Dana White loves free speech, but his UFC still bans journalists like me
The UFC's Dana White is casting himself as the champion of free speech despite fronting for a sports league infamous for its heavy-handed repression of the media, including journalists like me.
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Dana White has had a busy week. After one of his fighters casually described Hitler as a "good guy" just trying to deal with "greedy Jews," the UFC president has been on a media tour—not to condemn the comment, but to remind everyone how much he loves free speech.
During appearances on Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan this week, White presented the UFC as a bastion of free speech, lauding the fight organization’s supposed commitment to the first amendment. He even outright opposed the regulation of hate speech, which is loosely defined as a public speech that targets a person or group based on protected characteristics such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
Here is how White explained it on Morgan’s show:
Dana White: We have to protect free speech.
Piers Morgan: Is there any limit to that for you?
Dana White: No. I think probably the most important free speech to protect is hate speech. I mean, because when a government or a certain person can come out and determine, say, 'this is hate speech,' it's a very slippery slope and it's dangerous, in my opinion.
It’s frustrating to watch White cast himself as the champion of free speech when he fronts for a sports league infamous for its heavy-handed repression of the media—one that routinely intimidates and blacklists any journalist who dares to stray from its approved line, including myself.
For the past decade, the UFC has gone out of its way to make my job harder—blacklisting me from events, obstructing my investigations, and even attempting to get me fired by threatening to revoke my employer’s media credentials unless I was let go. Though I was lucky to have an employer at BloodyElbow—Nate Wilcox—who stood up for me and believed in my work, others were not so lucky.
In 2009, White uploaded a now-infamous video in which he called veteran MMA reporter Loretta Hunt a “fucking dumb bitch” and her sources “faggots” in response to an article on the UFC’s attempts to sidestep managers and agents when dealing with fighters. White was eventually forced to apologize to the LGBTQ+ community for using homophobic slurs in his rant, though he never apologized to Hunt. Instead, she remains banned from covering UFC events in person.
Josh Gross, another veteran MMA reporter, was also blacklisted by White as part of a larger denial of credentials to the vast majority of MMA media for UFC 55. Previously, Gross had been offered a job as editor of UFC.com, which he turned down.
Perhaps the most notable instance of a journalist being blacklisted from UFC events occurred in in the lead-up to the UFC sale in 2016, when Ariel Helwani had his credentials pulled during an event and was escorted out of the building, along with his colleagues at MMAFighting.com. We would later find out that Helwani was blacklisted because he stole White’s thunder and broke a UFC story before the UFC president had a chance to announce it himself. Helwani was later reinstated after an avalanche of mainstream publicity.
Despite the UFC continued success, White still found time to intimidate and lambast reporters covering the UFC. In 2020, the UFC released an anti-media video targeting journalists who criticized his decision to hold fights during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The video, which has since been removed by the UFC, was little more than a propaganda showpiece – a montage of journalists’ faces with “WRONG” emblazoned over them, out-of-context headlines and quotes, as well as snippets of White saying things like “I don’t give a fuck” while orchestral music played in the background.
“I’m not afraid of the media,” White said during the video. “Why should anybody listen to the media? Who are these people? What makes them experts? What have they ever accomplished?”
I was one of the journalists mentioned in the video for an article I wrote for the Guardian in March 2020 titled “The UFC’s defiance of the coronavirus outbreak is reckless and irresponsible.” The article was written in the same week that saw more than 100 countries institute a full or partial lockdown in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the virus. Yet while sports leagues such as MLS, NHL, and the NBA suspended their respective seasons, the UFC went ahead with an event in Brazil, where fighters were not tested for Covid-19.
The UFC’s strong-arm approach to public relations, which includes White’s abusive outbursts at media members, is part of the promotion’s strategy to control journalists, and by extension, the narratives surrounding a particular event. Due to the constant fear of having their press credentials rescinded, beat reporters in attendance are discouraged from asking difficult questions that would reflect poorly on the UFC. These include topics such as unionization, fighter exploitation, or the UFC’s affiliation with several authoritarian regimes around the world.
I know the UFC’s media tactics firsthand. While reporting for The New York Times on the UFC’s ties to Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, the organization went out of its way to discredit me—refusing to comment for the story and even attempting to undermine me with my editors. At one point, a UFC staffer called my editor directly, trying to convince him to stop working with me. Needless to say, their efforts failed spectacularly, and my series on the UFC and Kadyrov was published in 2022. But I’ll never forget my editor’s reaction—shocked by the UFC’s hostility, he told me he had never seen anyone representing The Times treated that way.
The UFC has spent years blacklisting journalists and steamrolling press freedoms, yet somehow, Dana White is being framed as a free speech warrior—for defending a guy who, checks notes, defended Hitler. It’s a testament to the clout White has cultivated on the American Right and his ability to spin a narrative where he, a cage-fighting mogul, is the last great defender of the First Amendment.
George Orwell must be rolling in his grave.
Correction: This article initially stated that Josh Gross was banned for reporting the results of the The Ultimate Fighter 4 Finale prior to airing on Spike TV. This was not the case, as Gross was banned prior to UFC 55, which took place long before TUF 4.
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I also forgot about the media/journalist slant on this. I was thinking with the UFC fighters only have free speech if it’s right wing or coincides with UFC TKO or Endeavor agenda. If you say anything good about Francis Ngannou, or criticize them about pay or say they are monopoly you’d be fired in a heartbeat. I can’t wait to see a fighter give the Elon salute pre or post fight. Let’s see how that goes.