I don’t know if any of you have been following this whole Chris Brennan vs Dana White, he-said she-said battle, but since it seems to be the talk of the MMA world right now I guess I need to throw my two cents in.
So, Chris Brennan appears on MMAWeekly.com’s Soundoff radio show with Ryan Bennett and Frank Trigg, and basically lashes out at the UFC for some contract disputes related to the upcoming Ultimate Fight Night show in April. Chris had been offered to fight The Ultimate Fighter Season 2 champion, Joe Stevenson that night, an opponent Chris had already defeated.
Brennan told MMAWeekly Radio’s Ryan Bennett and Frank Trigg this past week quote “Unfortunately for me and whoever else, I had a fight with Joe Stevenson lined up for April 6th, on the Spike UFN show, but I was offered a fairly small amount of money. This Gracie deal stepped up, with pretty much five times the money. I was told by Joe Silva that I was an idiot for taking that fight, but come on. I mean, it was literally five times what they were offering, so I had to go with it. It was unfortunate because I know Joe has wanted to rematch me for a long time, but the money that was being offered for a rematch with a guy I beat in two minutes, who now is their super hero, was not very good.
MMAWeekly’s Ryan Bennett followed up by asking if he thought he would ever fight in the UFC Brennan answered. “No. He told me if I fight in this event I’ll be done with the UFC, so I guess I’m done with the UFC.”
Then yesterday, whether you believe it or not, UFC president Dana White sat down for an interview with Jeff Cain from MMA Weekly. Now the fact that Dana gave an interview to a media site that he won’t even grant press credentials to events is amazing to me, but that is beside the point.
In the interview Dana is his usual terse self, and he begins by calling Chris Brennan out for “what Chris Brennan wrote on the internet.” Dana says Brennan should not have said what he did about Joe Silva who “is a good guy, and Joe Silva loves this sport and loves the guys that fight in it.” Surprisingly up to this point, Dana hasn’t used the f-bomb once. However, he proceeds to use his favorite word a dozen times answering the next three questions.
What I find most interesting is what is spoken about next in the interview.
MMAWeekly: So you’re saying he lied, and he handled this completely unprofessionally?
White: Completely. And Joe Silva is too good of a guy to jump out there and say something to him. I’m not. I’m not a ******* nice guy.
MMAWeekly: So you did make that thread on the ‘Underground?’
White: Of course I did.
Wait a second…Dana is upset at Brennan because he “handled this completely unprofessionally” then in the next sentence he claims to have made this thread on the MMA.tv Underground forum? Am I missing something here? This is the exact thread post:
chris, you are a liar, a crybaby and a punk. joe silva is to good of a guy to tell you in public. i’m not!
So Dana doesn’t like Chris using the internet and handling things unprofessionally, but Dana does the exact same thing? He uses the internet forum and acts unprofessionally himself (with pretty bad grammar as well). If you are the president of a multi-million dollar organization, I don’t think calling someone a “liar, a crybaby and a punk” is a very professional thing to do. Dana discredits himself, the UFC, and MMA as a whole in the public eye when he does something like that.
To finish the whole topic, Joe Silva appeared on the Soundoff radio show yesterday after the Dana White interview to give his side of the story. Silva is much more relaxed and explained the whole situation. If you are an MMA Weekly subscriber, head to the archives and listen to the show if you missed it.
I don’t care what really happened with Brennan and the contract for the UFN show. Fact is he never signed a contract, and chose to fight elsewhere for more money. That is his decision. He may have acted unprofessionally with the things he said and the way he said them, but the response from Dana White and the UFC is just as bad, if not worse.




Yeah I basically agree. I tend to take Dana’s side more than other people do, but this whole situation definately bothered me. I guess thats why I was up at 12am writing a blog instead of sleeping…especially since I had a 8am meeting this morning..haha.
The situation was definately handled poorly by both sides. Brennan was wrong and Dana was wrong. It really should never have gotten this big, and thats the real shame, I think…
[...] You’ll remember back in February there was a little bit of a “war of words” between Chris Brennan and UFC President Dana White. Brennan will make his Pride debut against top ranked contender Tatsuya Kawajiri which will be a very tough fight. [...]