The head honcho’s of MMA’s two biggest promotion’s are continuing to engage in a war of words in the afermath of last weekend’s Bellator 106 event.
Bad blood between UFC president Dana White and Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney stems primarily from Bellator’s decision to use legal means to stand in the way of Eddie Alvarez making a lucrative move to the UFC earlier this year.
That prompted white to take a verbal jab at Rebney after Saturday night’s event when Alvarez pulled off an upset win over Michael Chandler to win back the Bellator lightweight title.
“I’m hearing Djork oops Bjork got served a big fat plate of Karma tonight :) Congrats Eddie!!” White wrote on Twitter after the event.
Yesterday, after learning that the event had delivered a promotional record 1.1 million viewers on Spike TV, Rebney couldn’t resist firing back at his rival.
“If Fight of the Year & 10 times better ratings than you did on your last televised show is Karma, bring me another plate,” Rebney replied.
White received the message while in the middle of a media conference call and offered up the following response to reporters.
“I have no comment on that,” White said. “When I sent that karma text, everybody knows what I was talking about. He tried to f–k this kid, and then he loses. What was he shaking his head about if he was so f–king pumped about his evening?” White asked, his voice rising.
“If his evening was that wonderful and he was so pumped about it, why was he back there shaking his head and looked like he wanted to f–king kill himself?”
It’s true that a GIF of Rebney shaking his head did go viral after the result was announced, but the Bellator chief believes people have the wrong idea about why he responded in that way.
“Yep, shook my head because I couldn’t believe people booed that fight decision,” Rebney told a fan on Twitter. “Incredible display of skill & courage by both men.”
On reflection it does appear that was the case, and in fact, it’s since been noted that Rebney was actually smiling when the decision was first announced.
So, it could be argued that Rebney has the upper-hand in this particular exchange so far. Having said that, it has to be questioned whether it’s a smart move for Rebney to rile up his counterpart as other’s have tried and ultimately failed to beat White at his own game in the past.
