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Trading Shots: On Dana White's ire toward the 'so-called' MMA media

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This week’s Trading Shots is a doozy, and it begins with the UFC President’s anger at the “so-called guys” of the MMA media. Yeah, MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes and former UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes are going there. Buckle up.

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Fowlkes: So Danny, it turns out that UFC 177 was one of those cards that looked crappy on paper, but turned out to be pretty fun in practice. That, of course, will cue the cries from people who can’t understand how anyone could possibly judge a fight card before it happens – unless they’re judging it positively, which is apparently totally fine.

One of those people is bound to be UFC President Dana White, who went on a little bit of a tirade on FOX Sports 1 during the prelims, taking aim at the so-called “media,” what with their “articles” on the so-called “Internet.” One of the articles he seemed particularly peeved about was this one by Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden, which argues that the only way for fans to effectively communicate their displeasure with weak pay-per-view lineups is to stop buying them, starting with UFC 177.

White seemed to think this was absolutely unconscionable, so much so that he appeared to refer to it in a speech to his fighters as “the most disgusting f-cking despicable thing I’ve ever seen.” (Side note: What do you think is the second-most disgusting f-cking despicable thing he’s ever seen?)

My question to you, Danny, since I know you love to weigh in on the MMA media while pretending not to be a part of it, is do you agree with the UFC prez here? Was Snowden’s column, or even just the general criticism of UFC 177 from all corners, out of line?

Downes: Great, another week where you take the populist stance and I have to try to lay things out in a balanced, rational matter. If I knew this was going to happen so frequently, I never would have given you that Hugo Chavez biography.

One of the big criticisms levied against FOX News is that they do not distinguish their news reporting from their editorials. Opinion-based reporting is presented as hard news. While it may not be to the same extent, MMA media can be guilty of the same. What does true objectivity look like? That may be a question better handled by journalism professors and philosophers. For the purpose of our discussion, you have to admit that (either explicitly or implicitly) there are journalists out there whose level of schadenfreude exceeds what is proper. Whether it’s Bellator or the UFC, the Twitter snark and faultfinding isn’t always on par with the actual situation.

Do I understand the criticism of UFC 177 prior to the event taking place? Absolutely. Was the “this is the weakest PPV card ever!” narrative played up a bit too much, to the detriment of other stories? I think you can make a case for that. If UFC “hacks” can exist in the media, don’t we have to at least consider the possibility that the opposite end of the spectrum is present, too? Don’t some reporters get too caught up with “sticking it to the man,” to actually present other viewpoints?

tj-dillashaw-joe-soto-ufc-177Fowlkes: That’s possible. The internet is a breeding ground for snark, and I know I sometimes catch myself doing it out of laziness or habit, which sucks. Part of the problem for veteran MMA journalists might also be the result of long-term exposure to the corporate culture of the UFC. It’s a company that’s been known to threaten, bully and manipulate media members in the hopes of getting the narrative it likes. You deal with that long enough, and sooner or later you might develop an overly negative view of everything that company does, which isn’t really fair to the fighters it employs.

At the same time, doesn’t it seem like the UFC wants to have it both ways here? For instance, the rankings. The UFC has zero problem using those little numbers next to somebody’s name as a selling point when it can, yet it’s so quick to take offense when people look at a fight card like UFC 177 and point out that there are very few numbers to be found. That’s when we’re told that all fighters are created equal, just a bunch of hard-working athletes who deserve our respect and money (make those checks payable to the UFC, by the way, and not the fighters themselves, the vast majority of whom get no cut of the PPV revenue).

It’s the same with White’s revulsion at the very idea that any media member would tell fans not to buy one of his PPV events. He doesn’t seem to see any conflict when it’s working in the other direction. Nearly every major MMA website, including this one, does some variation on the “Reasons to Watch” theme before events. If it’s cool to tell readers why they should watch an event, why isn’t cool to tell them why they shouldn’t? Since when are only positive opinions valid?

I might not have agreed with every assertion in that Snowden column, but I think the core assumption it’s built on – if fans want something different from the UFC, they must vote for it with their credit cards – is completely reasonable. Whether you think UFC 177 was the event to make that case around or not, I don’t see how you can make the claim that it’s just completely beyond the scope of what the media should be doing.

Downes: I agree with your assessment of fighter rankings. In general, I don’t really find them useful either way. Yes, they’re voted on by media members, but have you ever looked at some individual ballots? The faults of democracy are an issue for another day, but your point is taken.

You would have to admit, though, that there arise situations where the UFC can’t win. Take your tweet here from last night:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the point you were trying to get across is that the UFC does not have loyalty to its fighters. The superstars whom they praise one minute and use for profit can be cast aside and thrown under the bus. What should Joe Rogan have done? If he went soft on Renan Barao the UFC would have been accused of being dishonest.

There are a couple things at play here. The first is the over-saturation argument. Many MMA journalists have weighed in on this issue, and most have come to the conclusion that the UFC is harming the on-screen product. That’s a perfectly viable position to hold, but it has become a cause célèbre in the community. Every chance someone has to say, “The UFC is watering down their product,” they take it.

Again, having that opinion is perfectly fine, but making it a mission statement isn’t acceptable. It’s like when you were trying to cost Vitor Belfort his job. The man couldn’t even get an awesome haircut without you trying to run him through the ringer.

