During a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, UFC color commentator Joe Rogan shared an interesting detail to last weekend’s expulsion and lifetime ban of MMAFighting.com reporter Ariel Helwani.
Helwani and his team were escorted out of the arena and had their credentials revoked right before the UFC 199’s main-event fight on Saturday for breaking the news on Brock Lesnar’s comeback at UFC 200. This caused massive outrage throughout the media and fan communities, until Helwani was reinstated on Monday.
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During a special episode of his own video-podcast The MMA Hour, the merited MMA journalist claimed that he wasn’t aware that he wasn’t allowed to break such news and that no UFC official has approached him beforehand. According to Rogan, this isn’t completely true.
This is what he had to say:
“That’s cool, because that means that public support made them lift that. But it also must mean that they worked out whatever the f*ck it was. See, this is what they were saying, this is what I’m hearing, okay. I haven’t talked to Ariel, but let me just give me the UFC perspective. The UFC perspective was that there was a mole. They believed that someone was giving Ariel information, and that information he was using to scoop the UFC’s official promotions. So the UFC, which is a private company, they don’t have to have… you don’t have to let people into your business, if you’re a private company, to come and report. So they were feeling that somehow or another he was getting a hold of this inside information, and releasing it, and making them look bad.
“Now, I get the UFC’s perspective. They would wanna know who the f’ck is leaking this secret information, and that they don’t want this guy taking this information and putting it live. Now from what I understand, the conversation with him was, ‘Don’t do this, because if you do this, there’s only a hand full of people who know this information. So we’re gonna fire everybody. We’re gonna fire a bunch of people and you’re gonna ruin people’s lives’. This is what I was told, was a conversation they had with him. After the conversation he leaked the Brock Lesnar stuff.
“I don’t know if that’s true, I would have to talk to Ariel. You’d have to get his opinion, you’d have to get the UFC’s opinion, you’d have to get the two of them together to debate whether or not, which story was true. But this is a side that you’re not hearing. All you’re hearing is that the UFC banned him for life and everybody was upset.”
You can watch the whole monologue above, starting at around 1:26:30. Helwani has since replied to Rogan’s claims on Twitter.
All due respect to Joe, his account is 100% inaccurate. Never happened. Also, enough with the mole nonsense. https://t.co/m15W2UPNCs
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) June 8, 2016
Here is Ariel’s perspective on the matter:
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