UFC President Dana White has decided to come forward with his thoughts on the incident between Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino and Angela Magana.
On the UFC Unfiltered podcast, as transcribed by MMA Fighting, White stated:
“This is the real world. Now, when you’re in that Octagon, almost anything goes. When you’re in a f–king fighter retreat, nothing goes.”
“You can’t put your hands on another human being outside of the Octagon. It’s assault, you will get arrested, in the fight world we all love to get caught up in the ‘hey, you know what, she had a big mouth and she needed a smack in the mouth’ thing, but it doesn’t work that way in real life.”
“If you were to beat the sh*t out of that douchebag announcer down in Atlanta, if that thing has escalated to the direction it was going in, you leave in handcuffs that night,” White told Serra. “You leave in handcuffs. And it was about as equal as the Cyborg-Angela Magana thing, you know what I mean?”
“Even that night with [Daley] and Josh Koscheck, the fight was over, the bell rang, and he went up and punched him in the face after the bell,” White said. “That’s assault.”
“If you’re Cyborg, you go up and let her know how you feel,” White said. “You say, ‘you said all this mean s—t about me, here’s what I feel about you.’ But what, you walk away, or you just stay away for the whole retreat. I’m not trying to be ‘Mr. I Take The High Road,’ because I never f–king take the high road. But, assault isn’t, you can’t go and assault somebody, you can’t do it.”
“Can you cyberbully fighters? Can you cyberbully a fighter?” White asked. “Hey, listen, if you have social media, you’re being cyberbullied. There’s nothing, there’s nowhere, nobody, I don’t care what kind of star you are, male, female whatever it is. It’s a place where freaks who can hide behind, most of them are on private, they can have that kind of stuff, private accounts, which I don’t think is right. Instagram should change that. If you’re private, you should only get messages from people that follow you. It’s ridiculous.”
