There’s something to be said about communication skills and the ability to be articulate and present your case well. If you lack this expertise, you are almost certain to not make it far in your career but if you excel at it, you may very well find that you can always go higher. Sometimes, the present job may seem like a restriction and your boss the jail keeper.
Although there are always more than two sides to a story, sometimes the clash is inevitable. In the realm of combat sports, though, most altercations end up becoming public. It is usually not a good idea to not be on good terms with your boss but sometimes things slip a little too out of hand.
Here are 5 times Dana White found the fighters disagreeing with him on a public platform.
#1 Tito Ortiz
Dana has had more than a few beefs in his time as the president of the biggest MMA organisation in the world but no one pissed him off more than the self-proclaimed “people’s champ”, Tito Ortiz.
Once the Light Heavyweight champion of the UFC, Tito sure has come a long way. The wave that he was once riding as a Champion has been over for a while but his popularity is still very much intact.
Although the level of competition he has faced through the years has declined considerably, he still has the charismatic aura about him that can help him make the perfect babyface for any company, except the UFC.
Perhaps, the mixture of this Type A personality, unwillingness to take orders from someone else and not wanting to work on someone else’s terms, led to the massive grudge against Dana White. A beef which at one point in time was even about to materialise in the form of a three-round boxing bout, which unfortunately never ended up happening.
Ultimately, the back and forth exchanges between White and Ortiz have been very entertaining and have made for good television, also allowing the UFC to provide a lot of context to the fights taking place inside the Octagon.
#2 Randy Couture
Randy Couture and Dana White have been through the ups and downs of the business relationship they shared, which ultimately culminated in having a bad personal relationship. There were many factors that led to this beef, many of which are understandable differences while others are rather mundane and even downright silly.
In the early days, Couture was disappointed as many, including Dana White didn’t see much potential in him. They undermined his promotion, not seeing him as a viable and marketable personality, something that really hurt Randy’s sentiments. The UFC instead chose to promote Pedro Rizzo as the Heavyweight Champion.
Randy took this personally and demolished Rizzo in two back to back fights, claiming to be the rightful face of the company. After his retirement, Couture declined a job offer from Dana White to work for UFC on FOX and called the salary “peanuts”, publicly disrespecting White in the process.
While White always claimed that Couture was particularly hard to work with, there are always two sides to a coin and what really happened will probably always remain a mystery.
#3 Jon Jones
This one pretty much explains itself. The things that Jones have been involved in, voluntarily and involuntarily, put a question mark on how seriously he took the sport. But even before he put himself in the disastrous situation of being involved in a hit-and-run incident, Jones refused to fight Chael Sonnen at the last moment, forcing Dana White to cancel UFC 151, the first UFC event to get cancelled in almost eleven years.
Apart from the fact that it caused much havoc having to refund people’s money and a tarnished reputation in terms of delivering the much-promised action; to Dana White, it all seemed deliberate. In his opinion, Jones could have saved the event if he wanted to, but chose to protect his ego and didn’t take the risk.
After this incident, and many others, White even put his coach, Greg Jackson on blast, calling him a seasoned businessman and not one to care about his fighters. After the UFC 200 main event had to be replaced because of Jones being caught with illegal substances, White claimed that he will never put Jones in the main event again and take the chance of him ruining another event.
A huge claim to make since Jones is the pound for pound best fighter on the planet today.
#4 Georges St – Pierre
The situation with GSP has been more stern business negotiation than dialogue, more passive aggression than outright beef but the mutually agreeable disagreeability is definitely a part of the equation for both parties.
Dana white rightfully criticised the judges when they basically gifted the decision in favor of GSP against Hendricks, something that ended up rubbing the Canadian the wrong way. The fact that GSP decided to retire immediately after that fight and not give Hendricks his rematch also bugged Dana White since he believed GSP lost that fight to begin with.
White also passed some harsh judgements on GSP’s mental fortitude and toughness in the Octagon, calling him a “bad loser” and a scared guy in the face of adversity. Dana White also refused to pay GSP his desired purse to make a return to the Octagon, adding further awkwardness to his relationship with ‘Rush’.
While White and GSP’s relationship may not be the best for now, we sure hope things work out, so we can witness GSP have a successful return in the Octagon.
#5 Mark Hunt
It is wise to save the best for the last.
There is probably no man, dead or alive, who hates the UFC as an organisation more than Mark “The Super Samoan” Hunt.
A very accomplished and decorated kickboxer and a legendary Mixed martial artist, Mark Hunt, usually gave away the leverage to his opponents regarding steroid use. So much so that, at one point, he even exclaimed before his bout with Brock Lesnar that he doesn’t mind Lesnar doping and added that he would still knock him out.
While we all saw how that strategy failed for Hunt, he has now adopted another strategy altogether, one that goes all in. Hunt noted that all three of his last three opponents have been potential doping violators and have had an unfair advantage against him.
An argument that is hard to deny but keeping in mind the attitude of Dana White regarding anyone who speaks out against his organisation, it was not going to be just a silly situation in the end. The matchmakers then ended up giving Alistair Overeem to Hunt.
Hunt now went the distance and threatened to sue Overeem personally if he was caught using banned substances. Hunt then went on to sue the UFC anyway, just weeks before his fight with Overeem and is now in limbo with the UFC.
Hunt has been extremely outspoken against the UFC on his social media, something that has made for a guilty pleasure among many fight fans. How the UFC chooses to deal with this outraged fighter would be an interesting development in the whole narrative.
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