Ariel Helwani Denies Joe Rogan’s Report On Brock Lesnar Fiasco
The UFC has lifted its lifetime ban on highly-touted journalist Ariel Helwani, but the mixed martial arts (MMA) community hasn’t dropped the situation just yet.
Ultimately, Helwani was escorted out of The Forum last Saturday (June 4, 2016) prior to the main event after breaking the news of Brock Lesnar’s return before the UFC could announce it themselves. Helwani’s credentials were also taken away.
The MMA world was thrown into an uproar, lobbying behind the Canadian journalist, and the UFC eventually reversed its actions.
However, as he detailed on an intense edition of The MMA Hour last Monday (June 6, 2016), his relationship with the UFC has always been a rocky one.
From Helwani’s side, he explained that he was simply doing his job.
UFC color commentator Joe Rogan recently touched on the situation, however, detailing what he thought to be the UFC’s view on the situation. Rogan claimed that the UFC felt as if there was a ‘mole’ feeding Helwani information, and that the promotion actually warned the journalist prior to his breaking of the news:
“That’s cool, because that means that public support made them lift that. But it also must mean that they worked out whatever the f*ck it was. See, this is what they were saying, this is what I’m hearing, okay. I haven’t talked to Ariel, but let me just give me the UFC perspective. The UFC perspective was that there was a mole. They believed that someone was giving Ariel information, and that information he was using to scoop the UFC’s official promotions. So the UFC, which is a private company, they don’t have to have… you don’t have to let people into your business, if you’re a private company, to come and report. So they were feeling that somehow or another he was getting a hold of this inside information, and releasing it, and making them look bad.”
“Now, I get the UFC’s perspective. They would wanna know who the f’ck is leaking this secret information, and that they don’t want this guy taking this 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 hand full of people who know this information. So we’re gonna fire everybody. We’re gonna fire a bunch of people and you’re gonna ruin people’s lives’. This is what I was told, was a conversation they had with him. After the conversation he leaked the Brock Lesnar stuff.” Rogan said on a recent edition of his podcast.
Helwani then quickly took to his official Twitter account to reject Rogan’s theory:
All due respect to Joe, his account is 100% inaccurate. Never happened. Also, enough with the mole nonsense. https://t.co/m15W2UPNCs
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) June 8, 2016
What do you make of the latest in this ever evolving story?
