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Various text messages and emails from UFC executives have been recently unsealed from the antitrust lawsuit against the promotion.
Among the trove of documents that John S. Nash and Bloody Elbow have obtained from the antitrust lawsuit were previously unreleased payouts for their biggest stars, along with dozens of text messages, emails and depositions.
Filings showed various dealings and discussions among the UFC brass where they celebrated “cut throat” and “nasty” moves they pulled off in negotiations, and trashed their stars such Jon Jones and Mark Hunt. This latest set of documents Bloody Elbow has sorted through involve UFC executives discussing “rival” promotions.
Dana White trashes “very bad promoter” Scott Coker
One of the text exchanges revealed from the antitrust lawsuit was about Bellator booking a matchup between former UFC champions Tito Ortiz and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. Lorenzo Fertitta sent Dana White a message, saying “I thought they don’t take UFC castoffs.”
Dana White was then asked about this in his deposition. This is how the exchange went:
Question: Okay. What did you understand Mr. Fertitta to be saying there?
Dana White: That Bellator had come out and said, “We won’t take UFC castoffs.”
Question: All right. And — but nevertheless, UFC viewed Mr. Ortiz and Mr. Jackson as essentially castoffs?
White: That’s — that’s Scott Coker’s MO. Scott Coker doesn’t build anybody, right? He doesn’t turn anybody into stars. He just takes old names and recycles them. He’s a — he — he’s a very, very bad promoter.
Question: Okay.
White: Very bad at what he does.
Question: All right. And that’s a — that’s — you’re saying that — I just want to understand you. Because Mr. Coker’s been in several different promotions; right?
White: Right.
Question: Okay.
White: All failures.
Dana White: Ronda Rousey only became a star because of me
While Dana White was ranting about how bad a promoter Scott Coker is, the deposition then continued on to discuss former Strikeforce and UFC champion Ronda Rousey.
Question: Right. Is it your — not withstanding the fact that the UFC got some — I think as you testified earlier, some really great fighters from Mr. Coker’s Strikeforce promotion; right?
White: That we turned into stars. When you have Ronda Rousey and you can’t turn her into a star, you should probably go open a restaurant or something.
Question: And so — and so is it your testimony that at Bellator, Mr. Coker is continuing to essentially recycle has-been fighters? Is that —
White: Well, no. He — he recycles big names.
Question: Right.
White: That’s what he does. Rampage Jackson is a huge name. Tito Ortiz is a huge name. And — and basically, he re– you know, takes guys with big names and puts on fights with them instead of turning guys into stars, even when he has a roster packed with stars, and one of them include Ronda Rousey.
Question: Well, Ronda Rousey wasn’t a star at the time that she was fighting under contract with Strikeforce; right?
White: Till I turned her into a star.
Question: Right. But the point is, she wasn’t a star at Strikeforce; correct?
White: Yeah, no.
Question: Okay. So — and at this time in 2013 —
White: Just for the record, I turned her into a star immediately when she got to the UFC —
Question: Okay.
White: — her first fight.
UFC lawsuit strategy? Dana White contradicts previous statements
Dana White had a lot of curious statements even in that short snippet from his deposition. One of the first things to note is that Tito Ortiz vs. Rampage Jackson happened at Bellator 106. This was during Bjorn Rebney’s time, and several months before Scott Coker even came in to head Bellator.
According to White, Coker couldn’t make Ronda Rousey a star, and that only happened when he himself “turned her into a star” on “her first fight” with UFC. Those have been completely opposite to what he previously said about Rousey, as he repeatedly raved about her already being a mainstream “breakthrough star” that could make him change his controversial stance on not wanting women in the UFC.
“I think she’s a big thing now. She’s already done things that we couldn’t get done, I mean she’s been on talk shows that we could never f—ing get on,” White said while Rousey was still with Strikeforce, noting her appearances on mainstream outlets. “I heard she was the best selling cover of ESPN: The Body Issue, that was what I heard.
“…My point is, she’s one of those breakthrough stars. You guys know I went to the Sons of Anarchy premiere with her? When we got out of the car, the whole f—ing place erupted, like she was on the show or something … she’s ‘there’“
While White botched the timelines on Rebney, and seemingly did a 180 on all his previous statements on Rousey, the UFC President and now CEO going after Coker when officially discussing this case isn’t that surprising. After all, that’s directly tied to some of the main issues being argued in the lawsuit.
Does UFC use anticompetitive practices and abuse their overwhelming leverage to increase their stranglehold on the market, or do they just have the magic formula for promoting fights better than everybody else?
Plaintiffs (fighters) will argue it’s the former, that UFC abuses its power in various ways like locking up top fighters in restrictive contracts, buying and killing off other promotions, etc. On the other hand, defendants (UFC) will argue they’re just simply better, and rival promoters can’t compete because they’re “very bad” at their job.
Many of Dana White’s text messages allegedly deleted
Also interesting to the case is how the plaintiffs and their lawyers argue that thousands of relevant text messages from Dana White were allegedly deleted and/or not made available to them, despite the order to produce them for the case. Lawyers have pieced up numerous conversations from other executives’ devices, showing messages from Dana White that weren’t on the phones he provided.
White said on his deposition that Scott Coker sucks at promoting despite being “packed with stars,” but in private, one of the missing messages in question had the UFC boss tackling…
Read the rest of the post over at our Substack page.
In the full post, we take a look at Dana White’s deleted text messages that were uncovered and their official defense for it, along with dozens of interactions from other UFC executives and matchmakers as everyone took jabs at Bellator, Scott Coker, and even their former fighters.
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