Pablo Torre Finds Out - What 'Freedom of Speech' Really Means to Dana White and the UFC

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

At a time when so many are struggling with the regulation of expression, from Elon Musk's X to college campuses to the workplace, why did mixed-martial arts, of all things, rebrand itself as America’s leading bastion of free speech? Ariel Helwani, the sport's preeminent journalist and host of The MMA Hour, traces an evolving policy — from getting censored himself to a homophobic rant going viral — and explains how UFC boss Dana White has made a fortune in the name of “freedom.”This episode originally aired January 30, 2024 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I don't fucking tell any other human being what to say, what to think, and there's no leashes on any of them. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. I don't want to do an episode with you where we moralize. I don't want to be confused in our conversation here with like an attempt to cancel anybody. No.

Just because I don't think that's what I find most interesting when I think about the stuff I want to talk about with you. Great. I don't want to do that either. That's perfect. But I do want to talk about freedom of speech. Yes. Because the story here that I find endlessly interesting is the story about how the sport that you love more than anybody else I've ever known, who has covered MMA and the UFC longer than anyone else in our business really, how that sport, how that business has become. the champion, the foremost champion of freedom of speech. Well, it didn't happen overnight, so it's not something that happened yesterday. There's been a slow build, if you will.

So you should know that Ariel Helani is the host of the MMA Hour podcast, and he has covered this sport for almost 20 years. And I would say what's beautiful about MMA and what has always drawn me to MMA is the fact that it is unlike the other. major sports, right? I grew up. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster like any other kid who went to Syracuse University. I wanted to be the next Bob Costas, Marv, Albert. And when I got there, there were 2,000 kids there that all wanted to be the same thing. And this is 2001, and the UFC's eight years old, and it's a little rough around the edges. And it's not even legal in half the

states in America. And I say to my parents, I want to cover this because no one's covering this. I want to be the Howard CoSell of this sport. And the term MMA had just been born. It wasn't even called MMA in the early days. It was just ultimate fighting or cage fighting. And so it's always been different. And I loved the characters. And I loved how, you know, how raw they were. And you've got Tito Ortiz with the crazy hair and shorts and Chuck Liddell with the tattoo on his head. So that's always kind of been a thing. Now it's just become maybe an even greater thing. Well, I want to establish that I love combat sports. I'm not an MMA expert by any means, but I've covered boxing for a long time. covering a fight is the most fun you could have on assignment.

Oh, it's the best, yeah. They don't generally give a fuck. They're incentivized economically to not give a fuck slash be interesting. And you get access and you get to see people just truly uncensored in a way that really is a delight to any journalist. They are incentivized to sell themselves, right? Like, Victor Wenbanyama at this point doesn't really have to do anything other than play to sell himself. He doesn't have to do media. He doesn't have to sit down.

Sure, the odd commercial, the odd sit down here or there. But he doesn't have to go and pound the pavement, right? Shohay Otani would not tell us the public, the name of his dog. Exactly. Like, that's the level of guardrail around this man, the security around him. And meanwhile, you have a fighter who's like, yeah, come over. Come over. Let me tell you everything.

Let me talk to you about mental health. Let me talk to you about my deep, dark secrets. Let me talk to you about my STDs. My STDs. Let me talk to you about when I was abused as a kid. Let me talk to you about everything. Everything. Like, they open up and then some.

So it's actually, even if I was doing an interview with a great journalist named Jeff Pearlman recently. Of course. Who told me that. Yes. Incredible journalist. And he was telling me like, why should I as a journalist care about this? I don't really like fighting. I was like, even if you don't like fighting and you just love stories and personalities,

it's a dream world for you. The character that has been most recently in front of America has been this guy, Sean Strickland. The world there, I think. The world, and rightfully so, you should say that. Because for people who aren't familiar, Sean Strickland wore a shirt to a press conference before his fight recently that said, a woman in every kitchen, a gun in every hand, right?

And so this is the other aspect of what happens when everybody can show personality. That this dude has a bunch of opinions that personally, I won't even categorize for the moment because, again, I'm not here to moralize. We've got a pretty supportive gay and lesbian community in this city. I did want to ask you about something you wrote a couple of years ago.

You said, if I had a gay son, I would think I... Oh, look, another, another, the each time saying, the swamp, you guys, a swamp. You've become a champion, you become a star, and someone's... Let me ask you something. Are you, are you gay? But I think it's textbook to say, objective to say, that it was incredibly,

explicitly homophobic. Are you gay? Well, now, I'm asking, this is a part of the goal. Are you, are you a gay man? I'm an ally of the community. Okay. If you had a son, then he was like, you know, he had a son, he was gay,

you'd be like, oh, man, you don't want a grand kid? No problem with it. Oh, man. Well, dude, you're a weak fucking man. man, dude. You're like, you're part of the problem. You elected Justin Trudeau. Like, what you, when he seized the bank accounts, like, you're just

pathetic. And the fact that, the fact that you have no fucking backbone and has he shut down your fucking country and seized bank accounts, you ask me some stupid shit like that, go fuck yourself. Move the fuck on, man. You're a coward. But I say that to

get to the point that Dana White, the president and CEO of the UFC, a guy you have covered for years in ways that we'll get to later, he gave a response to a journalist that articulated this freedom of speech policy born of all of the characters he is managing, but also clearly a philosophy that I was struck by. You obviously give a long leash to your fighters about, you know,

what they can say when they are up there with a UFC microphone and you are getting into territory of homophobia, transhobia, like, is there... I don't give anybody a leash. Well, I'm saying you... A leash? Free speech. Control what people say?

