There was a time when MMA journalist Ariel Helwani and UFC CEO Dana White were on good terms. In a conversation with Canadian TV personality Renee Paquette from three years ago, the veteran journalist spoke about how the close relationship he once enjoyed with Dana White is now “non-existent.” Helwani said that he the company president not wanting to talk to him or give him interviews was something he could live with. But White going after his livelihood didn’t sit well with him. We all know about the infamous fallout between the company president and a famed reporter in 2016. To this day, Helwani sticks to his guns, claiming that he didn’t do anything wrong.

To recap, the journalist had a famous fallout with  Dana White and Co. in 2016 because he leaked the announcement of Brock Lesnar’s return at UFC 200 before it was officially announced at UFC 199. This resulted in him getting his media access revoked at UFC events. The veteran journalist ended up getting his media credentials back, but never found himself in the UFC head honcho’s good graces again. But did the veteran journalist think that any part of this was wrong on his part? Absolutely not.

Helwani spoke about it at length to Bo Nickal in a recent interview on YouTube. When the UFC middleweight star asked him about the famous fallout, Helwani made it clear that he had no malicious intentions of jeopardizing the company’s interests. He said, “Absolutely not. I did nothing wrong. I was doing journalism the right way. And again, I wasn’t—if you really break down what I was doing I was [reporting].”

“I love sports news, I love sports radio, sports podcasts. I am on Twitter refreshing, being like, ‘Oh, who’s going where?’ Right? That’s what I was doing. It was transactional news. It was ‘this guy fighting this guy’, nothing more. I wasn’t digging into their finances or personal lives—like, that’s malicious stuff to a degree. I wasn’t doing any of that.”, the veteran journalist further added.

Another reason for Helwani’s fallout with Dana White was his platforming Rory MacDonald who revealed his discontent with his UFC contract. Helwani said, “And he said that he was going to fight out his contract and fight ‘Wonderboy’ in June of that year, it was March of 2016. And the next morning I got a call from my boss at FOX saying ‘We have to let you go’. And I asked, ‘Why’, and they said the UFC was upset and ‘they don’t want you on FOX anymore’.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the UFC head honcho ikes to control the narrative surrounding MMA and the promotion he leads. Needless to say, Helwani was shocked at suddenly being fired from FOX Sports. “I was very hurt,” he said. “I’ve never done anything bad or illegal or unethical or got a story wrong, and I didn’t feel like it was fair if I’m being honest.”

The UFC’s treatment of Helwani for him so fired up that he went on a tirade to break every news under the sun to prove how brilliant he was at his job. And what did the UFC think of this? Well, they assumed Helwani had a mole within their ranks!

UFC’s suspicion of Ariel Helwani

The former FOX journo was so good at his job that UFC thought he had a spy inside their company to get the latest company scoop. “I just had contacts, I had managers, I had fighters, I had coaches that were very kind to me. And [they] understood that I was just trying to do journalism, that I wasn’t malicious, I wasn’t trying to unearth dirty secrets about them, I was just doing sports journalism,” Helwani explained.

The boss was so angry that he said the ban would be irreplaceable as long as he was the boss. However, the ban was overturned soon after. But after attending all events up until UFC 248, Helwani stopped going because he joined ESPN. His new job prevented him from attending events but this was not the only reason. Apparently, the UFC was doing things to make his “life very difficult…” so he stopped going.

Whether Dana White forgives Ariel Helwani or not, is something that’s yet to be seen. As of now, they both still seem like strongly opposing forces, and it’s unlikely that their issues will be resolved any time soon. What do you think about this whole ordeal? Share your thoughts in the comments below.