Dana White has once again spoken out about beating his wife on New Year’s Eve.
UFC President made an unexpected appearance at media day on Wednesday in advance of the UFC’s first event of 2023.
White addressed his issue in a public interview for the first time.
“The focus of media day should be on the fighters, their training and getting ready for their fights. What happened on New Year’s eve is my mistake, not their’s. If one of the fighters wants to voice their opinion on it, then by all means, they can.”
“I’m sure you guys have seen the TMZ video and seen my interview. It was obviously a horrible personal experience and there’s no excuses for it. It’s something that I’m going to have to deal with and live with for the rest of my life.”
White asserts that nobody should try and justify his behavior on New Year’s Eve.
White stated: “One thing that I do want to clarify, that I didn’t talk about on TMZ, because I didn’t expect it and I didn’t see it coming are the people defending me. There’s never an excuse… there’s no defense for this. People should not be defending me over this thing, no matter what.”
“All the criticism that I have received this week is 100% warranted and will receive in the future and you know me, especially when the people that I don’t like start coming after me, nobody fires back more than I do.”
“Everybody has an opinion on this and they’re right to have their own opinions. I was very opinionated on this too and I still am. My reason for being here today is that I wanted you to focus on (them) and not me.”
Many people have asked for Dana White to face the consequences, including a women’s caucus that demanded White be fired from his role as UFC president. However, it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen.
In response to a reporter’s question about possible punishment for the slap, White said:
“What should the repercussions be? You tell me. I take 30 days off? How does that hurt me? Me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters. It doesn’t hurt me. I could have left in 2016.”
“I’ve been against this, I’ve owned this. I’m telling you that I’m wrong. We’ve had plenty of discussions internally with Ari (Emanuel), ESPN, nobody’s happy about this, neither am I. But it happened and I have to deal with it…”
White admits that he will have to put up with something like this for the rest of his life.
“Here’s my punishment, I have to walk around for however long I live and this is how I’m labelled now. My other punishment is that a lot of people, whether it be media, fighters, friends, acquaintances who had respect for me, might not have respect for me now.”
“There’s a lot of things that I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life that are way more of a punishment than, what I take a 30 day or 60 day absence, that’s not a punishment to me, the punishment is that I did it and now I have to deal with it.”