UFC President Dana White Has Crossed the Line

I was doing some research on the UFC Fight Night card, when I came across this vlog posting by Dana White. At about the four-minute mark, Dana discusses an article written by Sherdog's Loretta Hunt.

In the article, Hunt was critical of the UFC for not allowing some of its fighters to have their managers and agents backstage during a fight. Dana took offense to the article, particularly the anonymous source that Hunt used, and voiced it with some particularly colorful language.

Rants like this are nothing new for White. I cannot recall a time when he has been on camera for more than a minute without letting an "F bomb" fly. That's Dana, for better or worse.

The problem that I have with this particular rant, however, is that he chose to use a homophobic slur when speaking about the anonymous source. This is unacceptable, hateful, and akin to him using the "N word" when describing a black person.

Can you imagine David Stern using a derogatory slur like that during a news conference? Or Bud Selig? How about the CEO of a company?

No, it's unimaginable, and it should be. For a sport that craves mainstream credibility, Dana has done the UFC and MMA as a whole the ultimate disservice. Slurs like that only reinforce the mainstream stereotype that MMA is backwards and uncultured.

I respect the hell out of Dana, and the contributions that he has made to MMA are beyond question. But he has crossed the line with this language.

He won't be forced to apologize, like so many athletes and managers often do, because there is no league conduct to abide by and no threat of suspension (or any kind of discipline at all, for that matter).

No, in this instance, it will be the fans of Mixed Martial Arts that suffer, as we watch Dana lob a softball to anyone looking to criticize the sport we follow and its organization.

In closing, I'll quote the UFC president, but make a slight word choice alteration:

Dana White, you're a f**king idiot.