UFC’s Dana White calls Ariel Helwani’s Brock Lesnar scoop “dirty”, says he’s not a real journalist

To say UFC President Dana White still has a coal up his butt over Ariel Helwani is an understatement. Some quick background here. Earlier this month before UFC 199, Helwani broke the news that Brock Lesnar was going to be involved in UFC 200. Instead of celebrating the buzz by fans over Lesnar, White promptly revoked Helwani’s credentials and banned him from covering UFC events for life. While the ban was quickly lifted a few days later, White was still seething over the whole thing.

In the new UFC Unfiltered podcast hosted by Matt Serra and Jim Norton, White was asked about the the media covering mixed martial arts and he immediately went into a five minute rant about Helwani. White said Helwani breaking the news about Lesnar before the official announcement “was dirty, he knows it was dirty and he threw a big pity-party for himself (Crying noises). Crying on camera and shit. Just ridiculous.”

And that was just the tip of the iceberg:

“Nobody else does that. When you’re a real journalist, you reach out and you say, ‘Hey, this is the rumor, this is going on and everything else and I’m going to run with it.’ That’s what the real journalists do. He’s (Helwani) a website guy, you know what I mean?”

It’s obvious that White is still angry at Helwani for breaking the Lesnar news and probably will still be angry in 2036. But he still doesn’t realize that the news gave UFC plenty of buzz during the night as that was all fans were talking about leading up to the official announcement.

The rant has been transcribed:

And that segment from the UFC Unfiltered podcast has been clipped for your perusal:

https://youtu.be/pDWCbDygY-w

People from White to Joe Rogan don’t see that Helwani was actually doing UFC a service by breaking the news and providing buzz for the sport, but White is looking at this from another angle.

He’s not letting this go and once again, it makes him look petty.

[UFC Unfiltered]