This past Saturday’s UFC 199 was an even more epic event than initially thought. When I spoke with Tim Credeur on Friday to get ready for Fight Night at the Fabulous Forum, both he and I agreed that this card was stacked but saw many of the outcomes pretty hard to avoid. No way old man Dan Henderson would be able to dispose of Hector Lombard in a sport where you don’t ride off into the sunset, you get carried off. Michael Bisping had no chance in hell to win the Middleweight Championship of the World that night against Luke Rockhold, a guy who made the real life Captain America, Chris Weidman, look like an amateur. We were wrong and the UFC had an evening of monumental upsets that created memories for fight fans that will last a lifetime.
The UFC, by chance was given the gift of these memorable fights by the courage of the fighters. It was by hard work though; the UFC brass’ great business acumen and promotional tactics, that the UFC was able to pull off two of the most insanely hype and exciting announcements in MMA history on the same damn night! Two super fights were announced for UFC 200 and UFC 202 respectively. Like myself, fight fans all over the Internets were ecstatic. I went to bed amazed by the event I just witnessed and electrified thinking about the fights to come.
Unfortunately the next morning I woke up to read about the UFC completely screwing things up. On a night where the sport of MMA should have been celebrating the triumphs of Dan Henderson and Michael Bisping, the return of “The Beast” Brock Lesnar, and the hype of the Diaz/McGregor rematch; the MMA world instead was ashamed by what the UFC had done Saturday night to the sport’s most respected journalist, Ariel Helwani.
Ariel Helwani, if you haven’t heard of him, is the Jay Glazer, Adam Schefter, Dave Meltzer, and Ken Rosenthal of MMA all rolled into one. He breaks all the news. He broke the Brock Lesnar and Diaz/McGregor news earlier in the day before UFC formally made their announcement. So because Helwani did his job as a reporter, he was escorted out of the Forum and told by UFC officials he was banned for life. Helwani says he didn’t obtain any of his information unethically, and why shouldn’t we believe him? If this is the case and he was simply doing his job, the UFC is making itself out to look petty, thuggish, and amateur as an organization by banning a well respected member of the media, simply because he was able to break news before the UFC could.
I know Dana White and the Fertittas are the Game Makers, but even the game makers mess up sometimes. You couldn’t keep a lid on your big announcements and someone else broke the story. Boo hoo! Get over it. UFC is not in the business of breaking news. UFC is in the business of promoting big fights. The UFC will not lose a dime on UFC 200 or UFC 202 because Ariel Helwani broke the news before they wanted it to break. The UFC will lose some money because they acted like petulant children and treated the most respected journalist in the sport like he was a treasonous spy leaking classified information. The movement has already begun as thousands have decreed on social media that they will not be paying for UFC pay per views, but instead stealing them on the internet. And who can blame them? Who wants to support amateur thugs mascarading as a legitimate sports organization? The UFC can either #FreeHelwani and regain some legitimacy or fall by the wayside as the niche organization for bros and troglodytes it has been stereotyped to be.