Dana White has spoken about slapping his wife for the first time since his interview with TMZ aired.
Ahead of the scheduled media day for UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs. Imavov, Dana White spoke to media to answer questions over the incident with his wife. As with any major incident, there have been wide ranging opinions and commentary shared. Many have said there is never a reason for a man to put his hands on a woman. Others have leapt to the support of Dana as it appeared that his wife was the one who instigated the incident by slapping him first.
Nevertheless, Dana spent the first portion of his comments making it clear that there is no excuse for his actions and that people who are defending him should not be:
On Any Potential Punishment
“What should the repercussions be? You tell me. I take 30 days off, how does that hurt me? I told you guys when we were going through COVID, COVID could last 10 years, I could sit it out,” White said. “It is much like COVID actually, me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters. I could have left in 2016, I don’t know. Do I need to reflect? No, I don’t need to reflect. The next morning when I woke up, I have been against this, I’ve owned this, I’m telling you that I’m wrong. We have plenty of discussions internally with Ari, ESPN, nobody is happy, nobody is happy about this, and neither am I.“
“What is my punishment? Here’s my punishment, I have to walk around for however I long I live and this is how I’m labeled now. My other punishment, I’m sure a lot of people whether it be media, fighters, friends, or acquaintances who had respect for me might not have respect for me now. There are a lot of things that I’m going to have to deal for the rest of my life that are way more of a punishment then what, I take a 30-day, 60-day absence. That’s not a punishment, the punishment is that I did it.”
On Bouncing Back From This Incident
“You don’t bounce back from this. You don’t ever bounce back from this. For the rest of my life… however long that it, people are going to label me that. You know what I mean? I did it. I did it… you wake up every day and try to better than you were yesterday, and you make sure that that never happens again. Whatever steps you have take to make sure you’re never in that situation and that never happens again, that’s what I need to do… and it’s a fact. There’s a couple of things in life that you don’t bounce back from and this is one of them.”
On the Incident Coinciding with the Launch of ‘Power Slap’
“There is no good or bad timing for what I did. You know what I mean? There’s irony. Very ironic. There’s no good or bad timing for what I did on New Year’s Eve”
On Changes to the UFC Policy Moving Forward
“It all depends on different situations. Hopefully, everybody has seen what is going on with me and this never happens. At the end of the day we are all human beings and we all make mistakes. All you can do is try to recover from the mistakes you make in life. I don’t know… I am sure it will be on a case by case basis. We got a lot of people who make a lot of mistakes, and I am one of them.”
You can see the full clip of Dana White’s comments at the media day on YouTube courtesy of The Mac Life:
Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Images
