Tuesday's edition of the ESPN show E:60 will feature a portrait of UFC President Dana White, and that has a lot of mixed martial arts fans wondering: Will this be another mainstream media hit piece against MMA?
I haven't seen the profile yet, but on Friday I talked to E:60 correspondent Tom Farrey, and he told me that viewers won't see a hit piece. According to Farrey, they'll see a nuanced look at what White has done to get the UFC where it is, and where White is leading the UFC in the future.
"I think he's a fascinating figure in many ways," Farrey said. "You could say that he's refreshingly obvious. At a time when everybody gets spun in every direction, Dana White is different. You ask him a question and he answers it, and you certainly get the sense that he answers with sincerity. Now, he also speaks with a lot of profanity, and a lot of insults, occasionally, and a strident tone that is atypical for the leaders of any sports enterprise."
White has said that he expects the E:60 piece to portray him as "this foul-mouthed lunatic." Farrey doesn't sound like he thinks of White as a lunatic, but he does seem to find it surprising that White uses as much profanity as he does, and Farrey said a portion of his profile will focus on White's tirade toward Sherdog.com reporter Loretta Hunt, who is also interviewed in the piece.
Farrey also interviewed former UFC fighters Pat Miletich and Tito Ortiz, both of whom have animosity toward White. So suffice to say, not everything said about White in the piece will be positive.
"I don't know of any sports leader who's more polarizing than Dana White," Farrey said. "But so far he's survived and thrived. You've got to give him a lot of credit. He knows how to put together the fights the fans want to see, and he makes great use of promotional techniques to build up his fighters."
Farrey, who previously did an E:60 profile on Brock Lesnar, said he's attracted to reporting on MMA because "It's a cultural phenomenon. I got into this business not because I want to tell you who's going to win the World Series or who's going to be the MVP. There's nothing wrong with all that, but I got into this business because I want to cover the biggest trends in sports, the trends that say something about the society we're living in. MMA and UFC are great topics. ... Whether you like it or not, it's here and it's here to stay."
The question Farrey said he wanted to explore in his profile is whether White, as the man who got the UFC to the point where it's here to stay, is also the man to take the sport to new heights.
"He's clearly lifted the sport, he's done a number of brilliant things to lift the sport to where it is," Farrey said. "But one of the things we ask in the piece is, Is he too volatile to get the sport to the next level?"
UPDATE: Here's a clip from the profile: