As we reported yesterday, UFC heavyweight fighter Matt Mitrione has been suspended from the promotion for ‘transphobic’ remarks made about post-operation transexual fighter Fallon Fox on ‘The MMA Hour’ on Monday, and the story continues to develop with reactions from both Dana White and Fox herself.
Speaking on yesterday’s UFC 159 media conference call White didn’t delve deeply into the rights and wrongs of Mitrione’s remarks, but rather focused on why the fighter felt the need to comment about it in the first place.
“It’s one of those things it’s just a pain in the ass,” White stated. “He didn’t even need to be doing an interview. The only time these guys need to be doing interviews is leading up to fights. It ended up being a nightmare for him. What was the point of that interview? What’s the point of it. It’s causing all these problems for no reason whatsoever. What was the point of doing that interview. What was the upside to that interview? There was none. No upside.”
Meanwhile, Fox has also spoken out regarding the comments Mitrione leveled against her.
“Matt Mitrione went well beyond disagreeing with the medical experts who say I should be able to compete as a woman, and personally attacked me as a fighter, as a woman, and as a human being,” Fox wrote on Facebook. “His comments do not reflect the spirit of our sport, where most competitors uphold values like respect and dignity.”
Finally, in an added twist to the tale, former UFC heavyweight fighter Sean McCorkle, a long-time friend of Mitrione, has claimed that it was in fact he who wrote most of the off-color jokes regarding the topic that Mitrione told during the interview in question.
“As many of you may or may not know, since the very beginning of the Mitrione minute, I have helped Matt with his jokes for the [MMA Hour] show,” McCorkle wrote in a statement on the UG Forum. “I’m better at jokes than I am fighting, and always have been.
Matt got ahold of me early this morning, and I either wrote or helped him write just about all of what he said regarding Rhianna/Chris Brown, and the Lloyd Irvin/rape jokes. Sometimes I make the mistake of forgetting that because I’m no longer under contract with the UFC, I am free to not only toe the line, but go way over it in my interviews, and that Matt is not.
While I don’t regret writing the jokes he told, I do regret encouraging Matt to tell them given the trouble it has now caused him. He was very “iffy” on the jokes, and I feel almost as if I pressured him into doing it. So for that, I sincerely apologize to Matt.”
