MMA reporter Ariel Helwani had a somewhat heated exchange of questioning for UFC President Dana White at the recent UFC 25th Anniversary Series Press Conference. White refused to verbalize that Conor McGregor has been stripped of his UFC lightweight title.
However, the UFC president claimed that interim champion Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov would fight for the undisputed lightweight belt at UFC 223. After White dodged the question of McGregor’s championship status multiple times, Helwani doubled down and pressed White for a definitive answer.
The moment has since caught the attention of fight fans. Now Dana White has been heard in a recent interview accusing a reporter of “getting very Ariel Helwani” on him.
UFC 220 went down on Saturday night, Jan. 20. In the night’s main event, UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic earned a dominant decision victory over rising knockout artist Francis Ngannou. The UFC’s promotion of the fight leading up to fight night had drawn some controversy for being allegedly biased towards Ngannou, especially following the fighter’s knockout finish over Alistair Overeem.
Stipe Miocic would even go on to criticize the UFC’s promotion of the fight. In an interview with TSN following the events of UFC 220, Dana White offered his thoughts on the matter.
“I don’t think we built him up,” White said, speaking on their coverage of Ngannou. “We didn’t build him up and give him shine. The shine came from knocking the number one contender’s head off his shoulders. Then you put him in a fight with the champ and yeah, the fact that he beat the number one contender in such brutal fashion, that’s the fight that everybody wanted to see.
“Whether people think with Stipe now beating him that he’s the guy they want to follow now, that remains to be seen.”
“You’re getting very Ariel Helwani on me here,” White told TSN reporter Aaron Bronsteter. “What you said is, your promos were built up to give him all of the shine and now Stipe will get some shine now he beat him, which is completely false and very Ariel Helwani-ish.
“We built Stipe up in the promos just as much as we did Francis Ngannou. What built Francis Ngannou up was the beheading of Alistair Overeem. The way he beat Overeem it got people excited to fight Stipe Miocic.”
“No I wasn’t [trying to say] you were trying to take Francis down, it was that you said we were giving more shine to Francis in the promotion than Stipe, which wasn’t true,” White said.
“All the shine came from the way he beat Alistair Overeem and what he did to Alistair Overeem. That enabled us to make a great heavyweight championship fight.”
