Dana White puts no stock in Alex Pereira’s complaints against Daniel Cormier.
Earlier this week, Pereira came out against the upcoming heavyweight title fight between Ciryl Gane and Josh Hokit, claiming that the UFC told “influencers” like Cormier to “manipulate” the fans to be in favor of the fight. Cormier responded on Tuesday, rejecting Pereira’s claim entirely, and on Tuesday night, following the final episode of season 10 of Contender Series, White did the same while speaking with reporters.
“Of course that’s not true,” White said. “These guys are the most paranoid people on the planet. Like we’re telling DC — I’ve never told DC to do anything, ever. It doesn’t work like that. We don’t operate like that.”
Pereira’s complaint seems primarily to stem from his personal animosity with Gane. “Poatan” lost his fight with Gane for the interim heavyweight title at UFC White House, and has since lobbied for a rematch, citing illegal blows from Gane as the reason for his loss. Pereira has had some issues with the UFC before, but this one seems to run a bit deeper for the former two-division champion. It also comes at the same time as UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland has been airing his grievances about the promotion. But for White, this is simply a normal part of fight promotion.
“I don’t know. We have over 700 guys on contract, and we’ve talked about two of them being sideways right now,” White said. “This is normal when you’re in this business. As you guys know — first of all, I’ve never told Rogan or DC or any of these guys to say anything about anybody. And one of the things, as a longtime fan of the fight business, I actually can’t stand the commentators saying negative things about fighters or anything like that.
“But I don’t tell anybody what to say. I don’t tell the fighters what to say, I don’t tell the commentators what to say. This thing all just plays out organically in the way that the fights are called, and whatever they say when they walk out here and they interview with you guys tonight. We don’t police any of that stuff. If we did, Sean Strickland would’ve been gone three f*cking years ago, and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”