Going to tell people what to believe? Going to tell people... I don't fucking tell any other human being what to say, what to think, and there's no leashes. Aren't any of them. What is your question? I was asking that question.

I'll move on, though. Yeah, probably a good idea. That's ridiculous to say, give somebody a leash. Free speech, brother. People can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want. Dana grabbed onto leash and just focused on that.

Of course he knows it's a figure of speech, but that was like they should show that in courses all over the world as to how someone in his position should deal with a tough question like that. Right. You should have said, what, latitude. Latitude, yes.

Anything. You give them lever. Whatever it is, he just grabbed onto leash. And now I've seen so many people post that clip saying, look, this is how you run a company. Isn't this great? Well, so this is why I am obsessed with this is because we are in a time, Ariel, in a country, in a world in which everybody is struggling with how to regulate speech, how to be a content moderator, right? Like Elon Musk buys Twitter. And his brain is mostly consumed with this question of like, and the criticism around,

who do I kick off this platform? Who is allowed on here, right? Harvard University, any college, right? The debate is about what's acceptable to say, right? This is a laboratory of democracy, academia. What are we allowing people to actually say? Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no? It can be depending on the context.

It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. And so too is a thing in speech that, America has always struggled with, right? Like, when does free speech become something that actually First Amendment considerations all accounted for? We still need to regulate. And Dana White is the only person in sports to say, free speech, bro, period. I'm the head of this organization. I am not punishing anyone. As he said, I'm not punishing anyone. I've not told a single human being what to say because free speech, comma, bro. This is,

obviously an MMA story, but to your point, it's a much larger story, right? Because it's affecting us on a daily basis, every walk of life, every platform. In fact, just yesterday, Dana White joined none other than the platform of failed Republican candidate Vivek Ramoswamy to talk about how we all need to just stop being so afraid of free speech. More people like us need to stand up and talk about this because there's a lot of people that feel that way. but for some reason this whole cancel culture

and all the other bullshit that's flying around right now where if you fucking say anything that anybody doesn't like, they're coming after you. Shut up, sit down, do as you're told. 100%. I feel like it's the beginnings of that changing a little bit. Do you feel that? Oh, yeah.

It's the beginnings. I think we're on the, we're a hairs trigger away from everybody's tired of hell with this. Everybody's tired of this bullshit. As it pertains to MMA and Dana White, this has been a conscious effort on his part over the last few years, and I would say probably dating back to 2016, where it has increasingly become this stance.

And it's a stance, I want to be clear, that has become this rallying cry for a whole swath of American culture now. Yes. Because finally someone says it. It's very smart and calculated. But what I want the audience to understand is when he sits there and says, I don't police speech, I don't tell grown men and women what to say, and I've never done that, it's actually not true.

So we got to talk about pre-2016 then. Because these examples are things that I was not familiar with before I started researching this story. But you, as the interlocutor, interviewing Dana White, you were the guy to whom he was articulating some of this policy. How would you describe what his policy used to be like? Oh, his policy was actually quite clear. You can't go around offending people.

In fact, I would say his policy was keep it to yourself, right? There was once a time in 2015, a fighter named Yul Romero, won a big fight in Florida, and he is of Cuban descent. And so still to this day, we don't know if he said, don't forget Jesus or no for gay Jesus. We still don't know. He's not made this clear. And he got a huge amount of back on. afterwards. And Dana White in an interview with me, which is still on YouTube, said,

just leave your religion to yourself. No one wants to hear it. You just won the biggest fight of your career, you know. America doesn't want to hear your thoughts on Jesus. And, you know, keep that stuff at home. Religion, politics, all that stuff. When you're out there fighting and you're being interviewed, they want to hear about the fight. It's awesome that you love Jesus. Love Jesus all you want.

I just don't have to do it publicly. There was one example from 2013. 2013, okay? This is Matt Mitreone. So Matt Matrione was a former NFL player who then fought in the UFC. He actually used to come on my show every once in a while for a fun little segment called the Mitreone Minute. And it was basically him roasting people in the sport. Stuff that he said back then probably would never fly in this day and age.

And there was a fighter named Fallon Fox, who was a transgender fighter who was. was a really big story at the time. Everyone was doing stories on her. A trans woman. Yes. And he went off. It was pretty intense. Check this fight videos in, holy shit.

I have not seen a man be the woman like that since Chris Brown beat Rihanna. It was a man. And six years of taking performance, dehancing drugs, you think's going to change, all that? That's ridiculous. That is a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak. He got suspended. And the UFC put out a statement, and he had to apologize.

