MMA commentator Luke Thomas has expressed strong criticism of UFC stars who have publicly associated with and praised controversial figure Andrew Tate, calling their judgment into question and stating he will no longer engage with athletes who support Tate.
During a recent live chat, Thomas addressed the issue directly when discussing broader concerns about the sport’s culture.
“Anyone who did that, I was like, well I don’t give a [ ] about talking to this person anymore,” Thomas said. “Nobody who can follow any of those people has anything interesting to say matter of factly. Like, your judgment is so bad.”
Thomas went further, characterizing athletes who have aligned themselves with Tate as having crossed a line that removes them from serious consideration.
“This guy celebrated Andrew Tate,” he said, referencing unnamed athletes. “You’re off the [ ] roll call of anyone I’m going to have a conversation with, probably forever, because you’re a [ ] [ ] to ever think something like that.”
The commentator’s remarks come amid growing awareness of problems facing women in male-dominated spaces, including combat sports. Thomas cited his own experience learning about harassment and assault that occurs more frequently than many men realize, including stories from a female Marine he knew who never reported numerous incidents during her service.
“It did not really dawn on me the degree to which women in the workplace or beyond that in like a co-ed environment like an academic campus, it did not dawn on me the degree to which they suffer through SA itself, SA attempts, harrasment, until I got much older,” Thomas explained.
He connected this cultural problem to the normalization of figures like Tate within combat sports.
“The most innocent explanation would be, you guys don’t simply have any scale of the idea of like how much women encounter some version of SA or harrasment in their life,” Thomas said. “But now you are actually befriending and elevating and magnifying a guy who is trying to make this problem decidedly worse.”
