I'm not sure what on earth Dana White is doing, but the recent backtracking he's done regarding his "huge announcement" is strange. It's as if he doesn't realize we can verify what he said originally and that now that everyone's minds are tabula rasa, we have to accept this new version of events. Let's start with what he recently told The Baltimore Sun:
That’s what we were talking about that day [with ESPN] and I said I’m going to make an announcement to my employees that shows everyone exactly where this business is going in the next couple years. I said I wanted to make the announcement to my employees, so it’s not even like I was making a big announcement to the media. If I was doing that I would’ve had a big press conference and then gone off to London. I wanted to wait until I was back to do it.
It’s a big [expletive deleted] announcement, it’s a big [expletive deleted] deal, but I got a lot of other stuff we’re working on right now. It was never anything I said I was going to announce to the media.
It's really hard for me to accept this given that this is what he told ESPN just a week earlier:
There's something no one else has heard. You have no idea some of the stuff that we have planned. I'm going to make an announcement next week that is going to blow people's minds. That deal is done, but my employees don't even know yet. I'm renting out a place next Thursday and I'm going to tell them. Then we'll make the announcement later that day. It's an indicator of where this business is going over the next five years.
Blow "people's minds"? Which "people"? And if he's going to announce it to his staff first, what is the "Then we'll make an announcement later that day" intended for? So, he clearly states that even if the UFC employees are to hear the news first, the announcement was clearly going to be made public, i.e. to the media. Moreover, if the UFC is sitting on announcement that's going to underscore the trajectory of the business over the next half decade, one would think that'd be information you'd share with the press. Whether or not the cat is out of the bag and the announcement is the legalization of MMA in New York or not, White's revisionist history is transparently awkward.
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