And so this was, I believe, April of 2013, it was shortly thereafter me talking to Dana White about it all. And as you can see, he's talking about a UFC fighter, and he's saying like, no, there's a line, right? You can't go there. I know that there was a lot of talk. Free Mityone and all this stuff with the fans. And it's freedom of speech and all this stuff.

That's absolutely ridiculous. Work at any company anywhere in America and go out and say ignorant, stupid stuff publicly, even on top of that, say it publicly in a big place where people can go read it or hear it publicly and see what happens to you. And, you know, it's like, oh,

we agree with what Mitrione said. Well, you can agree with what Mitrione said, but he called her a disgusting freak and, you know, compared her to silence of the lambs and things like that. There's a way to voice your opinion without sounding like a bigot. You know what I mean?

He's saying exactly the thing that he was roasting the reporter for beginning to attempt to say about latitude and leashes. Which, by the way, I thought that was a very good answer. I've not seen that clip. That was like, that was like, 11 years old. Dude, I was a perfect answer, right? When I saw that, I was like, is this a deep fake? Right, right. Like, Dana White is doing a coherent job of saying a normal workplace policy found it anywhere, any company in America.

Yeah. And so the reason I point all of this out is to say it didn't use. to be like this. No. And now it is. Yes. And so when it comes to the question of what is the difference in incentive, in motive, in rationale, why has it flipped? Where do you begin to tell the story? You've done a great job of getting us to this point. And you've just exemplified why you are such a great journalist. Because on my show on Monday, I was trying, I don't try to be Mr. journalist or try to big brother other media. And I kind of actually hate when media critique media

that are sitting in that room. That was three o'clock in the morning. I'm at home. They're sitting there. It is tough to be in that room with Dana White. He is a strong-willed, intimidating fellow. 100%. And so I don't like to say, like, you should have said this. You should have said that. But what I said to the audience and indirectly to the media is you're asking the wrong question. What they continue to ask Sean Strickland, Dana White, and others is, Where's the line? How do you police this? What do you need to do? What do you say to your fighters if it goes too far? That's not the question to ask anymore. The question has always been what has changed. What's the difference? Why did you police others? Why did you suspend others? Why did you have an issue with it in 2013 and 14 and 15 and don't have an issue? It is black and white now.

I have no issues. Say what you want. Free speech, brother. So to me, I just want to know what has changed. Right. What's the difference? I would love to know that psychology. I want to frame this as a matter of incentives. When Dana White is cleaning up and manicuring the edges around this sport full of characters who will say anything and sometimes they say things that are transphobic, homophobic, etc. And he's like, we're punishing this. That feels like from afar to me as a thing you do because you want what you had perceived as the mainstream. You want them to think MMA could be in our corporate family. MMA could be a Disney partner. MMA could be in a household. And so what do we got to do? We got to clean up, get a haircut. And I'm wondering how obvious that was to you in retrospect or at the time. Incredibly obvious because it wasn't just that. It wasn't just saying the things that he was saying, which I honestly thought was sincere, certainly at the time. It was uniforms, instituting uniforms. You know this as a boxing guy, right? Fighters don't wear uniforms. Fighters are supposed to be themselves. Mike Tyson came out with black shorts and black boots and with a towel over his head.

Like I said, Titori's and Chuck Liddell. They all had very unique looks. But in 2015, they cut this deal with Reebok and everyone had to wear uniforms. So sponsors are gone. Unique shorts are gone. And what they told us at the time was we don't want the sport to look like NASCAR. We don't want the sport to be like all everyone wearing different things. Like look at the major sports.

Look at the NFL. Look at the NBA. Everyone's wearing uniforms. We're a major league sport. The other big thing that they did around that time was signed this deal with USADA, the United States anti-doping agency. Oh, we don't let people juice around here.

We are regulated by this incredible entity that oversees the Olympics and all sport, true, blue, clean, anti-doping. That's what we're all about. An American institution that regulates other legitimate American institutions. Yes, so they were putting this all together. Again, sincere or not, in order to make this into a nice, neat, mainstream corporate package to eventually sell it off and

all make a lot of money. Now, Dana White, for those I may not quite understand, was a part of that sale, meaning he owned at the time approximately 9% of the company. So two brothers, Lorenzo and Frank Fortita own the majority of the company. The Abu Dhabi government owned 10% and then Dana owned the other 10%, give or take 1% here or there. And so he made a killing. But, part of the deal, which was initially around 50% to Endeavor and other investors. Now Endeavor obviously owns the vast majority of it was that Dana White has to stick around. And so now he gets another percentage of the company and the salary and whatnot. So for those not understanding, 2016, he's a part of the sale. He makes the killing. The Fratita Brothers leave, but he sticks around

and he's still, you know, with the company under the same role. I would like from you, though, Yes. The articulation, because you have unique insight into this, how different the business of UFC, as I literally mean this as a financial concern, as a worldwide phenomenon. You talk about the growth being tracked since you were in college, right? What's the difference between UFC as a product, as an audience, as a financial money-making machine before and after, right? Like, how big is UFC now versus what it used to be? Oh, it's gigantic now.

