Despite what he would lead you to believe by popping his face in every UFC promotional spot like he was Puff Daddy in a Notorious BIG video, Dana White may actually be the worst person in the UFC and all of mixed martial arts. Yes, he has led the charge to bring the UFC and all of MMA to the mainstream, but he is making a mockery of himself and the sport and is hurting it in potentially irrevocable ways.
Here are the top 5 reasons that Dana White may just be the worst person in the UFC and all of mixed martial arts.
1. Dana White underpays UFC fighters
As I’ve discussed previously, Dana White underpays the fighters in the UFC by an insane margin. The fighters don’t even come close to sniffing the money that they are solely responsible for generating. For example, for UFC 100, billed as the “biggest night in the history UFC”, the UFC paid a total of approximately $2.2 million to all of the fighters on the card that night, which includes $400,000 of special bonuses.
Lesnar is reported to make about $3 million including his share of the pay-per-view sales, which is an extra $2.6 million from his salary. Georges St. Pierre is also set to receive a share of the PPV, so let’s just assume that totals out to another $2.6 million for him as well, because it certainly wouldn’t be more. The result is $7.4 million paid to UFC fighters for the UFC 100 event, about $6 million of which went to 2 fighters, leaving the other 18 fighters to divvy up the remains.
The live attendance gate for the fight was $5.1 million. Dana White said he’d be thrilled with 1.5 million pay-per-view buys, so let’s just underestimate that at a cool 1 million buys, which the UFC has done before, at $45 a pop. That’s a total of $50 million generated not including foreign rights, closed circuit distribution and other earnings. That means, even tweaking the figures in his favor, Dana White and the UFC paid 15% of the money they earned that night to all of the fighters combined. Outrageous.
2. Dana White discourages competition
While it certainly is smart business sense – to a degree – to destroy all of your competition and leave yourself as the sole top dog in the business, Dana White doesn’t even like to make things a fair fight. He schedules his events on the same night as other MMA promotions (following the practices of a sport he routinely bashes, more on that below), and he “goes to war” with anyone who tries to compete with him.
MMA icon and former UFC referee Big John McCarthy was hastily discarded (oh right, he retired) from the organization and was labeled “The new enemy,” by Dana White in part because, “He announces for Affliction,” a rival MMA organization. Other examples include that the UFC has stated they will ban permanently any fighters who appear in EA’s upcoming MMA video game. They also at one point tried to ban an entire training academy, including many highly respected fighters, from fighting in the UFC for various disputes.
If Congress wants to find an antitrust violation in sports, they shouldn’t be looking at the BCS, they should be looking at the UFC.
3. Dana White disrespects the sport
Over and over again on UFC’s reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, we hear about how Dana White expects the fighters to act a certain way because they are representing the sport. Fighters have been booted off the show many times for various indiscretions, some serious and others less so. But yet, when head case Junie Browning violently erupted in drunken range for the entire season, he was left on the show. Mmm, can you smell that? That’s a ratings boost in the air, tasty!
Now, after droning on endlessly about how fighters need to earn their spot in the sport, how nothing is handed out and how only real fighters can make it in the UFC, the organization is bringing in MMA sideshow Kimbo Slice to the next season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Way to hold up to your own ideals and respect the sport, Dana.
4. Dana White is blatantly biased
It shouldn’t come as a shock that Dana White shows blatant favoritism to many fighters. Take the case of Michael Bisping. He’s fought three, maybe four fights (out of eight) in his UFC career that I would consider against top or near top competition. He’s lost two of them, and should have loss the third, which was a terrible decision against Matt Hamill.
Yet, he’s coaching on The Ultimate Fighter, headlining cards and is one of the poster boys for the sport. Oh, I get it. It’s not what you do or how you fight… it’s where you’re from. That “crazy hooligan” Bisping is from the UK, and wouldn’t it be nice to exploit that market by falsely boosting a fighter who comes from there?
Meanwhile, in the recent UFC Top 100 countdown on Spike TV, Dana White commented on how psyched he was to set up Tito Ortiz with Chuck Liddell so he could get knocked out, and how fun that would be for him to watch. Now that’s what I call a job well done when it comes to staying unbiased and not holding any grudges against the fighters you are promoting and the sport you’re running.
5. Dana White is a hypocrite
While I don’t believe the UFC and boxing should be compared, Dana White certainly does. He holds press conferences and is quoted quite commonly disparaging the sport and its fighters, despite calling himself a fan.
But yet, here he is scheduling his cards on the same night as other MMA events, a practice that HBO has been blasted for in the past while going up against Showtime boxing cards. It’s a practice he called boxing guys “so stupid” for doing, but here he is. Here he is, underpaying his fighters – to unfathomable levels even in the boxing domain – and setting up some of his fighters for gimme wins while others are banned or rooted against. Here he is, using the 10 point must system for scoring fights from boxing, despite its awful application to the sport of MMA.
If you’re better than boxing and “boxing guys are so stupid” then why has your playbook for running the UFC seemingly been ripped from the appendix of Don King’s unpublished “How to Screw the Fighters” handbook?
Dana White once said, looking into his crystal ball, “Nobody will call [me] a scumbag promoter.” Consider yourself corrected.
Sources:
UFC 100 Fighter Salaries; UFC 100 Salaries; UFC 100 bonuses and awards; UFC 100 PPV buys; UFC Unlikely to Adopt New Weight Classes; UFC Will Ban Fighters Who Appear in EA Sports’ MMA Game; UFC Drops Jon Fitch; Dana White on Boxing; Dana White Goes Head to Head on Floyd Mayweather Jr.; The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV Show; The UFC Top 100 Countdown on Spike TV; The Ultimate Fighter commercials
