UFC president Dana White has come under fire for his attitude towards UFC women's bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes after she withdrew from the main event at UFC 213.
Nunes was due to fight Valentina Shevchenko in the main event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, but concerns were raised after the Brazilian was taken to hospital on the morning of the weigh-ins.
It has since emerged that Nunes suffers from chronic sinusitis, and pulled out of the fight due to fears regarding the damage that could be caused by strikes to the head with so much pressure in her sinuses.
Nunes also revealed that in hospital she was only checked for weigh-cut related in illness, but this fact mattered little to Dana White, who believed she was able to fight [via Yahoo Sports].
I asked the doctors what’s wrong with her. She was medically cleared. She was physically OK, they found nothing wrong with her, but she didn’t feel right.
White continued to claim that he would never book Nunes on a main event again.
It's an extremely harsh stance to take, and does not reflect well on White especially after his bewildering attitude towards Demetrious Johnson in recent times, but his comments are made to look spectacularly ill-advised by something he said back in February of last year, which has since re-emerged emerged on social media.
In 2016 Dana White admitted it was dumb of him to let a fighter fight sick. Now he pressures fighters to fight sick? https://t.co/tuVFKOtDuA
— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) July 9, 2017
After Sage Northcutt, someone who the UFC invested a heavy marketing push into, lost to Bryan Barberena at UFC on FOX 18, Dana White revealed that the young prospect was suffering from strep throat in the days before the fight and felt that he 'blew it' by allowing Northcutt to fight [via MMAJunkie.com].
The kid really wanted to fight and I let him fight and he was sick as hell – I blew it.
I blew that one, so bad. The kid was super sick and he still wanted to fight, his father said, ‘Listen, we still want to take this fight, we want to take this fight.’ I should have pulled the kid from the fight.
He knew that letting a someone fight while sick was a bad idea, something he openly regretted, and then decides to throw one of his more popular champions under the bus for not fighting while sick?
It's double standards. One rule for one fighter, and one for another. He was trying to protect Sage from the social media backlash after his hype-train was halted, and he was also pissed off that the main event of UFC 213 had to be scrapped.
White's treatment of some of the biggest stars in the UFC has been questionable in recent times, with many of them disillusioned by the prospect of continuing to fight for the organisation if they are going to be disrespected by the president.
This time, considering what he had said before directly contradicts what he is complaining about now, it looks particularly bad.
