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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC President Dana White made an appearance on ESPN 2's "Highly Questionable with Dan LeBatard" on Wednesday, and spent much of his seven minute appearance discussing the conspiratorial idea that the Anderson Silva-Chris Weidman bout at UFC 162 was fixed.
White just couldn't understand why anyone would think the fight was fixed, not only given the odds coming into the fight, but given the way it ended as well.
"That's ridiculous. The crazy thing for the conspiracy weirdos that came out and started saying that they thought the fight was fixed, or he threw it or something like that, the odds were 2-to-1!" White exclaimed. "You don't throw a 2-to-1 fight, you throw a 30-1 fight if you're going to throw a fight! Right? And Anderson Silva's broke every record in UFC history, he's the pound for pound best of all time. Why would you throw a fight?"
"It's not like Buster Douglas and Mike Tyson when nobody thought Douglas had a chance. A lot of fighters picked Chris Weidman to win this fight. I don't know what the conspiracy was. Who's going to throw a fight by getting viciously knocked out? Do you know how stupid you have to be to even think that? You are an absolute moron."
What drew White's ire even further was a panel discussion last week from Sports Illustrated, where they discussed the possibility of the fight being fixed. Unfortunately, none of those on the panel were MMA writers, and it appeared none of them had seen the fight in the first place, which caused an extremely negative reaction from White.
"Sports Illustrated had this group of people together, Sports Illustrated talked about, had this panel saying 'yeah, so I heard over the weekend this fight might have been fixed…' First of all, these people looked like they cover tennis, not fighting, and you could tell, none of them even watched the fight," White said angrily. "For somebody like Sports Illustrated, people who are supposed to be credible journalists to go out and say something that stupid when they never even watched the fight, it's just a testament to how bad reporting is getting these days. It's more about the 'shock' factor than the 'fact' factor."
Further than the reasons he discussed for that fight, White railed against the thought the UFC would put any plan into place to affect the outcome of fights as well. He said he finds the reality of the fight game to be better than any story they could come up with themselves, and thinks things work themselves out on that front.
"Whoever wins, wins; and whoever loses, loses," White said. "Let me tell you what I've learned over the last 13 years: the reality is better than anything you could ever hope [for]. Like let's say you planned something out in your mind and said, 'if it went down this way, it'd be awesome.' The way that it always works out is the best way."
Penick's Analysis: White's spot on regarding that Sports Illustrated panel. It was an absolute embarrassment of idiocy for a credible organization, and the fact that they didn't use any of the people on staff who would have seen the fight to shut them down is ridiculous. There was no incentive for anyone for that fight to be fixed. As White argued, what's the benefit in a two to one fight, one in which many were already picking Weidman? How does that do anyone any good? And for Silva, throwing a fight by getting knocked out doesn't make any sense either. The conversation on that front is just insanity, and is not in line with the reality of what happened.
[Dana White art by Travis Beaven (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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