ESPN Reportedly OK with UFC Event Featuring Alleged Domestic Abuser
If there’s one thing society loves, it’s a double standard.
Specifically, there are certain avenues in life where we simply hold the people associated with whatever the subject may be accountable in a way that we wouldn’t if it were under different circumstances.
Case in point? Alleged domestic abuser and former NFL player Greg Hardy.
Given his reputation, where he allegedly terrorized a former girlfriend to the point where she says she legitimately feared he would murder her, the Dallas Cowboys ran into such a firestorm of media criticism and public outcry that they had to let Hardy go no matter what contributions he made on the football field.
Now he’s trying to find a second life in mixed martial arts, and ESPN — the same network that devoted many, many hours of unproductive shouting on its talking-head shows to what an awful person he is and how terrible Jerry Jones was for having the gall to pay him genuine spendable United States dollars to play football — seems perfectly OK with Dana White paying Hardy to be a cage fighter.
Or so NBC Sports reports, with no small bit of incredulous are-you-kidding-me tone, no less.
They don’t even wait for the lede, they put the dripping sarcasm right there in the headline: “Nobody is put off by it.”
White, meanwhile, responded matter-of-factly about the Jan. 19 UFC card on ESPN in which Hardy will face Allen Crowder in Brooklyn, New York.
“We’ve been building this ESPN card for a while, and he was one of the guys that we had planned on putting on that card,” White said.
Making matters worse, Hardy will be fighting on the same card (though not in the same fight) as Rachael Ostovich, who was recently the victim of an alleged domestic violence incident involving her MMA-fighter boyfriend Arnold Berdon that resulted in Berdon being criminally charged.
White went on to say, “I’m not going to talk about Greg Hardy anymore; I already covered this. I’m not playing this bulls— with you guys. He’s on the UFC roster. He’s on the UFC roster, period, end of story. … He’s on the roster. Listen, you guys want to be sensitive about s—? Anybody can be sensitive about anything. You can make an issue about everything. The weird thing is, you guys give a f— but she doesn’t. She doesn’t care.”
Which, well, apples, meet oranges. You’ve often been compared to each other, I think you’ll get along.
As NBC points out, Dana White does not run a regime where even respectful disagreement from his fighters is tolerated. Were Ostovich to raise an objection about Hardy, she’d be off featured cards faster than you can say “nobody asked you.”
White’s petulance was on display as well.
“I’m done with it. I’m done with it. I’m done with it. I’m done with it! I’m done. Don’t make me leave. I’m done,” he said.
White then further went on to deny that Hardy’s past is even an issue.
“Nobody’s been put off by it,” White said. “Who’s put off by it?”
What, you mean besides every decent football fan who was happy to see Hardy drummed out of the NFL? Everyone who’s ever had a loved one victimized by an abusive relationship? Every man who doesn’t think it’s that difficult to internalize the lesson we learn as children that “don’t hit girls”?
Granted, Hardy was never found criminally liable, but charges were dropped after he agreed to settle a civil suit with his alleged victim. If you see smoke in the forest, you don’t go toward it to cut down your Christmas tree, do you?
But there’s your double standard. In the NFL, we expect a certain minimum standard of conduct from football players.
In Dana White’s UFC, every scoundrel is welcome, and if you point it out, somehow that makes you the jerk.
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