Why Dana White, as a Public Figure, is Bad for MMA

Dana White is possibly the most recognized face and name in MMA, which is rather shocking as he is just a businessman. His loud and abrasive personality has won him fans around the world, but this doesn’t mean he is good for MMA. On the contrary, I believe White is damaging MMA. He built a great organization and took it from the floor to the dinner table with the Fertitta brothers and it was a mighty feat but now it would seem that the fame has gotten a hold of him. It’s either that the fame has gone to his head or his constant exposure to the media is truly showing his ugly side.

Dana has done great deals for the MMA world and he likes to agree, but does he really love MMA? I don’t think so. Dana loves “his” MMA, and has proven that in the past, his love for other MMA promotions? Not so much. He has been known to pull dirty tactics on other promotions that he feels threatened by, one of the most common is showing old UFC events at the exact same time as another organizations pay per view event. It’s these little things that shows the true mentality of the UFC owner, his love of capitalism is much greater than his love of MMA.

Fighters

The UFC fighters are notoriously made to sign ridiculous contracts that pretty much give the UFC complete reign over everything about them. Some of these stipulations are that the fighter must only fight for the UFC and the UFC alone, they no longer own their own image. Yes the UFC now owns their fighter’s images and is free to do whatever they want with them, for example, say Kenny Florian was to leave the UFC, he could be walking through Wal-mart one day to see his face plastered all over a lunchbox and see his face on a poster, to which all of the profit would go to the UFC. This is how fighters such as Andrei Arlovski, Tim Sylvia and Rich Clementi all appeared in the UFC video game “UFC Undisputed 2009″ despite no longer fighting for the organization.

Along with these ridiculous terms and agreements, fighters are also signed into agreements which could say something about having up to 4 fights inside the UFC. But all that is scraped once the fighter fails to perform as well as expected and can soon find themselves looking for somewhere else to fight. I’m in no position to scrutinize the UFC’s stance on contracts, but it is this sort of behavior that is hurting the sport as a whole.

Publicity

As the UFC grew to greater heights, as did Dana White and with that his personality has been shown more and more to the public and there have been a few less desirable traits shown. First was his public “smack talk” against other promotions, in which he would just spurt some crazy talk about the organization having no talented fighters or something along the same lines for example he publicly said that Fedor was in essence a nobody and would never been anyone and that Anderson Silva is a much better champion than Fedor could ever be. Obviously this is something someone in their right mind would not even think to say, but this is Dana White, the most powerful man in MMA.

He also said some rather hurtful things about Internet superstar Kimbo Slice. Such as saying that Kimbo was a bum and that he would never fight in the UFC, only to completely change his stance a while later saying that the only way Kimbo would make it to the UFC would be if he was to fight on The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show, and what a huge surprise it was when it was announced just a few weeks later than Kimbo would be fighting on the TV show.

And then there is Fedor, a man that Dana publicly insulted and called a nobody, then literally days later he was trying to sign him to the UFC! Never before has someone made their opinion known to so publicly only to completely change their opinion a while later, but that is the capitalistic world of MMA.