Dana White Dismissing WWE as 'Fake' Is Hypocritical

UFC President Dana White is happy to pocket the real money that "fake" wrestlers bring to UFC. He's happy to see pay-per-view buys go up and interest climb when men who built their names in WWE make their way to the Octagon.

Still, he continues to scoff at what these men and women do in the squared circle. He continues to toss around the one word sure to infuriate an entire industry.

For years, the surefire way to enrage a wrestler has been to use the word "fake" to describe how they make a living. Ask John Stossel, who took a clubbing blow to the ear from David Schultz after uttering that word. Ask the man who made the mistake of using that term in front of Haku, losing a chunk of his nose as a result.

White has received a flurry of anger after his recent comments about WWE. He's made himself look bad for dissing a business he has profited from.

A Twitter interaction with a fan quickly turned to White taking jabs at WWE and pro wrestling as a whole:

(Warning: Contains NSFW language.) 

This led to wrestling fans bombarding White with heated messages. WWE names chimed in, too, including Seth Rollins, Joey Styles and Mick Foley.

Former TNA world champion Austin Aries threw in some choice thoughts as well:

Each of these men have a point. Wrestlers have to deal with this kind of dismissive attitude all the time. WWE doesn't pretend to be a legitimate sporting competition. It's long billed itself as entertainment, but "fake" is the wrong word to use.

Injuries are real. Reddened chests, broken noses and a lifetime of taking bumps are real. "Dynamite Kid" Tom Billington sitting in a wheel chair, partially paralyzed, back and leg issues haunting him long after his wrestling days ended, is real.

The violence is controlled as much as possible and the outcomes are predetermined, but it's not fake—a hologram is.

And while White is far from the only person with this attitude, it's his position as UFC's boss that makes his comments more high-profile and more foolish.

The Beast

When UFC decided to sign Brock Lesnar in 2008, it wasn't his 1-0 MMA record that got him the deal. He had been a main eventer with WWE, serving as the company's top champion and centerpiece for a time. 

Lesnar had defeated The Rock, stared down Steve Austin and battled Undertaker inside of the Hell in a Cell. He was a marquee pro wrestler with top-notch athletic prowess who left the WWE before he was 28 years old.

Defeating Min Soo Kim didn't make Lesnar a man with buzz swirling around him—his WWE work did. 

Just as he did with WWE, Lesnar brought eyes to the UFC product. Combine questions about how he would do in a non-worked fight and his natural presence with his attitude, and White had a moneymaker on his hands.

With Lesnar vs. Frank Mir at the top of the card, UFC 100 pulled in record numbers. As listed on FanSided.com, that event netted 1.6 million buys. That remains the UFC's best showing in that department.

Lesnar's name is all over that list. Of the top 16 UFC PPVs of all time, Lesnar headlined five of them, including the No. 2, No. 5 and No. 7 top events.

Bubba Dudley (aka Bully Ray) was quick to point that out to White after his recent comments:

Beyond the numbers, Lesnar's arrival helped UFC reach a wider audience, helped it generate interest on a larger level. Of Couture vs. Lesnar, Jonathan Snowden writes in Shooters: The Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling, "The sports world was abuzz over this fight, like it had never been for a UFC fight before."

That was true for so many of his bouts. And there's no doubt that a huge part of that is because he was a guy WWE made famous.

Even in 2014, White was cashing in on Lesnar's name. As part of UFC's Fight Pass, fans could tune in to hear The Rock discuss Lesnar's career, Austin offering his thoughts on Lesnar's UFC days and watch all of Lesnar's fights. This was while Lesnar was back doing "fake" wrestling and becoming an even bigger star.

Punk is Coming

CM Punk's UFC profile does not list him under his real name. Of course, it's not Phil Brooks that White is interested in—it's Punk, the former WWE champ.

Punk's MMA record before UFC signed him was 0-0. Like with Lesnar, White didn't welcome him aboard because he had proved himself with other MMA companies. He wanted Punk's name and drawing power.

White taking on an unproven fighter who is already well into his 30s had scores of fighters pissed off. Why was this guy given an opportunity over men and women who had dedicated years of their lives to learning the art of MMA?

Because Punk will make money for UFC.

His presence will certainly make any pay-per-view he's on a far more intriguing card. Whether fans want to see him prove his critics wrong or just watch him get his teeth kicked it, it doesn't matter. Punk will sell tickets. And that's a result of his forays into the world of "fake" fighting.

To count the dollars that come in as a result of Punk's WWE fame and turn around and crap on that industry is hypocritical.

Besides, pro wrestling aplenty is woven into MMA's history.

An Intertwined History

As much as pro wrestling and UFC are wildly different beasts, you can't separate their lineages. 

While it was a terrible match in terms of entertainment value, Antonio Inoki taking on Muhammad Ali in 1976 is considered a huge step in MMA's development. The match pitted a Japanese pro wrestling legend against perhaps the most famous boxer of all time.

It was all crouching kicks and awkwardness, but as Mike Whitman writes for Sherdog, "The iconic confrontation is nevertheless viewed as an important if not spectacular step toward the establishment of MMA."

One has to credit Inoki's wrestling fame for part of the interest in this battle. Wrestlers and boxers had clashed in the ring before, but this was a larger, more marquee meeting.

Over a decade before that bout, the referee from that fight, Gene LeBell, took on Milo Savage in another collision of styles. Savage was a boxer while LeBell was both a judoka and a pro wrestler. 

LeBell faced WWE Hall of Famer Peter Maivia during his career in the squared circle. His impact is felt more as a teacher, though. He trained Roddy Piper, worked with Chuck Norris and offered his expertise to Bruce Lee.

Of working with Lee, he told Submission Radio, "I taught him how to wrestle, armbars and leg locks, neck locks, and he taught me how to do these jumping fancy kicks which I used many times in the movies."

As noted by Yahoo Sports' Kevin Iole, White has called Lee the father of modern MMA. 

One doesn't have to go back that far to see the connection between pro wrestling and MMA, though. Flash back to 1993, when UFC put on its first event.

Gerard Gordeau, the man who lost to Royce Gracie in the finals that night, ventured into wrestling. He worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling, including a match against the legendary Inoki.

Ken Shamrock competed at UFC 1 as well and was one of the company's early stars. Pre-UFC, he had worked for shoot-style pro wrestling promotion Fujiwara Gumi in Japan.

Shamrock would later become a star for WWE, one of many times where shoot fighters went on to do worked matches and vice versa.

Kazushi Sakuraba competed in two UFC events after wrestling for NJPW and UWF International. UFC was happy to take Tony Halme (known in WWE as Ludvig Borga) when in 1997, he became one of the many men to lose to Randy Couture.

It's easy to think of UFC and what White dismisses as fake as existing on two wholly separate planes. But fighters come out to entrance music a la pro wrestling, borrow nicknames from the business, as Ronda Rousey did, and travel between those planes, as we've seen with guys such as Josh Barnett and Bobby Lashley.

Rather than embrace the WWE fanbase, which has plenty of overlap with the UFC audience, White chose to poke a stick at them. He chose to ignore his ongoing relationship with an enterprise that has bettered his own empire.