Dana White rarely backs down from any opportunity he gets to slam the media, but some headlines in Australia this past week really got under his skin.
While he spent the majority of the days leading up to UFC 312 praising “The Land Down Under” for welcoming the promotion back to Sydney, White couldn’t ignore a couple of stories that grabbed his attention for all the wrong reasons. The first was the cover of the Daily Telegraph Sport, which featured an image of Sean Strickland and some of his more inflammatory statements along with a caption that read: Will someone please... KNOCK THIS GUY OUT
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The second was an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald addressing White’s appearance on a podcast where he sat alongside New South Wales Premier Chris Minns with a quote that said watching them together “actually made me feel sick.”
“Listen for a place that is so tough—everything on land and in the water can kill you—you have the biggest p*ssies I’ve ever seen in the media in my life,” White said during the UFC 312 post-fight press conference. “I saw a story where a guy was like ‘I saw Dana do a podcast with the premier and it physically made me sick.’ Holy f*cking shit.
“You guys have to have the biggest p*ssies of all time in the media here. Just for the record.”
Truth be told, White wasn’t angry about that article but instead mocked the content because the writer claimed he was physically ill watching the UFC CEO converse with the Australian premier.
“We were actually laughing about it,” White said. “We were reading the story in the back and cracking up at that guy. That guy’s got to be the biggest f*cking wimp on planet Earth.”
When it came to the newspaper with Strickland’s photo, and a caption asking somebody to knock him out, White didn’t seem to take offense as much as he was stunned that it happened at all.
He admits that Strickland can be abrasive and say crazy things at times, but White promised nobody from the Australian government actually got upset he was headlining the card on Saturday.
“I’m a big believer in free speech,” White said. “It probably seems worse when you come here because your media are such weak human beings. I thought we had weak media. You guys win hands down.”
As much as White seemed to love his latest trip to Australia, it’s safe to assume he’s probably not picking up a lot of reading material for his flight back home to the United States.
“Even your people know your media are f*cking weak,” White said to the assembled repoters at the press conference. “They even know. They know it. We know it. We all know it now. I didn’t know it. Now I know.”