Yahoo: Mir's 'death in the Octagon' comment still a touchy topic with White

Clark Kent

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03-25-2010 01:20 AM:blank_pageIt seemed like the perfect platform to explain why he was so upset with Frank Mir's "first death in the Octagon" comments. Dana White had a big audience at Radio City Music Hall and good representation from the New York/New Jersey media.

Those comments taken out of context or too literally could hurt MMA's chances to get legalized in states like New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. White hinted at the comments when he was talking about how heated things are between Mir and Lesnar saying, "Nobody likes each other. There's been a lot of wild and crazy talk going back and forth, sometimes a little too crazy."

So we'd figured let's tee it up for White, he'd probably come up with a good answer about why he thought the "death" comments could be damaging. Instead we found out just how steamed White was about the initial comments (1:25 mark - cleaner version at UFC.com). White gave us an icy glare and then emboldened by the booing crowd of a 1,000-plus at Radio City, smirked and said, "next question."


We followed that up by asking Frank Mir, how heated it got between himself and UFC management (2:45 mark). He had zero issues answering the question.

"It's a mistake I made. Hopefully it'll be just a really dumb side note in my life. Very poor terminology. Obviously I'm here today, I'm fighting. We're still up here on stage. Everything's just fine ... so far."

White wasn't pleased with the question in such a celebratory/rah-rah environment. That's certainly understandable. He's hard to figure out sometimes.

By trying to hide his take on something or bury a story, he simply calls more attention to something that in the end is pretty stupid. Words should not be more impactful than actions. And the talk of "killing" or "destroying" an opponent has a long history in fighting. By shying away from talking out the issues and calming down the morons who would like to use Mir's comments as some anti-MMA crutch, White is only allowing their voice to be heard without a rebuttal.



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