More on Dana White and Corrupt Relationships With Reporters

Hates Dana White, wishes Strikeforce would rule the world, Nate’s a UFC hater, etc.

Just getting out of the way before the trolls get here. Good sleuthing. I didn’t know too much about this but as much as I love what Dana does for the UFC fans, he’s really got a vindictive and mean side to him.

Seriously, get over it. It’s not a big deal.

Anyone who already visits BE knows to take anything White says with a grain of salt.

He wants Brock #1 P4P? Done and done.

For reals though, no one’s making money off this shit. I spend hours a week on our website because I’m fucking obsessed with this sport.

I remember his [insert org here] primer posts. Really helpful.

I wonder how many casual or non-MMA fans listen to what Dana says when he goes into promoter mode and actually believe what he says. Most people who visit the site know better but I’d be interested to know how many people who aren’t in the MMA circle can see through the hyperbole.

Even if the smaller orgs paying the outlets was true, which I doubt, it would just be good business. Which Dana White can attest to.

continues to blog with intense nerd rage.

so Dana likes to try to influence the media covering his sport and is often brash and bullyish, and he often twists facts. big woop. i’m pretty sure he hasn’t committed any crimes yet, and let’s not act like reporters aren’t sometimes overly nosy, annoying, and wrongfully out for blood, so again, big woop. Clearly, Dana doesn’t control the media enough to stop you guys from getting out your viewpoint, so again, big woop.

it’s no different than any other commish, except with more f-bombs

the aspect of this whole issue that i have the most trouble with is the following ridiculous assertion, which has been used multiple times:

It’s less a matter of corrupt reporters — seriously, no one covers this sport for money, NO ONE

I know you bloggers don’t make much off of blogging (although i wish i had evidence to question this, too, because i doubt it’s the case for everyone. i know a few people who make ok chunks of change off ad revenue for blogs with less readers than this), but what a ridiculous statement. So every single person covering MMA has some other primary job and is covering the sport out of love and the hope that their coverage will help advance the sport they love? are you fucking kidding me? hell, half this story is about people getting paid-off to watch and then write about MMA, yet apparently NOBODY makes any money covering MMA.

now i ain’t gonna rip BE like some dude above did, because i love nearly everything about the site. but yeah, this is a serious case of making WAAAYYYY to big a deal about Dana’s comments

I’m just amazed Dana cares about internet rankings enough to get mad about them. Maybe they matter more than we think (I can dream, right?).

You gotta love Dana :p

“We just want to help tell the stories of these amazing athletes whose heart, skill and dedication give us so much joy.”

Nate, I have no doubt that this is true for you and the rest of the BE staff but the idea that everyone who covers mma does it “for the love of the game” is a little far fetched.

Even lapdogs like Steve Cofield get threatened over access if they ask tough questions

Cofield is hardly a lapdog.
Rob is pretty much on point w/ the rest.

You guys… If we just ignore Dana, he’ll eventually go away, m’kay?

LOL! LOL!

i idea that i work at MMA events for the money is insane.

i do it for the media dinners.

Dana White is trying to control and manipulate covrage of the UFC. Right now for all intensive purposes MMA is the UFC. It is the only organisation many have been exposed to. Thus Dana White is not only manipulating favorable coverage for the UFC, but MMA as well. Look at the crap Dana spews out of his mouth! “Don’t leave it in the hands of the judges.” Where I live that has become a trending phrase watching UFC’s with casual fans. He has immense influnce over fans. Tired of it or not it is still a very important issue that despratley needs light shed on it. Great job by Rob doing real journalistic work. Great post Nate.

Nate, you are a good writer who pieces arguments together well and uses strong references to back up your point. i don’t understand why you waste your time with all of these trivial articles, especially two within a day?

While I don’t necessarily agree with his tactics, this is a tough sport to get mainstream attention. You don’t see many articles about Coker, Dana on the other hand is always getting publicity. It will likely take someone like Dana to get MMA into the mainstream. Once it’s there, we can get a new figurehead.

Who cares, thye’re just rankings. They are useless argument fodder for hardcore fans, and aren’t worth paying actual money for.

This is how to replace rankings stupidity:

1. Have a champion. This is the person who is widely recognised as the #1 top dog in their particular division (Fedor)

2. Have a list of contendors. The best way to tell if someone is a contendor is to say to yourself: “If the #1 top dog was struck by lightening, could you make a reasonable argument that any one of these persons were the new #1 top dog?” (BROCK, Megareem, Carwin, JDS, Cain, etc)

3. Have a list of Very good, but not great fighters (Mir, Nog, Rogers, Bigfoot, Gonzaga, Kongo, etc)

The key points are that there is no arbitrary numerical limit. You could have 20 contendors, you could have none. Top fighters will be grouped into lumps with other top fighters of similar skill level and strength of record. Having a Top 10 is meaningless because 10 is just an arbitrary number.

