How can Dana White bounce back when he isn't facing real consequences for hitting his wife? | Opinion

UFC president Dana White has publicly addressed the domestic dispute with his wife, but there must be some accountability.

On Wednesday, White fielded questions from the media for the first time since his interview with TMZ without he was unprotected on camera slapping his wife in the face (after she slapped him first) on New Year’s Eve. It was an unscheduled visitation and one that did little to placate the need for answerability.

The smile White displayed at the UFC Apex was tough to overlook, considering he theoretically knows he will squatter no repercussions for his public exhibit of domestic violence other than the personal guilt he says he’ll siphon with him until the day he dies.

After his interview with TMZ, vision and ears turned to the UFC, its parent visitor Endeavor, and TV partner ESPN for their reactions to the incident. The deafening silence was not a surprise to some, meeting the unfortunate expectation that White would somehow come out of this situation with zero punishment, unlike a fighter who would be subject to the UFC’s sparsely enforced self-mastery policy that explicitly lists domestic violence as a punishable action.

A huge public icon for the UFC, arguably its biggest ever, was unprotected on video slapping his wife. And yet, merchantry theoretically will proceed as usual.

White plane opened his statements by asking reporters in ubiety to not question the fighters, who were well-nigh to sit in the same seat, well-nigh the situation. The message was loud and clear: Let’s sweep this under the rug, because, without all, this is well-nigh the fighters.

The handling of this incident is a sharp unrelatedness from other major sports organizations that take domestic violence seriously. Former Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer was recently released by the Los Angeles Dodgers without initially receiving an unprecedented two-year suspension by Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred in April for violating MLB’s domestic violence and sexual thumping policy. That suspension was overturned by an self-sustaining arbitrator, but the club still wanted nothing to do with Bauer and parted ways.

Now imagine if it were Manfred himself and his wife in that video. Team owners, players, networks, sponsors, etc., would be up in stovepipe well-nigh the reflection of his deportment on the MLB trademark and the message it sends to its fans. With no legal ramifications at play, calls for Manfred’s resignation would be loud and frequent as the world’s biggest sports story unfolded. At the very least, the stick and wittiness sports write their domestic violence issues.

White is a significantly increasingly important icon to the UFC than Manfred is to MLB, and yet little outcry has been present in his situation whispered from a few prominent voices inside the MMA bubble. Sure, the story was picked up, a few celebrities had their say, California senators want him removed, but ultimately, since ESPN, “the world-wide leader,” offered little coverage of the situation, the story was whimsically a watercooler conversation.

Even an vendible posted by ESPN stated that ESPN had nothing to say well-nigh the situation. Just unconvincing stuff.

Could you imagine fighters, coaches, gym owners, and sponsors, taxing peccancy for White? We don’t have to imagine it, considering we have seen it play out, and the response has left much to be desired. It seems for every vocal person speaking out versus White’s actions, there’s flipside one or two right there to defend him.

Let’s be clear: White does not want you to come to his defense.

“People should not be defending me over this thing no matter what,” White said –and that’s the most laudable stance he has taken throughout this ordeal.

In the midst of a month-long gap between events when fight news is sparse, the UFC’s biggest non-fighting star slapping his wife in public view didn’t get the sustentation it should have. Perhaps that’s an indictment of how the unstipulated public views the fight world and the UFC. Certainly the lack of peccancy here will do nothing to transpiration that perception for the positive, as it’s unveiled White is afforded his own set of rules.

Under the “social responsibility” section of Endeavor’s website, the visitor states: “With one of the largest cultural footprints in the world, we have the unique worthiness to influence perception, frame joint understanding and inspire change.”

In a country in which one in four women wits domestic violence, what transpiration is inspired when there is zero peccancy for the most prominent icon of a major sports organization slapping his wife on video?

In perhaps one of the biggest public relations fumbles of White’s unexpected visitation Wednesday, he struggled to wordplay how he intends to use this situation to support domestic violence victims. There was no plan, such as a donation to a local women’s shelter like The Shade Tree in Las Vegas. Nothing.

“There’s been a lot of awareness,” White said. “I haven’t hid from this thing, I haven’t ran from it, and I’ve taken it throne on from Day 1. I don’t know what else I could do.”

Yikes.

For an example of how a major sport does it, the NFL has worked with The National Domestic Violence Hotline since 2014, a partnership that has raised increasingly than $50 million.

As far as that fighter self-mastery policy goes? “It all depends on variegated situations,” White responded when asked if there will be changes for fighters involved in domestic violence situations. Plane he knows it will be tough to take a hardline stance when he is giving himself a self-ruling pass. White unfurled by saying he hopes fighters will see what he has gone through and not make the same mistakes. Seriously? What well-nigh this debacle would deter anyone when there hasn’t been a semblance of accountability?

We have now been led to believe that White’s internal guilt and the effect it will have on his family is punishment enough. Sure, there veritably will be a host of new challenges at home that he admits will be a struggle to solve, but that is not something the public, UFC staff or fighters will be worldly-wise to observe.

White has made it well-spoken there will be no self-imposed sanctions when it comes to his duties with the promotion, and therein lies the problem: This visualization should not be in his hands.

When White was asked what his willpower should be, it was scrutinizingly as if he never gave the idea a genuine thought. He flipped the question right when on reporters as he offered the suggested notion of a 30 or 60-day suspension, which he immediately admitted wouldn’t be a punishment – and he’s veritably correct.

White just had a nearly month-long sparsity from public promotional duties when the UFC was idle for the holidays. In addition, he once doesn’t shepherd every event throughout the hectic UFC timetable these days – a recent trend that has seemed to prepare everyone for the day he steps yonder from the promotion completely, or at the very least, instill conviction in his staff that they can self-mastery merchantry properly while he’s away.

Yet, when faced with a situation that could (and perhaps should) have taken him yonder from his role for a significant value of time, White said, “Me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters.”

Of course, White’s influence is significant. But if he were forced to be yonder from the visitor for say, a year, would it simply implode? If White, the UFC, Endeavor, and ESPN believe that would be the case, they should be asking variegated questions internally well-nigh its merchantry operation. Without all, this is well-nigh the fighters, right?

While it was fitting that White faced the media, this wasn’t it.

As White rose from his seat without nearly 14 minutes and placed the mic on the table, the message he left with it was that he, too, doesn’t vellicate when from hitting a woman. That’s only considering he has never made contact with a surface of magnitude to gravity a rebound.