MMA Nation Preemption Edition: Washington Post's Dan Steinberg Talks MMA, Dana White and the UFC

People get so bent out of shape about Dana’s overwhelming presence in the media when what they should be bitching about is how blogger and trained journalists take everything he says as gospel.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. You can’t blame Dana for taking advantage of an incredibly lazy and ignorant media contingent. He would be a fool not to. All that hate should be focused on the journalists who are too ignorant, too lazy, or just too plain dumb to realize that Dana has a HUGE incentive to play fast and loose with the truth.

Dana has used his position as an authority on the sport to shape the opinions of a a large percentage of journalists who are new to the sport. Guys like Kevin Iole enter the sport with no idea what he was doing and Dana takes the opportunity to turn them into an extension of the Zuffa PR machine.

Kudo’s to Dana for playing the game like a grand master. Shame on the media for getting played like a chump.

It’s a critique on the media, MMA-based or otherwise, who seek out answers from a man who, given the nature of his position, can’t give you helpful analysis insofar as independence is concerned.

Someone should find Roger Goodell and ask him if the Superbowl is diminished when one team reaches the game by a blown call and see how neutral and objective his response is. Better yet, find Bob Arum’s neutral conjecture on Manny Pacquiao’s legacy in the sport of Boxing.

I’ve heard that what’s refreshing about White is his desire to speak his mind. This generally is issued when he makes a point his fans or fans of his organization like. Conversely, if he makes a patently absurd statement, the same supporters remind us he’s merely a promoter and just trying to leverage his answer for maximum benefit.

To me, this is the biggest fallacy of Dana White’s most ardent supporters. Saying White is a promoter and prone to hyperbole doesn’t make his exaggerations any less wrong, yet “Dana’s just a promoter, he says stuff like that. You just hate the UFC” has become a rebuttal to blogger’s challenges of Dana’s more outlandish points. In turn, writers, on this site and others, get labeled “Zuffa haters” and everything they write is summarily dismissed because the author “hates the UFC.”

Consequently, half the discussion ends up focusing on people’s personal opinions of Dana White, rather than any actual substantive arguments. It’s funny how the public seems to be more swayed by what it perceives the author’s opinion of Dana White is rather than any actual argument he\she makes when discussing White or the UFC.

The reason why Dana’s words don’t bother me all that much is that it’s abundantly obvious where he’s coming from. He’s the leader/promoter/minority owner of Zuffa. He’s biased because of his roles just as every other person on earth is biased in some way or another. Whether he’s being “honest” or filling the role of “carnival barker,” it’s really irrelevant. Dana doesn’t hide his agenda. He couldn’t if he wanted to.

“Unbiased” and “neutral” reporters are a dime a dozen in most media circles. However, many fall well short of their high -minded labels. As a matter of personal preference, I’d rather know where these people are coming from. What shapes their reporting on various issues?

What MMA needs is more knowledgeable, skilled people to cover the sport. Given that the pre-eminent organization gathers most of its revenue through PPV events, it’s understandable why there’s not much money in covering the sport. Hence, there isn’t a deep pool of talent to cover it. Zuffa is, more or less, a vertically integrated giant of MMA. If Dana went out and hired Luke Thomas, Jordan Breen, and Josh Gross to commentate and analyze UFC events, a large, vocal group would view these stalwarts of MMA media as biased company men. They would, after all, have a vested, tangible interest in Zuffa’s success.

Media outlets don’t have enough access to Zuffa to generate the revenue needed to cultivate the analysts and knowledgeable reporters in question. One might come to the conclusion that this is Zuffa’s fault. I’d counter that that’s a bit of a foolish argument. In the end, Zuffa must make deals that are in it’s best interests from a financial perspective. ESPN and the other networks must do the same. If, in fact, MMA becomes more popular than football (or rivals it in some way) and Zuffa is still the dominant player, the media giants will come calling with cash, and somewhat knowledgeable analysts, etc. will emerge. As in the case of NASCAR and even American football, these things take time shake out. Advancements in information technology have and will continue to help MMA grow at a faster rate than it might have in the past, but the impatient among us will still have to give the sport time to grow on its own.

The point is that the current state of affairs is really no one’s fault. Dana White fills a huge media void not because he’s the only person who should have opinions or a voice, but because the sport’s current makeup dictates that he assume that position.

Wow another Dana White bashing thread from Bloodyelbow. Its not a complete day unless there is some Dana bashing.