Dana White Had Some Harsh Words About Scott Coker In Lawsuit Deposition

Dana White had some harsh comments for the former Strikeforce and current Bellator MMA President Scott Coker. For the most part, the UFC President keeps quiet about his main MMA competition which would obviously include Coker.

However in a recent deposition, White took some shots at Coker as he thinks that all promotions Coker has been affiliated with have been ‘failures.’ It should be noted that Coker was once a former Zuffa employee as he worked for the Las Vegas-based promotion once they bought Strikeforce.

The Lawsuit

Regarding this lawsuit, it’s an antitrust case which was originally filed by former UFC fighters Cung Le, Nathan Quarry and Jon Fitch against the UFC back in December 2014 that includes White’s deposition that went down last year in Las Vegas.

Dana White Had Harsh Words

Bloody Elbow has obtained these transcripts in which White talked about Coker’s involvement in several different promotions he was involved with over the course of his career as a promoter in the space of MMA. This is when White labeled them all as ‘failures.’

These are some strong statements due to the fact that Strikeforce was the closest and biggest competitor that the UFC had after PRIDE was sold to them around 2007. Another thing to consider is that Strikeforce not only recruited but also built some of the biggest names in the sport at the time, which the UFC later got after the sell was complete.

Those names include former women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, heavyweight and light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, former title contender Alistair Overeem and former heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum are just a few names to bring up.

“Yeah. What is crazy is you just laid out for me how horrible they were at promoting. [That’s] amazing. If you can’t turn those guys into stars and run your business, you should probably get into another line of work.”

The UFC decided to buy Strikeforce in March 2011, which saw Coker to continue to run the promotion until it was dissolved in 2013. This is when the UFC acquired most of the fighters signed to Strikeforce. However, White believes that it wasn’t until he signed Rousey that became a huge star.

“Look at what everybody has done in Strikeforce,” White said. “It’s just, these guys don’t know how to promote. It’s not what they’re good at. When you have Ronda Rousey and you can’t turn her into a star, you should probably go open a restaurant or something.”