And really the turning point is the summer of 2016. In the summer of 2016, July of 2016, to be exact, the UFC is sold for $4.025 billion. At the time, an astronomical number. No sports entity had ever been sold for that amount. In retrospect, it was a steal, right? If it's sold today, it's probably 10, 11, just look at WW. Yeah, that's like the NFL team plus a little. Exactly.

And so shortly thereafter, like literally a week or so after, Dana Wade's first appearance publicly is at the GOP convention on behalf of his friend Donald Trump who has been a longtime supporter of combat sports, pro wrestling, boxing, and MMA, who would host events at his casinos in Atlantic City and whatnot. And he went up there and it was a bit of a departure

for Dana White because he had always been like the guy who said like, keep politics out, keep religion out, keep these controversial takes out. What's up to you? And then in 2016, because of the rise of Donald Trump and his relationship with Donald Trump, he started to get a little bit more political over time. Now, he would probably say I'm not getting political.

But of course, when you're appearing at something like that, you are getting political, right? You are telling your audience, this is the guy that you need to back. Why? Because as he said in his speech, this is the guy who believed in us when no one believed in us, meaning the MMA and UFC community. Nobody took us seriously. Nobody except Donald Trump. Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC.

and encouraged us to build our business. He hosted our first two events at his venue. He dealt with us personally. He got in the trenches with us, and he made a deal that worked for everyone. On top of that, he showed up for the fight on Saturday night and sat in the front row.

Yeah, he's that guy. He shows up. That happens in 2016, and obviously Donald Trump becomes president, and that's an amazing ally to have, and he's on planes with him, and the Venn diagram between the two worlds

is starting to get even bigger. That little part in the middle, whatever the hell of that part is called, is starting to get bigger and bigger, right? The MMA world or the UFC world. The overlap. Yes, the overlap. 2020, everything changes. What changes in 2020?

COVID happens. And what happens? Everyone else shuts down. If it was up to Dana White, he wouldn't have shut down one single event, one single weekend he would have kept going. The first event that shut down

was in late March of 2020. He wanted to keep going. He tried every which way to keep going. He found a Native American reservation in the United States, in Oklahoma. He found another one in California that were not beholden to the same state rules that he was going to hold events. Eventually, in mid-April of 2020, Disney said stop. Disney being, you know, the parent company of ESPN, his broadcast partner said stop. We need to take a breath. That only lasted three weeks. And then early May, they hosted a series of events in Jacksonville. in an empty arena.

They were one of the first sports entities on the planet that were hosting events. There's no sports except for you guys and Korean baseball. Exactly, exactly. It was huge. It was gigantic.

Honestly, for the sport, for the careers of people covering the sport, etc. And Dana White took the chance at the time. He said, I'm going to be first. I'm going to keep the show rolling. And what it did was it made his sport exponentially popular

because, A, people who were bored, watched, the rise of sports gambling, right? People are now saying, like, I got my parlay Saturday night. I've got eight hours of entertainment when there's nothing going on. Huge, right? And because of the people who thought, COVID is a joke, this is all a joke, this is the one guy who's spitting in the face of all of this. This is my guy. And because of the momentum from all of that and the support from all of that, I think what he realized towards the end of 2020 was, okay, there's a lane here. And there's an opportunity to be the voice and the sport of this entire community that maybe feels like the other sports entities are not serving them or in line with their beliefs. The overlap becomes more and more his business.

Former President Donald Trump watched the ultimate fighting championship in New York on Saturday alongside Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and UFC president Dana White. Of course, Joe Rogan was at the event as well. The former president's appearance created a buzz on conservative social media. Conservative commentator and host, Benny Johnson wrote on X, My Politics is whatever this is. And so what does all of this say about who UFC considers to be in their demographic, in their audience, right? Like, that's to me where this all sort of lands is, oh, at the very least there's a clear message. Well, I think they would say to as, we're not saying that.

we're just saying everyone could say whatever they want here. That's what he'll say to you if he was sitting here. We're not saying we don't care. We're just saying Sean can believe what he wants to believe and this guy can believe what they want to believe and she can believe what they want to believe. Everyone is allowed here. We are inclusive.

So allow me to connect the dots and simply say that Tony Coroner quotes this all the time. Don Olmeyer, the former head of NBC Sports, used to say the answer to all your questions is money. And I would like to defer to following the money here just to point out that this is good. good business. Free speech absolutism is good business. Now, it wasn't before. This is a financial incentive that he is, again, savally, wisely, strategically taking advantage of and growing himself

and the sport. So in that way, I see why and how it's happening. But if I were to tell you, Ariel, that free speech absolutism also protects the First Amendment in this sense of journalists, How does Dana White approach that? Because to be a free speech absolutism, Ariel, as a principle, does not mean I only love the speech and protect the speech that makes me rich. It's I defend the speech that makes me uncomfortable. That's the entire point of free speech absolutism. So I ask you again, Ariel Helwani, journalist who's covered this sport longer than anybody else that I know, who's gone to war to defend the sport and to investigate it. How does Dana White feel about the first amendment?

