NRL administration can learn from UFC boss Dana White reaction to Khabib Nurmagomedov brawl
EVEN amid the white-hot atmosphere after Khabib Nurmagomedov had gone berserk, the UFC boss had the presence of mind to respond with authority. Something the NRL currently seems incapable of doing, writes PAUL KENT.
Opinion
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IN the white-hot atmosphere after the brawl in Las Vegas Dana White, his bald head sweating, pushed up beside Khabib Nurmagomedov, the little Russian fighter who had just gone berserk.
It might have been the most dangerous place on earth right there, at least for a brief moment.
Nurmagomedov was refusing to leave the octagon until he had the championship belt put around his waist.
To him, forget what had just happened. Diving over the cage to attack Conor McGregor’s trainer, the wild brawl that followed.
Being rewarded the belt was correct protocol.
White refused.
“If I put this belt on you,” he said to Nurmagomedov, “people will lose their shit and start throwing stuff in the octagon. Other people will get hurt.”
It was a moment of common sense and clarity.
Nurmagomedov, his blood cooled, understood and followed security out of the octagon.
Right there White gave sporting administrators a solid lesson in bullshit-free, just get-the-job-done administration.
White is no timid sporting administrator, governed by focus groups and political correctness and second-guessing, all of which are slowly asphyxiating our sports.
Every sport in Australia is trying to find PG-friendly versions of their sport to please the mums — “At the end of it all, I’m not trying to be sexist, mums will make the decision,” ARL Commissioner Peter Beattie said on Monday as he pushed the cause for women’s rugby league.
At the same time, PG-friendly administration, designed to polish the sport’s public image, is killing them through a toxic combination of weak direction and dead language.
White is the antidote. You can’t help but wonder what he would do with a sport like rugby league.
The UFC is the most violent sport in the world and yet, against very focus group ever assembled, is the fastest growing.
Its beauty is its simplicity. It knows its identity and refuses to apologise.
And it has White to thank.
For those who don’t know White it would be easy to dismiss the success of the UFC claims as PR spin.
But White took over the UFC in 2001 when he convinced two brothers at his Las Vegas high school, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, to pay the $20 million debt the sport carried to buy it.
The brothers immediately made White president, giving him a nine per cent stake in the company.
Growth was unprecedented and, in 2016, they sold it for approximately $US4 billion.
White has run the sport throughout with an ear finely tuned.
Performance under pressure is the hallmark of all great achievement.
Cooper Cronk in the grand final, Tiger Woods putting out in the 2000 PGA Championship, Steve Waugh putting the last ball of the day into the boundary to knock up his century.
In all, it takes clear thought.
White always talks in solid, simple to understand sentences, because he does not have to hide a lack of knowledge behind corporate-speak, a language designed to camouflage and confuse.
“I don’t even know what to say right now, I’m just disgusted and sick over it,” White said after the brawl in Las Vegas.
“There’s a lot of repercussions for what they did tonight.”
Simple and plain.
The UFC has not made the common mistake that infects most mainstream sports nowadays; trying to be all things to all people.
White did not promise a review. Or refrain from an opinion because a committee was being organised, or refuse to act because a panel needed to be consulted.
He knew what he felt. He said it. He was the boss.
The NRL, another tough sport, should study and reflect White’s administrative style.
The current administration does not.
Recent examples show how schizophrenic the NRL is.
The Bulldogs’ Mad Monday was such a black eye for the game it ended in a $250,000 fine and individual fines totalling $50,000.
South Sydney were allowed to conduct their own inquiry into their sexting scandal, with the NRL Integrity Unit’s Karyn Murphy included, and found eventually no offence was committed.
Almost laughably, the Rabbitohs released a statement saying the club’s code of conduct had not been breached.
The case fell over only when a solicitor argued the photographic evidence could not be tendered because it was illegally obtained.
Yet it still caused the game exact public embarrassment that saw the NRL fine Mitch Pearce $125,000 and suspend him eight games for a video that was obtained just as illegally as in the Souths' case.
Greg Inglis was caught drink-driving and speeding, still mid-range more than three hours after he got in the car. Inglis was dropped as Australian captain and will miss two Tests.
That’s it.
There is only one consistency among them all; every decision seemed designed to placate the public.
The case here isn’t for harsher penalties, but for more consistency and transparency, which affect integrity.
The irony is it has taken the world’s most barbaric sport, in its worst hour, to highlight the inadequacies of our own.
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