Jorge Masvidal and Kevin Holland had an argument the week before their fight, so people were expecting some questions about it at the UFC 287 pre-fight press conference. But Dana White wasn’t interested in talking about it.
At the host hotel in Miami, something happened that led to UFC security needing to step in between Masvidal and Holland. Videos were made of them shouting at each other, though it seemed they hadn’t touched each other. During a press conference a few minutes later, someone asked Masvidal what had happened. His answer was full of curse words.
“There’s no point to talk about it,” he said. “They’re just people looking for attention and trying to act cool. It’s not worth discussing.”
At that, Holland got onto the microphone and retorted back to him.
“That’s not what you were saying yesterday,” he stated firmly. “Be more careful with your words.”
Another question came up from this incident which upset White so he cut off the conversation.
White said, “Hey guys! They’re not even fighting. Can we please stop this? Do you have questions about the fight or do you just want to cause trouble here? What do you need to know?”
Masvidal will be fighting Gilbert Burns on Saturday, and Holland is going to take on Santiago Ponzinibbio.
White stopped Ponzinibbio from answering another question when a reporter asked if he thought Holland was too focused on his incident with Masvidal rather than on him.
“Don’t answer that!” White said.
Back in September, a disagreement between Holland and Khamzat Chimaev led to UFC taking safety precautions – this was called by Dana White as “an absolute mess”. On Thursday there started to be problems between Masvidal and Holland. So, it looks like this could have been on White’s mind for some time now.
Recently, Dana White (a UFC official) announced that Colby Covington will likely get the next title shot at welterweight champion Leon Edwards. Even though Masvidal and Burns have said that a great performance from either of them could shake up these plans, White still thinks Covington should be the one to fight for the title. This made some people attending the event in Miami unhappy.
“Hey everyone, let’s face it: even if you don’t like him or not, Colby Covington showed up in London, he made sure his weight was good for the fight and he did what he was supposed to do,” White said. “He earned a chance at fighting Leon on Saturday night. Let’s just hope the best fighter out of them too wins!”
Masvidal was not too happy about the decision of UFC’s President Dana White to make Covington the No. 1 contender. He expressed his disdain and even shouted “Boo!” He also questioned Covington’s record by asking “When’s the last time he finished someone in a fight?” suggesting that Covington didn’t have many wins lately.
UFC and WWE have recently joined forces. The two companies, owned by Endeavor, are now worth over 21 billion dollars! They will become a public company sometime this year.
White said he doesn’t want to talk about the merger right now. He explained that it is an exciting opportunity for the company, but now isn’t the time to talk about it since they are focusing on something else. When Holland was asked about the WWE, he replied “no comment” because he didn’t want to get into trouble. White then sarcastically asked if there were any other silly questions.