“They felt like he was somehow or other getting ahold of this inside information, releasing it and making them look bad. Now, I get the UFC’s perspective that they would want to know who the f*** is leaking this secret information, and they don’t want this guy taking that information and putting it live. Now, from what I understand, the conversation with him was ‘Don’t do this, because if you do this, there’s only a handful of people that know this information, and we’re going to fire everybody, or we’re going to fire a bunch of people, and you’ll ruin people’s lives.’ This is what I was told was the conversation they had with him. After that conversation, he leaked the Brock Lesnar stuff. I don’t know if that’s true, you’d have to talk to Ariel and get his opinion, you’d have to get the UFC’s opinion, you’d have to get the two of them together to debate which story was true, but this is the side that you’re not hearing. All you’re hearing is that the UFC banned him for life and everyone was upset. I like Ariel, I think he’s a very good reporter, I think he’s a bright guy, I’m good friends with his uncle…

There’s certain things like this you’ve got to kind of let the dust settle. So the dust settled, they lifted the ban, I’m very happy with that. But you’ve got to be careful when it comes to…see, here’s the thing when it comes to leaking information. People say ‘He was just doing his job reporting,’ I get that, I understand. But you have to realize this isn’t news that is not going to get out, that’s going to affect people’s health. This is a private company that’s spending millions of dollars to promote these events. All you’re doing is getting it on you.

..All you’re doing if you’re scooping it is shining the attention on yourself. What I like Ariel for is not him shining the attention on himself. What I like Ariel for is I think he’s a very bright guy, and I think he’s very insightful about fights and strategies and things along those lines. So I don’t think it’s important that he breaks the news before the UFC does, and if the UFC doesn’t want him to do that, because this is private information and a private company and they’re trying to control the press release, I don’t buy that it’s necessarily under the guise of journalism. There’s some f***ery with that. Because we’re not talking about ‘Oh, he found out about some horrible thing that happened that somebody’s covering up,’ or ‘He found out about corruption in government,’ ‘He found out about a person who got shot by the police,’ this is not that kind of news. This, they’re going to release it, you’re just trying to do it before they do.

And if it’s true that there’s a mole, you’re finding it out through some sort of a sneaky method. These people all signed non-disclosure agreements, and they’re all not supposed to release that information, because the UFC wanted to make that big, cool announcement. When that big announcement happened at UFC 199, I was working all day, I was commentating all day, so I didn’t go online, I didn’t read any of the MMA sites, but when I saw that promo and I saw Brock Lesnar, ‘Can you see me now!’, I was like ‘Is this real?’ That was a real f***ing reaction from me because I had no idea whatsoever that Brock Lesnar was going to be at UFC 200. That’s what the UFC wanted, they wanted that, and they felt like him releasing that early ruined that for the people who read his article, and I see their point of view.”

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