That was very well done on your part. Because yes, it is it is the great irony. Dana White who says you can say whatever you want. I'm not going to tell any man or woman how to feel or what to say is maybe one of the most sensitive people that I've ever met. And I know better than anyone because Dana White doesn't like me. I have not interviewed Dana White since 2016 because man. He didn't like that I would go on my show and talk about the most benign sports minutia topics. I have never, you know, you say I investigate like, you know, I almost am embarrassed to use that word because I'm not doing deep dives into their financials. I'm not doing, you know what I mean? Totally fair. I'm talking about stuff that is a little bit more than this guy's fighting that guy.

I can see that. But I'm talking about, you know, revenue sharing. I'm talking about collective bargaining. I'm talking to the business of MMA. And in addition to that, breaking fights and, you know, the same crap that you hear on sports talk radio or podcasts or YouTube, wherever, that's what I'm doing. And in their mind, I was supposed to be something else. I was supposed to be the type of media that he generally talks to now, which is very, very friendly, bro-y. Like, isn't this next fight going to be great?

Isn't this awesome? Someone's on the same team. Exactly. That's what they wanted. And I just, I wasn't looking for that. I was looking to be, you know, Walter Cronkite. You know, he's one of my idols. My second son's name is Walter because of Walter.

I wanted to be Mr. Big J. journalist, right? Man, you're going to get stuffed in a locker after this podcast. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. And so I wanted to ask certain questions. I wanted to talk about certain things. And that would increasingly upset both Dana White and Lorenzo Fertita.

He tried to make my life a living hell at ESPN and preclude me from talking to certain people or go certain places or or or have opportunities it was not very fun but i want to i want to walk through just your trajectory as guy who's trying to ask uncomfortable questions of powerful people and not even that uncomfortable okay so that's the beauty of it and i agree right so again this is a non-ideological survey yeah of what it means to exercise free speech in a press conference at a fight like this question for nick right over here To your left, right? I'm going to ask you why you weren't here yesterday and what happened and whose fault was it.

There you go. Thanks, Dana. I know you, ma'am. Appreciate it. I would have liked to make it. Just one more question. You said you got in late on Tuesday night. Was it because of...

Cariel, he's here. He's here. He's here now. You got any questions about the fight? Obviously, it was a big story. Yeah, he's here. He spoke about it. He's here now.

It's a part of the story. I understand. What's part of the fight? what story of this fight a lot of people are interested in watching this press conference to see if nick was going to show up because he wasn't there yesterday so we would he's here today and i guarantee he'll be there tomorrow at the way ends and i guarantee you he will be there saturday no one's doubting that but just wanted to get the reason you want to antagonize him you want to aggravate him and get him pissed off that absolutely not totally the truth that's why i knew what your question was

right when i called it right when you picked up the microphone you never even asked questions first you usually hang back and wait oh you have to get that first question you knew what you wanted God forbid. You want to piss them off and aggravate him. Do you have any questions about the fight? Not right now. Okay. So explain what that was.

Yeah, that was actually my hometown of Montreal. UFC 158, a highly anticipated fight between Nick Diaz, the guy sitting to his left and George St. Pierre, the Pride of Montreal. And Nick Diaz is one of the great characters in the history of the sport. And someone who kind of walked to the beat of his own drum, very anti-establishment. And, you know, at times, a thorn in the side of promoters because he didn't like to play the game.

He didn't like to show up on time, make the flights, et cetera, et cetera. So for this gigantic fight, title fight, Nick didn't show up when he was supposed to show up. He missed his flight. And then there was some type of rumor. It didn't come to the open workout on Wednesday. This is the Thursday before the fight. And so there was some talk like, is this fight even going to happen? This is like a multi, multi-million dollar for those gigantic, like sold out Bell Center.

And so everyone was waiting for this press conference. And obviously, I just wanted to know what happened. why I wanted to hear from him and so it's so far I haven't looked at these clips in quite some time you look great by the way I appreciate now or then well okay there I was wearing a suit yeah now too well this was all part of my thing

I was uh you know I was trying to be you know very professional and you wore black tie to this press conference yes for some reason I'm not quite here I am in a breadhard hoodie wow but the point being how the mighty have fallen you took all of this serious very seriously yes this was my job

and I love it and I still love it and people would say to me, why do you ask these questions? Why do you try to piss them off? Why do you try to make that angry? And I'm like, no, I'm not trying to do that. I actually have great respect and admiration for these people. However, I do feel like it is my duty because I'm there, because I have the privilege of holding that microphone and there's probably hundreds of thousands of people who wish they were in that spot. I do feel like I have a duty to ask the questions that need to be asked. Well, it's this thing of if you want to be taken seriously as an institution, a sport, a college, part of being in a democracy is that you get asked

serious questions. You don't get to just handpick what the questions are. And this is bringing me around to how it is that you got banned and how it is that you've had credentials revoked by the guy who is now the foremost champion of free speech absolutism in the United States. Can you explain how that happened? Yeah. So I'm working for Foxx from 2012 to 2016. And so what was interesting about this portion of my life, I'm working for Fox Sports, which is the broadcast partner of the UFC.

