Originally Posted by alnorth:
....and the MMA hour is done, Ariel spent 2 hours talking about quite a lot. He mostly held it together for about an hour 45 minutes, but the last 15 minutes are difficult to listen to.
Pretty sure UFC is going to face terrible backlash for the Helwani move, a completely awful thing to do... they're going to be forced to relent IMO [Reply]
Speaking personally, I was seriously considering cancelling my UFC Fightpass subscription over this. A LOT of people have been tweeting out screenshots of them cancelling their fightpass subscription and vowing to boycott UFC 200, so if this ended up being a lot of people, maybe the UFC decided "ok screw it, wow, we didn't expect this, but now this isn't worth it. Let Ariel do whatever stupid annoying thing he wants" [Reply]
Holy shit, its real. The UFC just put out a formal statement that basically amounts to "whoops, our bad, we fucked up. We're sorry, Ariel is welcome to report on our sport." [Reply]
ok, just to clarify, it looks like this wasn't a total capitaulation. The UFC is basically saying "OK, Ariel didn't know that we wouldn't accept this, but now he does, so now he knows".
Originally Posted by :
Following a conversation with the editorial team at SB Nation, UFC will not prevent MMAFighting.com from receiving media credentials to cover live UFC events. We respect the role the media plays in our sport and beyond, including MMAFighting’s ability to report news. However, in our opinion, we believe the recurring tactics used by its lead reporter extended beyond the purpose of journalism. We feel confident our position has now been adequately communicated to the SB Nation editorial team.
UFC’s goal as the world’s leading mixed martial arts promotion is to cultivate interest in its world-class athletes and events, and deliver for the fans. We will continue to introduce this sport and its athletes to new fans across the world, and we will do so by working alongside media across all platforms.
Originally Posted by alnorth:
Speaking personally, I was seriously considering cancelling my UFC Fightpass subscription over this. A LOT of people have been tweeting out screenshots of them cancelling their fightpass subscription and vowing to boycott UFC 200, so if this ended up being a lot of people, maybe the UFC decided "ok screw it, wow, we didn't expect this, but now this isn't worth it. Let Ariel do whatever stupid annoying thing he wants"
Probably just another angle UFC is pushing.
Dana is going full blown heel and Shane-O-Mac will appear to fight him for control. [Reply]
It probably wasn't just the fans though, Rich Eisen basically stated on his show today that he was going to go dark on the UFC and not ever talk about anything about the sport again unless Ariel was reinstated. A lot of big national sports journalist figures who usually only cover the NFL and NBA were beginning to rise up on this story, so maybe that also had something to do with it. [Reply]
I have to admit that I'm a huge fan of Ariel Helwani, I listen to at least parts of his MMA hour show every Monday, so this drama was a bit gut-wrenching for me, but I'm glad to see that cooler heads apparently prevailed tonight. [Reply]