The president of the world’s largest fighting competition isn’t backing down after criticizing the New York Times and a reporter who he believes attempted to “sabotage” a high-profile prize bout in early May.
Speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White accused the New York Times of patterned bias in its coverage of UFC 249, the latest fight in the mixed martial arts series, which was held in Jacksonville, Florida, on May 9 between lightweight fighters Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje.
“We were trying to figure out solutions to the problems and how do you bring back sports safely, and health and safety is an issue for us every single weekend,” White said. “When we were leading up to these events, we had so many, you know, New York Times and so many other media people trying to sabotage the event so that it couldn’t happen.”
White previously lashed out at the paper following a highly-critical piece that noted several instances where officials at the fight appeared to run afoul of social distancing guidelines adopted by the organization to make sure the event could proceed.
“I don’t give a shit what that guy thinks, what he has to say, or what he writes,” White said last week.
He told Hannity that the New York Times has rarely covered the sport and accused reporter Kevin Draper of failing to include positive quotes from ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro, which struck against the tone of the piece.
“This guy from the New York Times interviewed the president of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, for 45 minutes, wasted 45 minutes of his time and never used one of his quotes,” said White. “You know why? Because they were positive.”
Earlier in the interview, White said he is unsure how long it will be until live crowds can come back into fighting events but that he is hopeful enhanced testing will allow things to get back to normal.
“It’s gonna depend on testing,” White said. “If the level of testing keeps going up, you know, the president was talking about a tab that you would lick, and it would tell you immediately whether you had it or not. I think it’s going to take something like that before we can bring fans back.”