But I'm also hosting my own show slash podcast for Vox Media, Vox Media. So I have this sort of like independent life, and I have this life where I'm working for the TV partner, if you will. And this part of my life was starting to make problems in this part of my life. Because on this side, I'm talking about things like revenue sharing and fighter pay and Belator.

toward the competition and whatnot. And then I go over here and I'm the backstage reporter guy, right? And so when I'm here, they're like, you need to stop talking about this stuff because you're pissing off the world over here. Do you get what I'm saying? And so this is like building and building and building. And we get to 2016 and there's a fighter named Roy McDonald who comes on my show, the MMA hour here and talks about how he's going to fight out his contract because he

doesn't like the offer that the UFC gave him. And he just wants to test the free agent market. Again, like this is super benign stuff, right? Like basic sports business. A performance like that and everything I did leading up to it in my career with the UFC, you know, I feel like I should be left a little bit more financially stable, you know. You know, I still make good money, but like I still feel that I was worth more. You know, I brought more to the table than what, you know, I really got.

So the UFC and I heard Lorenzo Fertita, who was the CEO of the UFC at the time, didn't like that this type of stuff was being discussed that a disgruntled UFC fighter was coming on my show and airing this stuff out. He called Fox Sports. He called my boss, George Greenberg, and said, you need to get rid of Ariel. And George called me that night

and said, you're out. They've asked for you to be removed, you are out. And that was like a two-minute phone call. And that was devastating because this was a TV job. There aren't a lot of mainstream TV jobs in the sport. It was a huge blow. And so being the kind of person that I am. I don't like to just kind of like sit in the corner and, you know, lick my wounds.

I say, all right, I'm not beholden to anyone anymore. The shackles are off. What am I going to do? I'm just going to go and break every single story that I could possibly break. And I was obsessed. I was obsessed with breaking every single story pertaining to the UFC. Now, again, benign stuff. I'm not digging through financials. I'm trying to find out who's fighting who. What's the main event for UFC 200 that was coming up that summer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. etc. And I was doing a pretty good job. I was doing such a good job that the UFC was convinced that I had a mole in the company that was feeding me this information. So they would walk into people's offices, close the door, and say, hand me your phone and see if there was any conversation. They would put on

conference calls and talk about fake fights to find out if there was someone feeding me. They believed that I was logging into these conference calls and not announcing myself and listening to their conversations. On my life, none of that ever happened. You know what I was doing? Journalism? I had sources. I had people that wanted to talk to me. Making calls. Yes. It was very, it was very easy. So fast forward June of 2016. So I got let go March, three months later. Usually I'm breaking the news, you know, at my house, going for a walk with my kids, etc. This time, I'm in the media room at an event, UFC 199. I'm at an event. UFSI-199. I'm at the forum in Englewood, California.

So I'm like sitting in their house. I break the news that Brock Leicner's coming back. Big bad Brock Leicner who had left the UFC and went back to WWE and was a gigantic superstar. I didn't have the fight. I knew the date. I knew the car, but I didn't have the opponent. But it was gigantic because no one saw this coming.

So then I'm sitting in the media room and I start to hear that people are upset. And someone in PR says, Dana wants to speak to you. I say, no thanks. I'm not going. They come back like three or four times. Finally, around the co-main event, they say,

you have to come back. And so they escort me to the back. It's a short walk. I ask my cameraman to come with me, not to film it, but just as backup because I had no idea what was going to happen. And Dana's standing there, black shirt, black pants,

hands on his hips, and says, you're out. You're done. You're banned for life. And the initial thing that he said to me was, Lorenzo put a bullet in your head. Your career is over. I remember thinking at the time like, damn, that's a weird analogy to make, but okay. And then what I said to him was,

what did I do wrong? Did I get the story wrong? Because at the time, by then, they had actually officially announced that he was coming back. Did I get it wrong? No. He said, oh, you were being selfish. You ruin the surprise, all this stuff.

I'm like, man, ruin the surprise. Like, everyone's excited about this. What's surprise? You know what I mean? Then I said to him, what's the difference seeing what I did and what Woj does Schefter. I specifically mentioned those two guys.

There was no response. it was get out and you're being escorted. So they took my credential off my, you know, my neck and walked me out. And there I am standing in the parking lot of the forum, banned from the UFC. So to be clear, right, you don't work for the UFC. No, I cover the UFC. But they grant journalists in ostensible respect of what it means to, again, exercise freedom of speech credentials to ask questions and to cover and to write about

and do all of this stuff, chronicle their sport. And so what they're saying is, you are no longer allowed, and how long does that ban last? 48 hours that last. I was very rattled by this experience. I went to my hotel. I mean, it's a sad mental image.

