By Cassandra Cousineau for LVSportsBiz.com
With Christmas and the New Year approaching, UFC President Dana White released a video gift to put a bow on this crazy pandemic year.
It was a four-minute, 48-second nastygram to anyone who had the nerve to criticize UFC or White about staging fights when professional sports shut down in March, April and May during a COVID-19 pandemic that would eventually kill more than 300,000 Americans.
The video was a well-crafted piece of propaganda, consistent with the high production standards you see in all of UFC’s self-produced videos.
In short, the video was a big fat middle finger to his favorite frenemies, the folks in the media who questioned whether re-starting sports during a pandemic was a sound idea.
I call it propaganda because the footage and screen shots of various outlet headlines and comments from journalists were mostly from April when media members featured in the video were specifically commenting on White’s efforts to hold UFC 249 at the Tachi Palace Resort Casino in central California in a venue that would not have to comply with state health standards and COVID-19 restrictions.
The plan to move ahead with a fight show for the April 18 show would’ve sidestepped California state guidelines, which, that at the time, brought sports to a standstill. The casino was on land belonging to the Tachi-Yokut Tribe. By staging the event on tribal land, organizers evaded the requirement of obtaining sanctioning from the California State Athletic Commission.
It wasn’t the media that stopped White from holding a fight show back then. It was his own bosses at Disney and ESPN. Just days before the event, White “got a call from the highest level you can go at Disney and the highest level of ESPN” asking him to cancel the show.
White ended up staging his fight show in May in Jacksonville in the state of Florida, where the coronavirus restrictions are much more lax than those in California. White’s pal, President Donald Trump, released a video praising the UFC bossman for re-starting sports in the USA in May when White put on the UFC event in Jacksonville.
White then put on the first live sports event in Las Vegas during the pandemic May 30 and LVSportsBiz.com reported that, too. He was actually praised for kickstarting live sports in Vegas during the rough pandemic times.
White then went on to stage fights involving UFC’s international fighters in the Middle East on something he called, “Fight Island,” in Abu Dhabi. He drew lots of free publicity for the whole Fight Island shtick.
Anyone who dared to question White’s insistence that the show go on at the start of the pandemic was ridiculed and ripped in the video. While most sports league executives ignore criticism because they understand that’s one of the roles of the media, White took comments about UFC putting on fights during a pandemic as a personal affront.
White said instead of panicking, he wanted solutions to hold sports during the pandemic.
“Why should anyone listen to the media. Who are these people? What makes them experts,” White asked. “It’s easy to criticize from the sidelines when you risk nothing and do nothing.”
White’s tone was similar to that of the rants by his buddy, Trump, who also routinely blasted the media who criticized him. Here’s White leaving Air Force One during a Trump campaign stop.
The video’s message was not necessarily new because White said many of the same comments during the pandemic, such as the media doesn’t know anything about the business of staging fight shows. White also mentioned he did not lay off any UFC employees during the pandemic, though 60 fighters do plan to be cut from the roster.
It was just a parting shot by a man who enjoys mixing it up with the media and drawing clicks just like the media that White scorned in the video.