It should come as no surprise, but one of the world’s biggest fight promoters does not believe in curtailing fighting words said by his fighters, even when it comes to bigotry.

On Monday at the weigh-ins for the Contender Series, an ugly moment took place when, after failing to make the bantamweight limit, Oron Kahlon called his opponent Javid Basharat a “terrorist” during their face off. Basharat is originally from Afghanistan and was understandably unhappy with the comment. Basharat turned that anger into motivation though and when the two faced off last night, Basharat dominated Kahlon, securing a third-round submission after battering Kahlon for the first 10 minutes of the fight. And according to UFC President Dana White, that’s how he believes incidents like this should be handled.

“Are we gonna do anything? It got done tonight,” White said in the post-fight press conference. “You know what I mean? It’s the beautiful thing about this sport. I say it all the time: This is not a nice sport. This is a very rough sport. We say a lot of mean things to each other, you know, and justice gets served at the end of the day.

“Listen, when you have a situation like that, the best way to solve the problem is you fight, and you fight legally. You get paid to do it, and that’s what happened tonight.”

White’s laissez-faire attitude flies directly in the face of the UFC’s own Code of Conduct policy which states that “fighters shall conduct themselves in accordance with commonly accepted standards of decency, social convention, and morals” and further prohibits the use of “derogatory or offensive conduct, including without limitation insulting language, symbols, or actions about a person’s ethnic background, heritage, color, race, national origin, age, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation.”

While the Code of Conduct does not technically apply to Contender Series fighters given that they are competing for a UFC contract, the UFC’s failure to enforce these standards has become the topic of much conversation recently. Following Conor McGregor’s altercation with Machine Gun Kelly at the MTV Awards, Dana White said that he had no intention of reprimanding McGregor because he has “700 f*cking lunatic under contract” and “crazy sh*t happens in the fight business,” and that seems to be the fundamental stance of White: there is no such thing as too far.

“No, not in this business I don’t (worry about things going too far)” White said. “If you look, you can add that to the pile of some pretty nasty things that have been said in this sport. And not just this sport – boxing, I’m sure Muay Thai, kickboxing, you name it. Mean things are said. In this insanely politically correct world we’re living in, this is one place that is not.”

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VIDEO STEW

UFC 267 Media Day.

Contender Series announcements.

Embedded.

The Rise of Khamzat Chimaev.

PFL Championship preview.

Kayla Harrison.

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LISTEN UP

UFC Unfiltered. Interviews with Michael Chandler and Herschel Walker.

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SOCIAL MEDIA BOUILLABAISSE

Good run.

This is where Mike Perry belongs.

A whole new person.

Michael Chandler chasing the money, not the title.

I can’t tell if DC is trolling or not.

That’s a lot of excuses.

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FIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTS

N/A.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

So if Oran Kahlon had won, would that have been justice? What the hell is the point of a Code of Conduct if you’re going to directly say you won’t enforce it? The thing that is frustrating here is that even Dana White would admit that it’s not okay for his fighters to say absolutely anything. If some dude was out there preaching genocide and winning fights, he would step in. Just extremely dumb.

Thanks for reading and see y’all tomorrow.

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EXIT POLL

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