Yeah, no, it was, by the way. You in a parking lot, ostensibly, you know, dressed as you do. Yeah. No, it was, it was definitely an uneasy moment. and I kept thinking about the bullet in the head thing. You know, I'm a neurotic Jew. I go to my room.

I pack my bags and I go to LAX and I sit there for eight hours. I mean, at this point it's like 11 p.m. My flight is at 6 a.m. And I just sit there. Why? I was afraid someone was going to come to my room. I was legit afraid of that. So I just sat there.

And you know, it's 1 a.m., 2 a.m., East Coast time. I can't call anyone. I have no one to talk to. So I'm just sitting there. I get on the flight, I wait an hour or so, I buy the Wi-Fi, and then all of a sudden I go on Twitter, and I start to see a lot of people talking about this. And I start to see people that I've never met but admire greatly.

The Dan Lebitards of the world, the Rachel Nichols of the world, the Frank Isolos of the world are commenting on this, right? And so that all happens, and it becomes such a big thing, and the fans really had my back, and there's like this Free Helwani movement, and they're canceling their UFC Fight Pass subscription, which is like their Netflix. It was absurd.

I remember this. It was absurd. And then by that night, by the Monday night, 48 hours later, they put out a statement. They took a bit of a shot at me in the statement saying they didn't think that I was practicing good journalism, which is, you know, laughable. But they said that I was back and all good. And that was 199 and 200. I was at 200. Now, the lingering, let's call it tensions between you and Dana White, though, that persisted to the point where I would see him pop up on, you know, shows like, pardon my.

I'd take and say stuff like this. Ariel Hawani, why do you hate him? It's not that I hate the guy. He said you hated him. He did. Well, he's a victim. The guy's a victim. Okay.

He's just one of those fucking. He's a pokey. And he's a fucking, just a big fucking crybaby victim. I don't do that, play that for you. That was fantastic. Thank you for that. Just to laugh at you.

Yeah. But I point out that Dana White and his sensitivities around your use of speech have not abated. After the banning and the unbanning, like actually it was a pretty good existence for me. You know, like we just sort of accepted that we're not going to speak to each other. I would see him, you know, walking down the hallway, no problem. I would ask questions at press conferences. Yeah, there were times where he would get annoyed by my presence or whatever, but like it was totally fine.

The worst thing to have happened to our relationship actually was me going to you. Because for Dana White, getting TSPN was, like, that was his North Star. That's where he always wanted to be. That's why he was manicuring and regulating speech was to get a deal with an ESPN. Disney, yes. And the ESPN specifically. Yes, it was huge for them. And he gets there.

And me, I'm standing there. I'm the new MMA reporter that they just hired. You just preceded that. Yes, yes, yes, by literally a month. And he freaked out. out. My feeling was like, hey, I'm just going to cover the sport and you don't want me to do interviews with you. That's fine. But what they did was they tried to make my life at ESPN so difficult. They were obsessed with getting all the scoops away from me and making my life difficult,

making me feel unwelcome. Like, it made things way worse because they just didn't want me there. It drove him nuts that, you know, I'm at the event representing ESPN with that microphone when it should be someone else. Not this guy. I thought I got rid of this guy. You know what I mean? And so when he talks about me being a victim and all these things. It's really just like he was upset about that. And also on that Monday, when I talked about post-banning, I got very emotional on the show and people still bring it up all the time. Cry baby, cry baby, cry, baby. I was very emotional on that show because to me, I wasn't emotional about getting banned. By the time I was doing that show 48 hours later, I had come to terms with like my new reality because guess what? They have done this

to other journalists and they've never been unband. So I thought like, I'm banned, I'm banned. I never thought for a second I was getting unbanned. So I had already come to the sort of conclusion that this is my new reality. I'm just a super emotional guy in general. I had two kids, a third on the way. And I'm like, well, what the hell am I going to do now? But I want to return to this notion of hypocrisy because Dana White, if you were to ask him, why don't you platform? Why don't you talk to Ariel Helwani? Why don't you want to treat journalists differently in the way that you now treat the people who now are exercising their freedom of speech, you are fighters, in ways that you would not have tolerated before, right? I think he would say, I imagine, there's a difference. There's a difference

in speech there because I am protecting in the world of why I have behaved this way towards Ariel Helwani. I've been protecting my business. And I guess my point is, that's the point. like all of this is about protecting your business. And so the question becomes, is it plausible to be the foremost champion of free speech in American sports if what you're really protecting is money? Well, yes, I mean, you're poking a lot of holes in this stance, and there's a ton, obviously. And the example that you're giving, you know, regarding his stance towards journalism is, is a great example of that.

But, you know, I guess I would just say, like, nothing is sensible at the moment. And I want to explain to you all why when he says, like, you know, we don't police speech, that hasn't always been the case. And I want to explain to all that when he's caught on camera doing something last, you know, January 1st. Yes, lapping his wife. Yes. And nothing happens, which is what I said in the aftermath.

I didn't call for his job to be, you know, him to be removed. I just said, we need to see what's going to happen here. Because if nothing happens, that is a message to the rest of the roster that nothing's going to happen to you. Right? Because if Dana White isn't getting, you know, reprimanded in any sort of way at all. It's about policy. What are your standards for this workplace? And I said this recently.

