Dana White says everyone read too much into it. At the UFC 333 press conference in Abu Dhabi, White addressed the fallout from his earlier remark that there’s “definitely a reason” Farid Basharat wasn’t re-signed. He explained that he never meant to hang a cloud of suspicion over the unbeaten bantamweight.
“I saw the kid on Instagram last week,” White said. “When I was talking about why some guys get released, or their contracts don’t get renewed, I was just saying in general. I wasn’t pointing him out, specifically.”
The topic came up sideways. A reporter asked whether Movsar Evloev could be in danger of getting cut, given that he has strung together 10 straight UFC wins without a single finish. White didn’t offer Evloev any guarantees. “I can’t promise anything. But he’s in a pretty good spot right now,” he said, in a clip MMA Junkie shared on X.
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Why the original comment stung
Basharat went 7-0 inside the Octagon and still didn’t get a new deal. According to Bloody Elbow, he found out at the same moment the public did. White’s vague line about there being a reason left fans guessing, and the guesses weren’t flattering. If you leave a hole like that, people fill it with stories about turned-down fights or bad attitude.
Basharat’s camp pushed back hard on that idea. His manager, Ali Abdelaziz, went to X to set the record straight.
“Let me be clear: Farid Basharat did not turn down a fight,” Abdelaziz wrote. “In 2024, he fought an opponent who was 10 pounds overweight. He’s always been a company guy and accepted every opponent offered to him. The company decided not to re-sign him, for whatever reason.”
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Basharat has also been openly critical of the UFC since the news came out. He has said he never refused an opponent, so he can’t make sense of White suggesting there was something behind the decision.
The style question
White still hasn’t said what the reason actually is. Bloody Elbow points to the obvious suspect, which is finishes, or the lack of them. Six of Basharat’s seven UFC wins went to the scorecards. Basharat also told Demetrious Johnson on his podcast that the promotion informed him last year it wasn’t a fan of his style.
The same thing has already happened in his family. His brother, Javid Basharat, wasn’t re-signed earlier this year for similar reasons, according to Bloody Elbow. Javid went 4-2-1 in the UFC, losing to Aiemann Zahabi and Ricky Simon, and every one of his wins came by decision.
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That puts White’s Evloev answer in a very specific light. Evloev is unbeaten through 10 UFC fights and has no stoppages in that run. The promotion’s message to him was a shrug and “a pretty good spot.”
My take is that the clarification fixes the tone and dodges the substance. Cutting a 7-0 fighter because the fights didn’t pop is a business call the UFC is allowed to make, and the Basharat brothers’ own accounts suggest that’s the real story. What wasn’t fair was letting a kid who took every opponent, including one who came in 10 pounds heavy, twist in the wind for a week while fans invented sins for him. Saying “in general” afterward doesn’t hand back that week. Basharat is off the roster with a perfect UFC record, and the guy who signs him gets a bantamweight who has never lost in the Octagon.
