If the Ultimate Fighting Championship has gay fighters, their boss believes they should emerge from the closet and not worry about it.
“I’ll tell you right now, if there was a gay fighter in UFC, I wish he would come out,” UFC President Dana White said in late October. “I could care less if there’s a gay fighter in the UFC. There probably is and there’s probably more than one.”
White was responding to criticisms levied by the Las Vegas chapter of the Culinary Union and other groups who accuse UFC of being an anti-gay organization. In a letter to Anheuser-Busch and a an online petition to Fox, the union and its allies cited statements by White and fighters such as Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira as proof that UFC has “a history of tolerating homophobic conduct.”
Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light brand sponsors UFC. Fox recently signed a seven-year deal to air UFC events.
The most notable instance of White’s use of harsh language came in April 2009, during a video tirade directed at reporter Loretta Hunt and sources she cited anonymously for a Sherdog.com story. In one of the only times he has expressed regret about his language, White quickly issued a video apology about his use of a term frequently associated with anti-gay sentiments, although he did not apologize for other portions of his rant.
“If you guys look at all the stuff that I’ve said over the last 10 years”some of it stupid, some of it whatever”that’s the one that bothers me,” White said. “That’s the only one that bothers me”the fact that these losers from the Culinary Union can go out and say that I’m a homophobe and things like that”because it’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
Controversial statements from individuals shouldn’t be used to indict an organization as a whole, White said.
