ESPN’s Molly Qerim had the guts to urge Endeavor to punish Dana White. Stephen A. Smith, not so much.
We heard from UFC president Dana White for the second time since he slapped his wife on New Year’s Eve, as he fielded questions from reporters Wednesday and all but confirmed that there will be no punishment – neither from UFC parent company Endeavor nor self-imposed – for his despicable actions.
By this point, you must’ve seen the video of the incident released by TMZ: White and his wife, Anne, in an apparent argument, Anne looking distraught, White grabs her by the wrist, she slaps him in the face, he retaliates by slapping her in the face twice and then pushing her down to the ground.
It’s appalling, although a lot of folks on social media, including fighters, and in comments sections have defended White by saying she deserved it because she hit him first (completely ignoring that he put his hands on her first), despite White himself not defending his actions.
This brings us to UFC broadcast partner ESPN, whose coverage of the situation has been remarkably lean. A story like this, where a top sports executive is caught on video committing an act of domestic violence? That’s the kind of thing that gets discussed on “First Take” immediately, but not in this case. It took until Jan. 4, two days after the TMZ video was released, for Stephen A. Smith and host Molly Qerim to address the story. When they did, it was only a couple of minutes to close out the episode.
And their takes? Well, they were softer than Charmin. You can watch here:
Stephen A. Smith addressed the video of Dana White slapping his wife pic.twitter.com/HwuGAjXnxi
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 4, 2023
Fast forward to Thursday. Smith and Qerim addressed the situation a second time on “First Take” in light of White’s unexpected news conference where he again owned up to his wrongdoing. In fact, he did it so comfortably, like he knows he’s in the clear. There was some narcissism in the air, too, when White’s response was to throw it back to the reporter who asked about repercussions.
“What should the repercussions be? You tell me,” White said. “I take 30 days off? How does that hurt me?”
Resigning from his position? This was White’s manipulative response to that notion.
“Me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters. It doesn’t hurt me,” White said. “I could’ve left in 2016. You know what I mean? I don’t know. Do I need to reflect? No, I don’t need to reflect. The next morning when I woke up (I reflected). …
“Here’s my punishment: I have to walk around for however long I live – Is it 10.4 years or another 25 years? – and this is how I’m labeled now. My other punishment is I’m sure a lot of people, whether it be media, fighters, friends, acquaintances, who had respect for me, might not have respect for me now. There are a lot of things that I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life that are way more of a punishment than what, I take a 30-day, 60-day absence? That’s not a punishment to me. The punishment is that I did it, and now I have to deal with it.”
Those words seem to have struck a chord with both Smith and Qerim – more so with Qerim – when they reacted to White’s news conference during Thursday’s episode of “First Take” (the segment is below).
Neither of them went so far as to say that Endeavor should remove White from his position as UFC president. In fact, Stephen A. made it loud and clear that he’s against that. “Now, am I an advocate of cancel culture where you want him to lose his job? No!” Smith said. “And I’m not apologizing for that.”
Stephen A. need not worry about his friend losing his job, since Endeavor apparently has no plans to even punish White at all, which Qerim took umbrage with.
Here’s a notable exchange between them from the show:
Qerim: “It needs to be Endeavor (that punishes White), because he has a boss. If we’re saying that if fighters get x-amount of punishment – and I looked it up, there isn’t a standard policy with the UFC. And I’ve said this before with the NFL: There should be a hard-and-fast rule with gambling and PEDs, and there also should be when you violate a woman. So it’s the same thing here. They have to create a policy, if they have to look at what happened with fighters in the past, and it has to be more severe from the simple fact that he’s in a leadership role. He’s the face of the company and what comes with that.
Smith: “I got it. And my response to that is, ‘Fine.’ But then people should be talking about that. They shouldn’t be looking at Molly and Stephen A. and be, ‘Your tenor, your tone, and it wasn’t aggressive enough!’ What do you want me to say? All I can do is be honest and open about where we’re coming from. Dana White is someone that I know. He is a friend. I called him and told him, ‘What the hell were you doing? You have any idea how bad it is? You were wrong. By the way, you deserve to be punished.’ By the way, I told ESPN that, I’ve told William-Morris that, I’m telling the national audience that. And then after that, you deal with what is. We have to deal with this all the time, in terms of people looking at us and our commentary. And not just this show, a multitude of shows on this network and beyond. That’s the reality of the situation. We can wish, we can desire, we can believe. But at the end of the day, the onus is on somebody else to do something about it. All we can say is what we feel, and I have said so. That’s my point.”
Qerim: “The one other piece I want to say is there should be some credit to ‘First take’ as the one show that’s discussing this and giving our opinion for that matter. And I realize that clip (from last week) circulated, and there was conversation that we weren’t strict enough, but people weren’t taking the part about the punishment that should be exacted. They were focusing on the part that you said Dana’s a friend. But we owe the audience full disclosure to know the relationship of WME and Dana, but we condemn. Domestic violence is egregious, it’s unacceptable, it shouldn’t happen, and he shouldn’t be able to exact his punishment. So many people make poor decisions or get involved with the law, and they don’t get to say, ‘Hey, my shame’s enough.’ No, you face punishment in addition to that, and that should happen here, and he has a boss, and that is Endeavor, and I expect them to hand something down.”
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Maybe it’s too late, but what Qerim did this time compared to last was she used her platform to apply pressure on Endeavor to say something, do something, anything that sends a message that domestic violence won’t be tolerated, at least a basic level of accountability. She deserves credit for that.
Stephen A. on the other hand? You can’t convince me that his passive-aggressive stance (at best that’s what it is) would be the same energy he’d keep if it was, say, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell slapping his wife in that video instead of White. He’d be calling for Goodell’s job. And if NFL owners stood back and said nothing for 10 days, he’d be calling them all out for being cowards. You know it, I know it, we all know it.
But that’s not happening here. He’s not putting any pressure on executives at Endeavor. For Stephen A., it’s whatever-they-want-to-do-it’s-not-up-to-me.
Such a shame.
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Here's everything Dana White said during news conference about slapping his wife
