Dana White on Matt Mitrione's Transgender Rant: “There Was No Point In It”
UFC heavyweight Matt Mitrione, fresh off of a victory over Phil De Fries this past weekend in Sweden, went from celebrating to floundering in a pot of roiling water just 48 hours later.
Why?
That’s what UFC president Dana White wants to know.
Mitrione talked about the controversy swirling around transgender fighter Fallon Fox on the Monday edition of the MMA Hour. He went off on a rant about Fox and her participation in mixed martial arts that resulted in the UFC taking action against him for “breach of conduct.”
“I checked his fight videos and haven’t seen a man beat a woman like that since Chris Brown beat Rihanna,” said Mitrione.
“He’s chromosomally a man. He had a gender change, not a sex change. He’s still a man. He was a man for 31 years. Thirty-one years. That’s a couple years younger than I am. He’s a man,” he continued. “Six years of taking performance de-hancing drugs, you think is going to change all that? That’s ridiculous.
“That is a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak. And I mean that. Because you lied on your license to beat up women. That’s disgusting. You should be embarrassed yourself.”
Prior to his comments about Fox, which included more than the noted comments, Mitrione also made light of his opponent Phil De Fries in relation to him being a student of Lloyd Irvin and recent rape allegations leveled at another Irvin student.
The UFC later suspended Mitrione and issued a statement about his conduct.
“The organization finds Mr Mitrione’s comments offensive and wholly unacceptable and – as a direct result of this significant breach of the UFC’s code of conduct – Mr Mitrione’s UFC contract has been suspended and the incident is being investigated.”
The question that White has is: why was Mitrione even doing an interview in the first place?
“It's one of those things that's just a pain in the ass. First of all, he didn't even need to be doing an interview,” White commented on Tuesday. “And I'm gonna talk to these guys. The only time these guys really need to be doing interviews is leading up to fights.”
Fighters often do a few interviews in the days following their most recent fights, but it is usually to address topics surrounding the fight or their future plans depending upon the outcome. Mitrione, however, has a segment on the show called the “Mitrione Minute” and selected Fallon Fox as one of the targets of his comments.
“It ended up being a nightmare for him. What was the point of that interview? There was no point in it,” White continued. “Now it's caused him a bunch of headaches and problems. It's caused us a bunch of headaches and problems… for no reason whatsoever.
“What was the upside in that interview? There was none, no upside.”
UFC officials are investigating the Mitrione situation and have not yet determined what the final outcome will be.