It wasn’t Ariel that went on the Cro Cop rant,it was Iole.

Again, this is all stuff we already know. No point in dragging this up over and over. The best way to handle Dana White is to ignore him. I’m not sure why he gets so much attention, he’s just a front office guy, everything he does is business. You don’t see guys like Roger Goodell, Bud Selig or David Stern getting nearly this much attention and their sports are much more popular and profitable.

There are TOO MANY MMA websites that could and WOULD call out ANY website that was ranking guys where they should not be. Especially if it was obvious. Also, Dana is insulting the intelligence of his fanbase. LIke we don’t know who the best fighters are.

P4P is SOOOOOOO subjective anyway, there is no way to quantify it. How much would it REALLY be worth to Strikeforce or anyone else to pay someone for rankings on ONE website?

The only rankings that could make ANY impact would be Sherdog and possible BE’s since their USA Today connection. But theirs is a compilation of rankings so things are going to average out. There would have to be 10’s of people on the take for it to matter.

This is just Dana being Dana. We should ignore it and move on. He’s not going to let hard hitters like Gross in ever. Why should he? Where is the benefit to him and the UFC? Since there is none, he won’t. It’s not right, but seeing that every aspect of MMA is covered in a unbiased manner is the polar opposite of Dana’s goals when it comes to media. Frankly, the definition of promoter is just that.

Anyway, he is holding back the legitimacy of the sport by doing what he does, but right now, that’s the least of the problems of the UFC’s continued growth.

All around.

He’s just more vocal.

So, you are saying Dana earlier comment was right… MMA orgs to pay off media members to try to curry favor. It’s just mostly the UFC trying to do it lol.

I’ve been one of the people who tell people to ignore a lot of what Dana says as “promoterspeak”

However, people are starting to use the “he’s a promoter, what do you expect?” line to defend stuff that doesn’t fall under that category.

Taking shots at fighters outside of his organization is promoterspeak. Were he simply to say that he can’t take sites that rank Fedor highly as legitimate? that’s fine. I can disagree with the statement without it being irresponsible.

To cast a statement out that ranking sites are on the take and that’s why they have him ranked there is not acceptable. It damages credibility for MANY sites without any sort of proof. If he is aware of this actually happening somewhere…name names. They should absolutely be called on it.

How is this any different from what he freaked out on Loretta Hunt? His whole point was that she was saying things without “legitimate proof” via her use of anonymous sources.

Basically my point here is that not all behavior is acceptable as “promoterspeak”

I fully support Dana’s quest to unify the top talent in mma(which is the issue that underlies all the Dana vs media vs fans drama), and I don’t have a problem with about 80% of his tactics. However, in this case I think he deserves the shit he’s getting.

One of Dana’s problems is that he often goes off the rails while making a valid point. For example, there are legitimate arguments to be made about quality of opponents Fedor has faced, but instead of making them he says he hasn’t fought anyone since 1999. Likewise, I think there is a valid argument to be made against many in the media – incompetence, undisclosed conflicts of interest, bias in the way prospects are valued, etc. – but Dana can’t restrain himself from accusing people of being on the take, and instead of focusing on some of the truly suspect rankings that are out there, he’s talking about Sherdog’s p4p rankings which show absolutely no evidence of anti Zuffa bias.

On top of that, Dana is concerned that the media inflates rankings because they don’t want to see the UFC monopolize the top talent and become the NFL of MMA? He’s the one who’s responsible for making people stakeholders in his quest to monopolize though his preferred tactic of shutting people out. When you present certain members of the media with two alternate futures – either the UFC will become the NFL and you will have as little access as possible or parity between promotions/the boxing model and you will have some degree of access – it’s no surprise that so many prefer the latter to the former.

Is immediately suspect. Dana White is quoted more often in stories about Strikeforce than Scott Coker. The world doesn’t need more Dana. Reporters- please stop soliciting his opinion on every issue under the sun.

BE have become ardent Dana haters and that is fine because there is a big difference between journalism of merit and a blogger with a forum. Simply calling one’s self a journalist does not make it so, most especially when a whole staff act with such middle school self-righteousness. In the same manner that one takes a fight between cans for what it is and enjoy it for that purpose since not every fighter can on the champion level, I take the level of “journalism” from BE for it is as well as well, but it has rarely been at this level of such juvenile self-important hyperbole.