What is it with Dana White and heavyweights?
In the past five days, Dana White has had two beefs with heavyweights (past and present) boil over.
Of course, there was the UFC president's very public back-and-forth with Brendan Schaub. It started with White
laying into 'Big Brown' in the comments of another UFC star's Instagram video. He insulted Schaub's intelligence and fighting ability in one fell swoop in the replies. Then Schaub scored the knockout blow with his response outing White as his
'eskimo brother' while taking shots at his business acumen.
Now, the greatest heavyweight champion in UFC history, Stipe Miocic, is upset with White.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/1017532057520664576
It meant nothing
When
Brock Lesnar entered the Octagon after Daniel Cormier won the heavyweight strap, some folks thought it took away from the new champ-champ's moment. That couldn't have been further from the truth. DC loved what happened. He welcomed it with open arms. It secured a lucrative payday at the tail end of his career.
However, the incident did leave a sour taste in Miocic's mouth. Lesnar took away from his moment to talk. Rather than do an interview with Joe Rogan, he had to endure the WWE superstar calling him a 'piece of shit'.
He called the incident a 'shit show' and 'disrespectful' in an interview with
Brett Okamoto of ESPN. He added that White actually apologised for
Lesnar's antics, but Miocic didn't buy it. He believes the UFC got exactly what they wanted.
"It was like a two-second conversation, he apologized for everything that happened in the cage. I just said, 'Whatever.' The apology didn't mean anything. That's what they want to happen."
This isn't the first time Miocic has clashed with Dana White. The normally soft-spoken heavyweight came out to criticise the promotion or giving Alistair Overeem a larger purse than him at UFC 203, despite the legendary Dutchman being the challenger.
After comprehensively beating Francis Ngannou, Miocic infamously didn't let White wrap the belt around his waist. Traditionally, the UFC president does this for the victor in every UFC title fight. However, Miocic took the strap off him and handed it to his coach, Marcus Marinelli, to do the honours instead.
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He explained to
Peter Carroll of MMAFighting that he did this because his coach, 'respects me.'
Something tells us White won't be making his Christmas card list this year.
