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By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch contributor
At the UFC 149 press conference last week Dana White showed once again that he's not ready for primetime. This is a portion of Dana's comments:
"I’m not a big hockey fan. But I respect how talented you have to be to play hockey. Soccer? That’s a whole other ball. Can’t stand soccer. It’s the least-talented sport on Earth. There’s a reason three-year-olds can play soccer."
Dana goes on to complain about the lack of scoring in soccer while talking up hockey. It's pretty obvious that Dana was trying to get in good with Canadian hockey fans (the press conference was in Calgary), but he went about it in about the worst way possible. In other words, he went about it in his typical way.
I understand and appreciate the way that Dana calls it the way he sees it, but he needs to show more judgement while doing this. A man in his position shouldn't be making such statements, they're reckless and foolish. He represents the UFC, and these kinds of statements reflect poorly on the company. It shows a serious lack of tact and responsible thinking to denigrate an entire sport, especially when he was just trying to smooth talk hockey fans.
Why even bring soccer into it? Why couldn't he just have left it at talking how much he respects hockey and the players? There's a reason coaches and other high-rankings members of a sports league all sound like robots, you're not supposed to act like some schmoe in a bar after he's had a few too many. It's not necessary to go that far, though. In fact, it's preferable if you don't. Rex Ryan coaches the New York Jets in the NFL, and he's far from a robot. I love the way Ryan coaches and the way he handles himself. Dana White routinely makes bombastic statements, and that's fine as long as he doesn't trash an entire sport.
I don't like soccer, it's not for me. I don't like baseball either. I don't care much for hockey, to be honest. I don't go around trashing those sports, though. If a regular guy like me knows that, then why does this concept so elude Dana?
What makes this even worse is that the UFC is trying to sell-out a soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the UFC 147 rematch between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen. Didn't Dana think that trashing soccer might piss off a lot of potential fans in Rio? The UFC is targeting 80,000 seats for this stadium, they need as much goodwill as they can get. Dana just recently said that UFC 147 will be bigger than anything, the NFL, the NBA, or anything else. While that's not true, but there's no harm in him saying that. Hell, we expect it, he's supposed to say stuff like that.
It's time for Dana to evolve past this type of behavior. One of the prices you pay for success is that you can't act the way you always have. Considering that they televise the sport, I wonder what the folks at FOX think about Dana putting down soccer in that manner?
Comments and suggestions can be e-mailed to me at hydenfrank@gmail.com
Sidenote- I'm a big music fan, I get into all sorts of music. I recently found out that my brother-in-law, Ian Skeans, is in a band called Dino Riki that just recently released an album. Ian also has a side solo project called Pink Balloon Band (PBB, for short). I've never been much for labels, but I suppose I'd call the music rock/punk. The point is, they're really good and you can check them out on Facebook, links below. I've been especially stuck on this PBB song called "What Have I Become". That song is awesome.
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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