Dana White distracts MMA media while Ari Emanuel makes major moves

Question for MMA media: Is the bigger story the one involving Jesse on Fire or the one involving the co-CEO of Netflix?

Leave it to OG UFC celebrity fan David Spade to break the biggest news to come out of UFC 300: Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos sitting together cage side.

Spade knows Sarandos well, having sold him a Malibu house in 2013 and recently commended the Netflix boss for supporting Dave Chapelle.

Literally no one in MMA media picked up on this story. Frankly, I’d wager very few of them even understand the importance of Ari getting close to the Netflix boss. If you’re wondering what that is, we’ll explain below, after the paywall.

What has MMA media been talking about instead?

As usual, they’re taking the Dana White bait and discussing his latest media diss video.

@danawhite#UFC300 😃

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The video is Dana's victory lap after putting together UFC 300, which he calls “the greatest card in combat sports history.” So he’s naming names and posting photos of “MMA experts” who were critical of the card.

While anyone who actually remembers UFC 100 (or any of the cards headlined by Conor McGregor or Ronda Rousey) knows that UFC 300 isn’t even the greatest card in UFC history, that’s a vanishing minority of today’s UFC fans.

Hilariously, one of the unfortunate podcasters called out by Dana (hell, he even doxxed the dude by posting his real name instead of his handle which led me to discover Jesse’s past life as a would-be patriotic NFT seller a career highlight Jesse somehow left off his LinkedIn page) was dedicated Dana enthusiast Jesse Merl, aka Jesse on Fire.

Jesse was simultaneously hurt and baffled that the UFC media team took an out-of-context quote in which he was sarcastically mocking critics of UFC 300 and made him out to be one of those critics.

Jesse’s response is hilarious:

I had my heart shattered in a million pieces when I had 10,000 people text message oops text message and DM me you’re in Dana’s reel and I was like no way dude oh my gosh finally I'm getting the recognition that I have always hoped for I go look and it's a compilation of people hating on the UFC 300 card and they put a clip of me making fun of the YouTubers who were constantly making fun of the UFC 300 card as if I was making fun of the UFC 300 card I was like ‘what the?’ 

I was making fun of them there's like hours and hours of footage of me talking about UFC 300 I never said a single negative thing about it not only that I paid over $4,000 for my tickets to UFC 300. I had one of the best nights of my life and then most importantly I think most important to this story is this little number right here apparently they missed this tweet of mine (saying) any content creators who made their coverage leading up to UFC 300 all about how garbage the card was, you know who you are, (should) apologize to Dana White and the UFC after the single greatest night of fights in history.

When I said this is the greatest card ever assembled in the history of Combat Sports, this is what the media thought of you guys “Oh UFC 300 makes no sense” “Is any fight on this card 300 worthy?” “No this is the most diabolically disappointing UFC 300 announcement ever” it feels ridic. It's like you can hear that I'm obviously joking… The only reason that it hurts it hurts so much is because that card was insanely amazing I did multiple videos and streams comparing that card to any other card and talking about how it was so much better I called it the best card ever assembled. I paid over $4000 for tickets to go to the show. I then tweeted that everybody owes them an apology and they did me like that dude 

What I honestly want to know I'm actually genuinely curious, is if someone did it because they wanted to be devious and malicious or if they were just lazy. Probably just lazy.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of covering the UFC, Jesse. Consider this your blood-in initiation. Jesse is going to remain in denial about this as long as he can, but the deal is, and always has been, that Dana and the UFC deeply resent anyone who earns a little money talking up their product.

This is a problem you can’t boot-lick your way out of. Ask Ariel Helwani.

For years Ariel was Dana’s go-to friendly media outlet. For example, when the UFC bought Strikeforce, Dana flew Ariel to Vegas to break the story.

But when Ariel broke a story the UFC didn’t want broken, he was cast out and has remained on Dana’s enemies list ever since.

Trent Reinsmith offered a much needed correction to Dana’s diss video:

White's build-up to the announcement of the UFC 300 headliner made fans (and media) believe that it would be an earth-shattering fight. Instead, White delivered a good booking that, according to one of the participants, was offered to him the day before the UFC announced the fight. That announcement came less than a month before fight night, which left fans and media thinking that the UFC had settled on what it could get for a main event and had not delivered what it had promised.

Trent also points out Dana’s cherry-picking:

If White is so eager to take credit for the success of UFC 300, he should be equally enthusiastic to take the blame for what he is trying to pass off as UFC-quality fight cards at the UFC Apex.

Take a look at the next Apex event. It's not great. The same could be said for UFC 301. Outside of the main event of that pay-per-view card, there's not a single contest that screams "must watch." Are we going to get a mea culpa from White on all the UFC Apex Fight Night events that he didn't even bother to attend? Doubtful.

But let’s get to the real news coming out of the event. The news that everyone in MMA media slept on. The news that has the most potential to impact every single UFC fan on the planet.

What does it mean that Ari Emanuel hosted Netflix’ Co-CEO at UFC 300?