Bouncing back again and again

Six years ago Karim Zidan wrote a piece titled “'You don’t bounce back from hitting a woman': Is this the UFC's biggest lie?,” in which he highlighted “the gaping inconsistencies in their domestic violence policies” amid promoting former NFL player Greg Hardy joining UFC after he had been arrested for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend by throwing her on a futon full of guns and threatening to kill her. Hardy was convicted of two counts of domestic violence but later had the charges expunged when the victim did not appear in court (though Hardy did settle a civil suit with her). 

Signing Hardy to fight came five years after UFC president Dana White stated, “There’s one thing that you never bounce back from and that’s putting your hands on a woman. Been that way in the UFC since we started here. You don’t bounce back from putting your hands on a woman.” But that’s never been true at White’s company. In July 2015, HBO’s Real Sports reported in a stunning, deeply uncomfortable segment on domestic violence in MMA that the sport had a DV rate more than twice that of the general public and more than three times the NFL, a league that was most often in the news for such incidents. The Real Sports segment also discussed how multiple fighters employed by UFC had been allowed to compete after being arrested for and/or convicted of domestic violence, including the late Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, Anthony Lapsley, Abel Trujillo, and Jason “Mayhem” Miller. White did not participate in the segment.

The hypocrisy of White’s “never bounce back” line was never more blatant than when he was videotaped slapping his own wife at a club in the early morning of New Year’s Day 2023. White spoke to TMZ about it shortly afterward and said:

There’s never ever an excuse for a guy to put his hands on a woman, and now here I am on TMZ talking about it.

This is one of those situations that’s horrible, I’m embarrassed – but it’s also one of those situations that right now we’re more concerned about our kids,” White continued. “We have three kids and obviously since the video popped up, we’ve shown the kids the video, and we’re more focused on our family right now.

White more than once called the incident with his wife “an unfortunate situation” and deflected to his children multiple times while briefly mentioning that he had apologized to his wife (and that she had apologized to him). He did not extend apologies in that interview to anyone involved in or fan of the UFC, and he did not follow through on his previous statements about not bouncing back from domestic violence in UFC, refusing to step down in his role with the company (and getting mocked by his own fighters for that), where he remains to this day.

That’s because Dana White showed back then and continues to show today that he hates women. He could claim otherwise, but the evidence is all there.

He put Hardy on the same fight card as a woman who survived her husband breaking her face in an attack and thought the optics there were fine. 

After longtime scumbag Conor McGregor was found by an Irish civil court to have raped a woman, White was asked if he had a statement, and he offered no condemnation of McGregor or lamentations on the case, and when asked if McGregor would fight in the UFC again, refused to say he wouldn’t. 

In 2011, White chose not to issue a public apology to journalist Maggie Hendricks and instead a very weak statement after UFC employee Joe Rogan called her a slur. 

Then came this past weekend. On Friday at Power Slap 12 (an unfortunate actual thing that probably begs its own examination of White’s priorities), White greeted the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan, with handshakes and hugs and “Welcome to the States, boys.” The brothers are both currently facing charges in Romania that include human trafficking and sex with a minor as well as an open investigation on them in Florida and a civil suit from a woman who claims the Tates forced her into sex work. That’s besides Andrew’s social media career that has been built on proud misogyny, celebrating violence against women, and convincing thousands of teenage boys that women are no more than property. On Saturday, International Women’s Day–which the Tates certainly hold dear–they sat cageside at UFC 313.

How repugnant does one have to be to get the likes of Dana Loesch, John Cardillo, and Jeremy Boreing to publicly criticize you? But being Tate-adjacent means scoring a significant chunk of Tate’s rabid but misled young male audience, and for the UFC CEO, dollars are more important than people harmed.

Not to mention White’s chumminess the President of the TV, who has a lengthy track record of insulting women who dare criticize or question him (especially Black women journalists) and has admitted on tape to sexual assault, has admitted in an interview that he would go in beauty pageant contestants’ dressing rooms without permission, and been found liable in a court of law for sexual abuse. None of those things has been a deal-breaker for White and actually seem more and more likely each to be a plus to a guy like him.

There is not any other head of a sports league who has shown themselves to be such a creep and enemy of women as White. That includes NFL commish Roger Goodell’s hamfisted handling of domestic violence cases and NHL commish Gary Bettman just looking like someone you don’t want to be alone with. 

So at this point any non-sociopath cannot with a clean conscience purchase a UFC pay-per-view event and claim they only care about what happens in the cage. UFC is currently seeking a billion-dollar broadcast rights deal–what network is going to pay such a fee to a man who has repeatedly shown a dismissal of the dignity of women? Will it be current rights-holder ESPN, which has been notably soft on White? And will the future buyer even be pressed on its relationship with such a person at all? I’d criticize Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta for also having White newly on its board of directors, but that company has been in such a gross state for a while that it almost seems fitting.

Regardless, it’s fair to say that supporting Dana White’s business means supporting a man who clearly hates women and embraces men who would do them harm. And doing so will allow White to continue to bounce back from future insults to women as he has been doing for a while.