Dana White Blames Staff For UFC London Altercation, Does Not Plan To Punish Masvidal or Edwards

Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White confirmed that the UFC will not punish Jorge Masvidal for his backstage altercation with fellow fighter Leon Edwards at UFC London last Saturday night.

Masvidal, fresh off his impressive knockout win over Darren Till, was being interviewed backstage when Edwards, walking by, called out “We’ll go July.” “Gamebred” broke free of his interview and walked towards Edwards with his hands behind his back. Masvidal then threw several punches before being restrained by security.

UFC President Dana White told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday that he blames his own staff for the pair coming to blows.

“I do blame my staff,” White said. “There’s never a scenario where you let guys walk up to each other like that backstage. We have enough people backstage that, that shouldn’t happen, including security. I’m super disappointed in my whole crew for that one. These guys are fighters, they’re in the heat of the moment, he just won, he’s got the adrenaline pumping and [Leon Edwards] comes by plus Masvidal is ‘that guy.’

“For anybody backstage in my staff to let these guys walk up to each other is just ridiculous,” White added. “As soon as he walked [off] the stage with his hands behind his back, 10 people from the UFC should have jumped in there. That stuff shouldn’t happen.”

White didn’t condone what happened between the pair but said he will not be looking to punish either fighter.

“It’s the fight business. Sometimes people overreact,” White said. “I thought a lot of people overreacted on the Conor [McGregor] and Khabib [Nurmagomedov] thing. We had that thing contained like that, we knew that was a possibility that could happen and we were ready for it. These things happen.

“It’s the fight business and our job is to make sure these things don’t happen on stage, behind the scenes, but sometimes it does. Sometimes things escalate and blow up.”

White claimed that understanding the mindset of many professional fighters is key to preventing and controlling altercations like the one that took place Saturday.

“These people that fight for a living are different than normal people. These people function on a whole different level than normal human beings do,” White said. “When you understand what’s here [in the head] with a professional fighter, as an organization, it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”