, even though Hardy's second chance came when he played for the Dallas Cowboys in 2015. I expect White to try and paint Johnson with the same brush. Don't forget the UFC president tried to tell everyone that Hardy was never convicted of anything, which of course, is a lie. Johnson shouldn't be back with the UFC, but he is someone who can make White and the UFC some money, so expect him to land on his feet no matter what he did in the past.
Is it a Threat if You Don't Care?
I wrote something recently that the UFC did not agree with. A VP from the organization was kind enough to reach out to me to share his dissatisfaction with the story and also threaten me with pulling my credentials. I used credentials to attend a lot of events back in the day. But since the GSP vs. Diaz card of 2013, I have been to exactly one UFC event as a credentialed media member. So, that's a pretty useless threat as far as threats go. However, it does make one wonder how effective threats or even implied threats are when it comes to folks who want to attend events on the regular.
Missed it by That Much
Anyone have a list of all the fights Conor McGregor was so close to getting before outside circumstances got in the way of those bouts?
Dana White Fact Check:
White said that the population of Shenzhen, China is 17 million. The actual population is around 12.1 million. So, he was off by more than the population of Los Angeles. As far as White’s stretching of the truth, this one falls under the very minor heading.