Dana White took the stage at UFC Vegas 67 media day to address the recent scandal where he was filmed slapping his wife at a New Years Eve club party in Cabo, Mexico. The big question on many people’s minds is whether he will face serious repercussions for the incident.
According to White, his punishment is that he will be branded a wife-beater for the rest of his life.
It’s definitely a social repercussion to get caught hitting your wife. But, as several celebrities and athletes have pointed out, it really does seem like the media picks and chooses who gets a pass and who doesn’t when it comes to situations like this. White suggested a suspension wouldn’t really be a punishment for him, but it would hurt the UFC, Endeavor’s shareholders and the fighters who rely on him to promote the sport.
ESPN’s Max Kellerman disagreed.
in a new Keyshawn, JWill and Max show segment discussing White’s situation and the apparent lack of consequences, Kellerman suggested that a suspension would indeed hurt the UFC president.
“I have a relationship with Dana White that goes back almost 25 years,” Kellerman said. “When he says, ‘Staying 30 days wouldn’t be a punishment for me’…yes, it would be. Absolutely, it would be because Dana is not an adrenaline junkie. Dana is a personality of type A who needs to go, has to run the business, it’s something he loves. It’s a labor of love, a passion for him. So yes, that would absolutely be a punishment.
“But that won’t happen because he’s the one with the authority,” he added. “He is the one in the position of power. And I agree with his assessment that he owns it, he understands it, everything, and he’s wrong, he makes no apologies. But, I think people have a bad reaction because it’s the overlap, the Venn diagram, the shaded area of not only domestic violence but responsibility and how people in positions of power don’t have to answer for the behavior the same way others do. So I think people will have a strong reaction to that.
Former NBA player Jay Williams has commented on how strange it was to see White getting a pass from all the people and business entities above him.
“Why does Dana White decide or have the power to decide what his punishment is in the first place?” said Will. “It should be out of his hands. He shouldn’t have that power. There are people in positions of power in building this organizational structure who could determine what the end result would be for Dana White. I’ll just say that and leave it at that. And also, when you’re in those situations, the shameless tone of his statement is what rubs people the wrong way. And I get that “I have to live with it”, but how you say something matters.
“So when your tone is about coming from a privileged position of power, ‘Hey, I’m the figure in what will determine how I feel about it’ – for people who aren’t in that position of power , who aren’t afforded the same luxury, it becomes a big deal,” he continued. “Because now you’re above the law. You’re above the rules. No matter what you do, you don’t have to be contrite, you don’t have to serve suspensions. While others do. That’s what people don’t like.”
“He has a good personal relationship with people,” Kellerman emphasized again. “I have a relationship with him that goes back a quarter of a century. It helps you in times like these. But, there must be no ambiguity. He knows he’s wrong. The real argument for that something is going on isn’t that he doesn’t understand what he did or punish for punishment’s sake it’s that in a country where it’s an epidemic you want to send a culturally clear message that it won’t be not tolerated…that’s a bad thing.
What interests us here at MMAmania.com is how the UFC routinely suspends fighters for two years under its United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) program, sometimes for questionable infractions. on drugs that lean more towards accidental exposure than anything else. It’s not even something that’s in question at this point: fail a USADA test, and a fighter is gone for at least a year to fight it.
Yet we’re talking here about giving the UFC president a 30-day suspension for hitting his wife? Or rather not talk about it, because it certainly doesn’t seem like it will happen.
As Kellerman and J-Will have said, it’s the double standards and complete isolation of consequences that bother most people about Dana White’s current situation.
#ESPN #hosts #doubt #White #punished #Hes #authority
