Dana White hits out at 'uneducated' Waleed Aly

UFC boss Dana White has responded to the furore surrounding his interview with Waleed Aly on The Project on Tuesday night.

Aly has been widely condemned after he took White to task over the authenticity of the UFC.

White is in Australia to attend the GQ Magazine’s Man of the Year awards, as well as promote UFC Fight Night 142 in Adelaide and UFC 234 in Melbourne next February.

However, the majority of his time on The Project was spent defending the integrity of his organisation, after Aly suggested the UFC was “all over” the recent Conor McGregor-Khabib Nurmagomedov drama.

White was particularly perturbed by Aly’s criticism that McGregor wasn’t suspended for his infamous attack on a bus carrying some of his fiercest UFC rivals, suggesting that the incident was ‘staged’.

Following the uproar, White has hit out at Aly in an interview with foxsports.com.au.

“It’s just crazy to me that anybody could believe that that’s staged, you know what I mean,” White said on Wednesday.

“First of all, the kid [McGregor] gets arrested, goes to jail, is being sued by everybody, and then is not allowed to fight in the state of New York anymore.

“The biggest fight we’ve ever done, gate-wise, was $18 million in New York, and we can’t go back in New York with Conor McGregor now. How does that even make sense?”

However White admitted he understood that ‘uneducated’ people might think that way.

“It happens when you talk to really uneducated people; people who are uneducated about sport,” he said.

“First of all, we’re sanctioned by the Athletic Commission. If the Athletic commission knew you were doing something like that, that’d be the end of us. We’d lose our license.”

The aftermath of McGregor and Khabib’s notorious bout descended into chaos when the Russian leapt out of the octagon to attack one of McGregor’s team members.

Two of Nurmagomedov’s then jumped into the octagon to attack the Irish fighter.

It all followed the sensational attack by McGregor and his entourage on a bus carrying Nurmagomedov and his team before a UFC event in New York earlier in the year.

Aly took aim at White over both incidents, suggesting that the UFC boss was too lenient in his sanctions for the pair.

Here’s how the interview went:

Waleed Aly (WA): “There’s the bus incident where McGregor attacks a bus full of fighters, you get really upset about that.

“Then there’s the incident after the fight where Nurmagomedov’s blokes come into the ring and there’s a scuffle after the fight.

“At that time you were livid about this.

“I’m calling this, I can see a smirk on your face as you say this, I don’t know if there have been any real punishments handed out to these guys, if they have a big price they’ve paid, but let’s be totally honest, let’s be real … you love this stuff, it’s great for promotions, right?”

Dana White (DW): “We have a hearing that’s coming up in front of the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) that’s coming up in December, they will lay down fines and suspensions and whatever they’re going to do.

“They’re actually coming after me for the promotion of the fight, so it was a bad night and believe me everybody asks me this question.

“You know, ‘This happened and it was bad, but it’s good for your business’, it’s really not good for business when things like that happen.

“We don’t need that type of stuff to sell a fight.”

WA: “You don’t suspend them, you don’t do anything. In the bus situation where McGregor’s attacking that bus, there’s high def cameras ready to capture it so the vision is great.

“It just looks like you’re all over this.”

It was here White went on the attack, biting back and telling Aly in no uncertain terms McGregor was punished because he fell foul of the law.

DW: “We do a show called UFC Embedded where we follow the fighters around, so those cameras were there when that happened because of that.

“But do you understand, he (McGregor) got arrested … he went to jail! He had to go before the New York Attorney-General.

“So they already took care of it, what am I going to do? What’s a suspension going to do? He was suspended, he couldn’t fight because he was in jail!”

WA: “I get it, the state suspended him and you said, ‘Come back and fight again’, that’s what happened. If that’s what you want to do, great, I’m not necessarily criticising, I just want you to level with us and just say this is the way it is.”

DW: “I’m levelling, that’s what I do. I put on fights. This guy was arrested, he was down there because we were supposed to be talking about a fight he was going to be in, he came and attacked a bus and got arrested and went to jail.

“Now we’re overseen by the NSAC, so these guys can’t fight. They’re both on suspension, they’re going to get fined a certain amount of money. Whatever that number is that they suggest and then there’s going to be a suspension held out.

“That’s what Nevada does, they govern us. So what else am I going to do? Suspend them for another year? It doesn’t make sense.”