Ariel Helwani just gave the most emotional and raw show ever on The MMA Hour, if you haven't seen it yet then you must go and watch it. Ariel bares his feelings extremely clearly without any preventions. He talks about how Dana helped him out when he started and as he got better and made more links with fighters and influential people he managed to get more stories and became more popular. He also talks about his upbringing into journalism through his university and what his professors had taught him about the ethics of journalism. He seemed to be very affected and influenced by these teachings along with his own feelings and others on ethics and that he didn't do anything wrong.
During the podcast he also discussed how him and the UFC hadn't really seen eye to eye for a little while. Last year Ariel was fired from Fox with no apparent reason presented to Ariel himself or any of the media, it was suggested from several people that a potential reason could be Ariel backing and talking about free agency and UFC brass not liking it.
On the night of UFC 199 Ariel had released an article stating that Brock Lesnar was returning at UFC 200, he had also previously broken the news that Conor McGregor would be facing Nate Diaz at UFC 202. The UFC said that Ariel's reporting extended beyond the interests of journalism, i.e he was scooping the UFC's news before they could put it out to bring the attention on him. Now it's time for a bit of opinion, that's bullshit Ariel is a reporter and he can release any information if he wants to, now obviously he doesn't because sometime it isn't ethical. The UFC got annoyed because they had a big promo to unveil the Lesnar return at 200 so they banned Ariel in ridiculous fashion, I understand that the UFC is a private company and has the right to keep their information but if you let a top journalist like Ariel Helwani in you can't limit or prevent the information he puts out.
Ariel revealed that just prior to the main event a PR person came to him and said Dana wants to talk to you in the back, he said he wants to watch the main event first, then a higher level PR person came to him and said Dana wants to speak to you in the back, to which Ariel said well I'm only coming if I can bring a colleague. When Ariel got to that back Dana said you're done, get out of here you're finished, told him to go work for Bellator. Ariel protested his innocence saying he did nothing wrong. Dana then said some horrible things to him which he would not release, which is saying something after Dana told him that Lorenzo hates him and he was the one who got Ariel fired from Fox and Lorenzo said he's had enough of him and that he was banned for life. Ariel and his team was then escorted from the building and they never got to see Michael Bisping knock out Luke Rockhold in round 1 and realise his dream.
I personally went to Ariel's twitter after Bisping won and I calmed down to see what he had said about the main event and I thought it was a little weird that he'd said nothing about it but I didn't think anything of it. Then he posted to twitter to say that he was removed from the building and his credentials were removed, at first I thought it was a joke but then other people started posting about it and he said his team was also escorted out and he went on with emotional tweets about his time in the sport. It broke my heart to see the best journalist in our sport like this and very angry, I wasn't the only one. Twitter blew up with support for MMAFighting, Ariel and his team with #FreeAriel and #FreeHelwani trending with lots of people very angry at the UFC and some even saying they'd cancelled their fight pass subscription.
After the outrage on Twitter and overwhelming public support Ariel and his team's lifeban lasted a few days and the UFC lifted the ban and released this statement,
The UFC lifted the ban and released this statement a few hours after The MMA Hour went out where Ariel revealed the whole truth about the whole incident and revealed the bullshit scummy moves that the UFC were pulling and trying to keep everything out of the media but the fans and Ariel exposed them for what they were doing. MMA Fighting also released a statement saying they disagreed with the highlighted sentence but they were glad they'd manage to work everything out.
The MMA Genius team were firmly behind Ariel and were vocally tweeting our opinion and support for Ariel, his team and MMA Fighting. We're very glad to be able to read and listen to Ariel's work again and that justice has been served.
If you enjoyed this post or any of the other on this blog then please support us by clicking on the adverts you see in the right sidebar and below. Thank you it is greatly appreciated!
No comments:
Post a Comment