It's like, again, I talked about 2016. I talked about COVID. The third element was when nothing happened at all. And when I say nothing happened, I'm not even talking about a suspension, a firing. it's not my, I don't care. Again, it's not my job to call for that stuff. I just wanted to know what's going to happen. I want to ask the question, what is going to happen?

And the answer to the question was nothing. Even a statement. There was not even a statement. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Zero. So that told me that if I'm a fighter on, if you're a fighter on the roster and you see that like, hey, man, if you get into some sort of issue with your spouse, nothing's going to happen to you too. Whenever this is going to get posted, it's going to be, look at Ariel Kron.

Look at the woke beta journalist crying. That's right. It's going to be all that. I can guarantee you because no one is listening. No one is actually sitting down and thinking and being like, okay, well, what about this? And what about that? No one is actually doing that anymore because everyone is so fired up and everyone's so emotional about all this stuff. And who knows how long that lasts.

But your point about ultimately, you know, this is good for business is the bottom line. This is what the fight business is all about. whatever is good for business is what they want. And look, you know, there's a lot of different angles that you could take with all of this. Like, for example, the UFC, and this is one that they don't like me bringing up, the UFC says that their fighters are independent contractors. To me, an independent contractor is, you know, is someone that comes in, you know, I hire and who fixes my garage, right?

I can't tell that person what to do. You know, he comes to fix my garage on Thursday at 3 p.m. I can't tell him what to do Saturday at 4 p.m. I can't tell him what to wear. I can't tell him who to do business with. He's an independent contractor. Right. The question of unionization of fighter pay.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. All seems to fall into the category of things that Dana White would not love for there to be a ton of speech about. Right. And so this is one of the things they don't. But like it's like there's this, there's this internal battle that they're having because on the one hand, they're saying like, you guys could say whatever you want. You could do whatever you want. We're not going to police you. But those same independent contractors can't go and fight for anyone.

They can't do X, Y, and Z outside of the UFC. They can't wear whatever they want. Oh, because Ariel, because that's business. You don't understand. See, this is a, that's a business concern. And my point here is simply to say that no one in America who runs a company or institution like this, a college, a sport, anything, is actually about free speech, comma, bro. Right.

You have other interests. Yeah. And it's convenient sometimes to say I'm a favorite of free speech. It's inconvenient in all of these ways. And what I'd like for you, maybe, is to, I don't know, send Dana White this episode and be like, how many years has it been since you've talked to him? 2016. So we're approaching eight years. Okay.

That blows my mind, by the way. Me too. Yeah. It just feels like the guy who loves free speech might want to hear from the guy who has been trying to exercise it. Listen, I believe this strongly and he can maybe prove me otherwise. If I walked out of this building right now, if I walked out of this building right now and got hit by a bus, I think he would celebrate. I think his disdain for me runs that deep. When I announced that I was leaving ESPN, I got a text from an unknown number.

And I know it was him saying, I told you we'd get rid of you. Ha ha. And so this guy is rooting for my demise. They just want to believe that I did something. but there is nothing. There's nothing there. There is no smoking gun. There's no story. There's no salacious. There's nothing. I've, I've not hit him, you know, below the belt. I've not uncovered any sort of dark secret about him. I've stayed away from family stuff, all that. I even felt very uncomfortable about the incident with his wife. It's even hard for me to say it here. I've noticed. You know what I mean?

Because I believe that certain things should be off limits. Like I want to be, ultimately, what I really strongly believe, Pablo, in this day and age, is that I want to be an escape for people. I, I, I, I I love the journalism and I love breaking things down and all that. But there's no greater compliment than when a UPS driver tells me, I love your show because for four hours, I don't think about my job or I don't think about my worries.

I could just think about fighting. Because guess what? For most people, including the sports media that cover the NFL and NBA, including athletes, the fight game and the UFC now because it is the preeminent fight league, is their escape. It's Saturday night at the fights,

Vegas with their friends. That's what it is, right? And so I get it when people say, like, I don't want to be bothered with the minutia. I don't want to be bothered with the negativity. And guess what? I don't want either. But like I said to you, I have this responsibility. Right. And if I'm going to cover this sport and if I'm going to devote 23 years to cover this sport, I'm sorry, but I have to talk sometimes about the good, the bad and the ugly, the business, right? I have to. Because otherwise, I'm a sham like so many others out there. And I can't be that guy. I want when my career is over, you hated Ariel, you'd like this show, you didn't like, at least he told it like it is, he told the truth, and he covered the sport the right way. That's what I want people to say. Some will feel that way. Others may not. One day, I do believe it will be a huge pay-per-view. Myself and Dana White at the table, Frost Nixon style.

Black tie. 59-99 on ESPN Plus pay-per-view. Who doesn't watch that? Ariel Helani. Business, business, sells, right? I just want to exercise my right to tell you. that I really hope you don't get hit by a bus. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Thanks for doing this. My pleasure. This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.