Instead of MMA, let’s pretend we were restaurant critics. And, for the sake of argument, let’s say your boy Guy Fieri was opening a new restaurant in Missoula. Before the place even opens, there are some valid criticisms you can throw out there. I don’t know if my idea of “Flavor Town” uses something called “donkey sauce,” but who knows, I might like it. There’s a big difference, though, between telling people, “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll eat there,” and actively telling them not to patronize the restaurant.

The errors of journalists aren’t solely those placed on the anti-UFC side. There are plenty of people who I would argue ignore their duty in other ways. You know as well as I do that there are media members out there who hang out with fighters and camps and act like best buddies. I personally find that to be a conflict of interest, but maybe I’m wrong.

There are reporters who want to insert themselves into storylines and make themselves pseudo-celebrities. Does this violate journalistic standards? I don’t know, you could answer that better than I could. What I do know is that the backlash against Kevin Iole when he praised the UFC’s marketing strategy was swift. The criticism of Marc Raimondi for this story was also quick. To be clear, I’m not criticizing people’s reactions to those articles. I just want to know, when has it ever happened the other way?

If I could paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I would remind you that that moderation in the reporting of MMA is no vice, and extremism in journalism is no virtue.

Fowlkes: What I was trying to get across with that tweet is that the UFC will turn on a fighter pretty quickly the moment he costs the UFC money. It will also apparently do so with a gleeful relish, and in very public settings where it holds all the power (whereas if you fail a drug test after the UFC has had a chance to profit from your services, meh, that can be handled with a brief website statement).

Did you see Barao before that interview started, sitting there with his UFC shirt on, looking like he’d just been suspended from school and was waiting for his angry mother to leave work and come pick him up? That was a pubic flogging of a guy who, just a few months ago, White couldn’t stand to see besmirched in any fashion whatsoever. I don’t know about you, but if I heard that the dude interviewing me about a mistake I made was “fired up” to “go after” me, I don’t think I’d feel like I was about to get the fairest of shakes. If that dude also worked for the company that had suffered a financial setback as a result of my mistake, I suspect my apprehension would only deepen.

The UFC does a lot of stuff like that, where it presents itself as if it is the media. You ever watch “UFC Tonight”? It’s built to look like a real news show, but it’s mostly UFC employees talking about the company they work for. Hell, the broadcasts of the events themselves are controlled by the UFC, which is why things that would definitely be discussed on a FOX broadcast of an NFL game (the arrest of a fighter’s father/coach the day before the event, for instance), go unmentioned during a UFC fight. It’s a for-profit company telling you about itself, so how confident can you be that you’re always going to get the full story? That’s why you need the media.

As for writers catching flak for being too UFC-positive, I don’t know if that’s always such a bad thing. I know there have been instances in which I’ve taken crap for a story I wrote and it forced me to confront the fact that I screwed something up. Of course, just like you don’t want to hear analysis of your shortcomings as a fighter from someone who’s never been punched in the face, media members don’t always take kindly to the peanut gallery criticism of people who’ve never done a lick of actual journalism in their entire lives.

Still, pressure from readers helps keep people honest, and it also helps to let them know when they’ve drifted too far in one direction. You need that feedback, to some extent. I know I hear plenty of it from people who think I’m being too hard on the UFC. Even when I think they’re wrong, it helps to be forced to think about it sometimes.

I think the thing people forget sometimes is that the UFC is not doing them a favor by putting on these fights. You don’t have to thank them for the privilege of letting you give them your 50 bucks once a month. The UFC is trying to sell us a product, and at premium prices. The people it is trying to sell that product to have every right to voice an opinion on it.

This sport does not belong to the UFC. It belongs to the fighters and the fans. We don’t always have to agree with one another about what’s right or wrong with MMA, but if we start declaring some opinions off-limits – and if we let the person who has the clearest financial stake in the matter decide where that line is drawn – where the hell do we think we’re going to end up?

Downes: The sport does not belong to the UFC, but the organization does. You can disagree with tactics and strategy, but it’s their business. I laugh at the idea of the NFL being a nonprofit, but they’re a completely different animal than the UFC when it comes to accountability. As you said, the UFC is a for-profit company. I understand the “UFC Tonight” complaints, but you might as well yell at Pepsi for telling us that more people prefer their taste to Coca-Cola.

I’m sure many people will call my objectivity into question. The capacity in which I work for the UFC is limited to “TUF” recaps and predictions articles littered with YouTube links and Henry Clay references, but it’s still a job. Having said that, my freelance work for UFC.com does not make my arguments invalid per se. We criticize White for using ad hominem arguments to make a point. Shouldn’t the same apply here?

One of the phrases I hate most in life is, “Hey, it’s just business.” People use it all the time to justify insensitive or harmful acts. The problem is, you can’t divorce a business from the people in it. Businesses are composed of individuals, and any action you take against the structure ultimately affects the people associated with it. If you go to a restaurant and have a bad time, who’s the one that suffers? Chances are it’s the waiter. Sometimes the waiter is a justifiable target, but other times they do everything within their power and the system prevents them from providing an enjoyable experience.

Something similar applies to MMA. People mocked White for saying that media members were being disrespectful to the fighters competing on the card. If you think about it, he wasn’t that far off. You may have perfectly reasonable explanations for criticizing MMA organizations and their tactics, but you can’t deny that telling people not to order a PPV or to ignore an event hurts fighters. That may not be the intention, but they’re harmed regardless. It’s an example of another one of my most hated phrases: “collateral damage.” In the end, the vitriol and nastiness this week may not have been the most disgusting, f -cking despicable thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly not preferable. Let’s hope we can do better. Everyone.

For complete coverage of UFC 177, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.

Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram page and YouTube channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.

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