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Dana White’s hilarious commentary on the media
By Zach Arnold | June 14, 2010
Thank you for giving me such a laugh tonight:
“Everything that’s happened throughout the years, all the [expletive] that I’ve gone through, my biggest beef with a lot of these MMA websites is that these guys are for-profit websites. They’re not [expletive] news sites. They’re for-profit websites.”
And as to why UFC doesn’t do their own rankings (besides the fact that it would give fighters and agents insight as to how the company slots talent):
“We don’t even rank our own fighters. Do you see any ranking system on our website?”
“But we don’t make our own rankings. It wouldn’t be right.”
Let me clarify this for you. All news outlets are for-profit, and I’m not just talking about the MMA media, so let’s not pretend like that’s anything new. It seems to me the real issue here is that Dana can’t land Fedor and it’s frustrating the hell out of him.
Wait until he sees the EA Sports MMA video game cover with Fedor & Randy Couture on it.
When Dana finds the money trees growing to finance MMA web sites, he should give me a call.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 17 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Zach, are you denying that you’re on the take from Shooto?
Only a Fedor fanboy would think this has anything to do with him. This is about a complete bias in the MMA Media that refuses to acknowledge that 90%+ of the top talent is in one organization and continues to put out rankings that completely over inflate the standings of non-Zuffa fighters.
White hasn’t hit this issue correctly but he is right about it.
Dana White. God what a silly man.
Where are these nonprofit news sites?
The ones that don’t have a store or subscription service. AKA every MMA site but Sherdog, MMA Weekly, Fightlinker, Wrestling Observer, and MMA Torch (and maybe I’m missing a few with stores.)
BIG surprise – ANOTHER “only an xyz fanboy”/”You’re an xyz fanboy if” quote!
Yawn – getting really sick of this dismissive wanking comment as if the commenter is the arbiter of logic and the final authority on the topic. Its a lazy, last refuge of someone who has nothing noteworthy or worthwhile to say but just feels the burning desire to make some blatantly biased comment and try to automatically neutralize any comment that might dare to disagree with their point of view.
To be fair, it’s pretty asinine to think that Dana is saying all of this just because of Fedor. The issue is bigger than Fedor.
Dana’s upset because of the guys in other orgs like Mousasi that get ranked as high as #6 for beating nobody of note in that division, but looking good doing it. I could make a list of half a dozen names who shouldn’t be ranked as high as they are. It really doesn’t matter if Dana signs one or two fighters, or if a couple of the fighters lose, they’ll get replaced by another fighter that gets highly ranked for looking good against sub-standard competition in other promotions.
Yeah – it was more of a general comment on the increasing meme/trend of using this as an argument.
It’s lazy, it’s unintelligent and is as ridiculous as it gets because 99.9% of the time it’s being used (hypocritically) to ridicule taking the stance that’s the exact opposite of yours (since the commenter is obviously taking the mirror side of a “biased” argument).
There’s a couple of people here who use it, they know who they are, and it’s becoming their go-to crutch argument.
How is this different from Kenny Florian? He’s universally ranked top 5 but where are his top 5 wins? Even his top 10 wins were borderline top 10.
And how about Dan Hardy? The guy wins a few split decisions then loses to GSP and he’s still top 5-10 in one of the most stacked divisions in MMA?
Retarded rankings are on both sides of the fence.
Good argument.
I would say (where your arguments with Kenny are concerned) because most of the internet media continues to rank fighters outside of the UFC way too high, but you do make good points.
What he means to say is that he won’t be extorted by sleazy MMA sites and ‘reporters’, so they vindictively write bad things about him and the UFC. He obviously doesn’t need to advertise on those sites or pay for good press.
Renato Sobral wasn’t a noteworthy opponent? He was a legitimate top-15 LHW before Mousasi smoked him.
Legitimate top 15 that got smoked by Jason Lambert a year before that.
Kirik has admitted on numerous occasions that he is a paid Zuffa sock-puppet.
In essence, they do rank their own fighters though–they just don’t call it that. Title fights, interim title fights, and eliminator matches are all determined by the UFC.
They rank in other ways also. When negotiations with Fedor were going well, Fedor was the best heavyweight in the world. When the negotiations fell through, he wasn’t even a top 5 heavyweight.
I do agree with Dana though–rankings in such fashion do appear to be a conflict of interest. Yet another thing that should be handled by a fighters association.
An independent body of journalists would also work, IE AP or USA Today/ESPN polls for college football, or Ring Magazine rankings.
Honestly, I don’t consider rankings any more of a “conflict of interest” than I do handing out world titles and playing sanctioning body along with being the promoter.
“An independent body of journalists would also work, IE AP or USA Today/ESPN polls for college football, or Ring Magazine rankings.
Honestly, I don’t consider rankings any more of a “conflict of interest” than I do handing out world titles and playing sanctioning body along with being the promoter.”
That was exactly my point–they are doing “rankings” already–just not calling it what it is.
As to an independent panel–agreed again. Who should recognize such a panel? The fighters should–not any promotion.