Dana White used the UFC 333 post-fight press conference in Abu Dhabi on Saturday to walk back comments that left Farid Basharat sounding like a problem employee on his way out the door. The UFC CEO said he never meant to suggest Basharat was difficult to work with, and he admitted that seeing the fighter’s response video was what made him realize how his earlier remarks had landed.
“When I was talking to the media that night, and I was saying reasons that you could not get re-signed. I wasn’t saying that about him,” White said, as reported by Yahoo Sports. “I said, ‘Well, it’s happened before.’ There’s lots of reasons why guys don’t get re-signed. I wasn’t talking about him, specifically.”
He then described the moment it clicked. “I actually saw his [response] video on my Instagram, and I was like, ‘Oh s***. I didn’t mean to do that to that kid.’” White recalled Basharat saying something like “If you’re not going to re-sign me, don’t try to hurt my career,” and he insisted he had made no attempt to do that.
How we got here
Basharat, a 29-year-old bantamweight, went 7-0 inside the Octagon. His last fight under contract was a decision win over John Garza in July. About three months later, he announced he was leaving the UFC and said the promotion had told him he wouldn’t be re-signed.
When White was asked about it in the days that followed, he said he didn’t know the exact reason Basharat hadn’t been offered a new deal. He added that, usually, a fighter has done something to keep from coming back. That one word did a lot of work. Basharat heard it as an insinuation about his character, and he said so publicly.
The release fed into a bigger argument already running through the sport. Basharat, along with former UFC contenders Muhammad Mokaev and Michael Page, has said he believes the promotion now values entertainment over winning. Yahoo Sports described the decision as part of the UFC’s apparent move away from fighters whose wins tend to go the distance.
What’s next
Basharat will keep fighting outside the UFC for now. White didn’t rule out a reunion, but he isn’t expecting one soon.
“I have no problems with him whatsoever, personally or professionally, and I’m sure with his record, and what he’s got going on, he’ll get signed somewhere,” White said. “I wouldn’t say in the near future [he’d be back]. We just let him go. But I’m not saying it’s not a possibility that he could come back to the UFC.”
My take
Give White credit for cleaning this up on the record. That matters to a free agent whose next promoter will be reading those quotes before making an offer. But the clarification doesn’t touch the part that should bother people. A 29-year-old bantamweight went 7-0 and still got cut, and the only reason anyone has offered publicly is a general sense that the company wants more finishes. Matchmakers don’t get to call the guy who keeps winning a bad investment, then act surprised when other fighters start reading the scorecards as a warning. Somebody is going to sign Basharat quickly, and the first thing they’ll put on the poster is a seven-fight UFC run with no losses on it.
