In the ongoing and, seemingly, never ending battle between Dana White and the mixed martial arts media, the recent outburst from the UFC CEO has left many scratching their heads.
After weeks and months of White railing against the media-created UFC rankings — almost exclusively in the form of unironic rants about Jon Jones’ pound-for-pound ranking that have felt like poorly contrived “Saturday Night Live” skits — the most powerful man in MMA took to social media on Tuesday to post a video complaint surrounding light heavyweight contender Khalil Rountree Jr.
For those who missed it, Rountree received a surprise title shot two weeks ago at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City, Utah, despite being ranked No. 8 in the 205-pound division. To his credit, Rountree won the opening two rounds on all three scorecards and gave a great account of himself until Alex Pereira defended his title via brutal knockout in Round 4, leaving Rountree’s face a disfigured mess.
The resulting rankings update from a group of media members hand-picked by the UFC to provide order to the top 15 in each division saw Rountree hold serve at No. 8. White, whose blood pressure previously spiked after a pair of lightweight rankings updates saw Renato Moicano stay put despite upsetting Benoit Saint Denis and Max Holloway ranked behind Justin Gaethje after defeating him, lost his mind just the same over Rountree.
“The morons strike again,” White said in an Instagram story. “Khalil Rountree fights that badass fight against Pereira, and the morons rank him No. 8 — keep him at No. 8. Literally this week, I have a meeting to try to fix the rankings and get all those know-nothing motherf—ers out of it. So, hopefully this week I get this fixed.”
White would only continue to double down on his disdain for the media later that night during the “Dana White Contender Series” postfight press conference in Las Vegas.
“I can’t handle incompetence,” White said. “I can’t take it anymore, it’s driving me crazy. And I can’t let people that I don’t believe know what the f— they are talking about deal with the rankings anymore. I just can’t do it. I have to figure out a solution. Tomorrow, I have a meeting with a group of people that are coming to me saying they have a solution to this problem and God, I hope they are right. The media will no longer control the rankings in the UFC.
“What’s not fair is for fighters to go and do what they do and just have people who are lazy or incompetent f— up their shit. That I can’t deal with anymore. It’s driving me crazy.”
Now to be fair, some of White’s issues with the rankings — outside of his inability to understand how Jones can be MMA’s G.O.A.T. but not the sport’s current P4P king due to inactivity — are absolutely justified.
Not only did UFC rankings previously combine male and female fighters into the same P4P list in ways that never quite made sense, there’s a rotating pattern of quirks or tropes that have developed that are just as confusing. Most notably, how outgoing champions are always ranked as the No. 1 contender in their division after losing their title regardless of how poorly they looked in doing so.
Other prominent UFC fighters have been allowed to linger high up in the rankings in ways in which their recent track record doesn’t explain.
Brian Ortega, for example, is currently ranked No. 6 at featherweight despite having lost four of his last six. He, just like Julianna Pena, also previously never lost his Top 5 ranking despite sitting out for two years due to injury. Then there’s Kamaru Usman, the 37-year-old former welterweight champion, who still holds the No. 2 ranking at 170 pounds despite riding a three-fight losing skid and having not competed in the division in 19 months.
All in all, the UFC rankings have never been a perfect science and the unexplained criteria has never helped matters, either.
So, considering the flaws in play with not only the rankings system but the often questionable decisions made by its voting panel, White would be more than justified in generalizing his ongoing hate for traditional MMA media by bringing his rankings issues to the masses in such a heavy-handed manner as he did on Tuesday? Right?
Maybe. But only if the media outlets in question that White so passionately derided were the same members of MMA media who consistently cover UFC events and ask the kind of hard-hitting (and absolutely legitimate) questions at press conferences; you know, the kind that typically draw White’s ire and only further his interest in replacing them cageside with high-trafficked influencers who would never rock the boat by actually straddling the line between journalism and entertainment.
In this case, to steal from a “Star Wars” line, those simply aren’t the droids White is actually looking for.
For all of White’s issues in recent years with traditional MMA media from any number of legacy outlets, none of those were chosen to contribute to UFC’s rankings. In fact, take a closer look at the promotion’s website where, under the subhead of “How Are Rankings Determined,” the list of outlets responsible read like a veritable “island of misfit toys.”
As MMA journalist Aaron Bronsteter of SportsNet in Canada pointed out Tuesday on X, many of the outlets listed are currently defunct. They also fail to represent any resemblance to the traditional and elite media White so often blames and berates for continuing public conversations — including fighter pay and Francis Ngannou’s free-agent exit from UFC in 2023 — that he had previously worked so hard to discredit or gaslight out of existence.
While White’s preference to keep UFC brass out of the rankings curation as a way to avoid bias or the impression of impropriety is noble, the reality of the situation is that no one — including MMA media — could really care less.
Fans and media have already become accustomed to looking at the rankings as nothing more than a guidepost considering how often — the Pereira-Rountree fight being the perfect example — UFC matchmakers have defied the true value of their own rankings from a meritocracy standpoint by booking the most commercially viable fight at any given moment.
In this case, UFC chose to send No. 2 light heavyweight Magomed Ankalaev, who presents the most difficult style matchup for the champion Pereira, into a fight against No. 5 Aleksandr Rakic (who is riding a two-fight losing skid, both by stoppage) in order to clear the way for Pereira to fight the No. 8 Rountree. But, considering how much elite MMA is entertainment just as much as it’s a sport, UFC is fully within its right as the industry leader to continue to do exactly that.
So, why again, is White choosing this hill to die on as his war with the media only continues to reignite at his own behest?
That’s a great question, especially considering the majority of elite media members have had nothing to do with the UFC rankings to begin with and already could’ve shared the system’s flaws with White long before this recent series of outbursts began to escalate.
If UFC is serious in its want to revamp such a system, it’s ironic that the group most perfectly suited to execute such a task are the same people White has been screaming at for weeks.
