‘They’re in the clickbait business’ – UFC delivers anti-media propaganda video on COVID response

If memory serves correctly, back in mid-March – with COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages and cases and deaths just starting to surge around much of the world – the UFC took a calm and considered approach to their pandemic response. They listened to the best science available at the time, took the most ambitious precautions possible, and made it clear that, as a business, their most important tenet was the safety of their athletes and staff.

At no point did they try to hop from state to state ahead of increasing restrictions, hoping to find at least one place that would let them circumvent more drastic measures, eventually settling on Tachi Palace’s tribal lands in California.

Yet, for all their valiant efforts to ensure that they were running the most cautious and mindful business in the world, Dana White and the rest of the UFC were forced to suffer the persecution of an increasingly powerful enemy. Armed with little more than blog sites and YouTube videos, the MMA Media nearly dealt crushing blow after crushing blow to the UFC brass. They very nearly forced event cancellations and almost made Endeavor cut staff. They came close to forcing the UFC to stop paying talent, and came within a hair of causing the UFC’s 2020 profit margin to tank.

Anything anyone heard about ESPN & Disney executives personally calling Dana White and telling him to knock this shit off because it was a terrible idea? A complete fabrication. Stories that the UFC had a fantastic (maybe even record setting) year of profits, to the point that they were able to build their own TV studio and buy up prime Vegas (ish) real estate to build their own fighter hotel? All just propaganda to distract from the havoc that timely and well crafted op-eds wreaked on the Octagon.

Truly, if 2020 proved anything, it’s that the UFC is built to fight for what it believes in. And that they’re definitely not just opportunists who saw a chance to make even more money while getting by with the bare minimum required to get sanctioned to run events in the state of Nevada. Really definitely not that at all.

On that note, enjoy this wonderfully produced UFC video naming and shaming all those people whose unbelievable might almost pushed the promotion into a corner where only the bravest and boldest could have survived.