More information about the UFC’s antitrust lawsuit and Dana White continues to come to light.
On April 13th, the UFC will hold its milestone 300th pay-per-view event. The fight card doesn’t have a main event as of now but is still a stellar card. As of now, billed matchups include Justin Gaethje vs. Max Holloway, Zhang Weili vs. Yan Xiaonan, and the promotional debut of Kayla Harrison. The former PFL tournament winner is expected to face former champion Holly Holm at the event.
Two days later, Dana White and the company will fight for their promotional lives in a Nevada courtroom. For a decade now, fighters such as Cung Le and Nate Quarry have been working on a class action lawsuit against the company. After years of delays, it’s now set to go to trial on April 15th. If the UFC loses, the company could be forced to pay upwards of $1.6 billion in damages, to 1,200 fighters.
Over the last few months, a lot of information relating to the trial has been released. Some of that information includes private text messages between Dana White and other UFC officials. Privately, the promoter bashed the likes of Nate Diaz and Jon Jones, calling the latter a “scumbag”. However, it seems that there are a lot of text messages that won’t be used in the trial.
Earlier today, a report from BloodyElbow was released, showing various emails and text messages unsealed from the ongoing lawsuit. However, the report also revealed that Dana White reportedly deleted text messages that could’ve been used as evidence in the trial. In fact, the plaintiffs and lawyers argue that thousands of text messages from the promoter weren’t made available to them.
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Dana White reportedly deleted thousands of text messages relating to antitrust trial
Lawyers in the case have pieced together conversations from other UFC executives’ devices. In the process, they discovered that Dana White didn’t turn over all the information that he was ordered to. The messages from other executives weren’t on the phones that the promoter turned over in the trial.
As of now, Dana White hasn’t commented on the claim that he deleted text messages relating to the trial. However, last month, he was asked about the ongoing antitrust lawsuit in an interview with SportsNet. In a rare comment about the situation, White shot down the belief that he was involved with the situation at all.
“No.” Dana White quickly responded to a question on whether he was concerned about the UFC going to trial in April, in an interview with SportsNet last month. “[I give] literally zero [thought to it]. I don’t think about it ever, it has nothing to do with me.”
It’s worth noting that while the two sides are set to go to trial on April 15th, that’s no guarantee. Earlier today, federal judge Richard Boulware ordered the two sides to have a settlement conference by March 18th.
What do you make of this news involving Dana White? Have you been following the UFC antitrust trial?
