Dana White expressed surprise yesterday after Khabib Nurmagomedov was suspended for nine months and fined $500,000 for his part in the brawl following UFC 229 last year.
“I was obviously surprised how much they put on Khabib,” White said on ESPN. “It was a half-million dollars and six months if he does some PSAs. They had the whole thing contained in seconds. It was a little harsh in my opinion. It is what it is.”
During their discussions at the hearing NSAC even considered clamping down on fighter’s pre-fight trash talk since it can end up causing more trouble, but Dana White doesn’t agree with heading down that route.
“It’s a fight. At the end of the day, it’s a fight. Sometimes you come across people that don’t like each other and there’s a lot of bad blood. That was in the case in this fight. That’s what we do it’s the fight business. These guys are talking about fighters saying mean things to each other and all this other stuff. If you break it down and you go back to when Ali fought Frazier, and you look at the times when it happened, the stuff he said about Frazier and to Frazier was horrible. Horrible things you didn’t say to somebody else back then.”
