Joaquin Buckley awkwardly bails on MMA Hour interview after accusing Ariel Helwani of using UFC fighters
Things got a little intense between welterweight standout Joaquin Buckley and Ariel Helwani during Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour.
Fresh off his second-round knockout of Vicente Luque at UFC Atlantic City, ‘New Mansa’ made an appearance on Helwani’s show to discuss his big win and what may be next.
Along the way, Buckley called out Helwani, accusing the multi-time award-winning journalist of using loaded questions to weaponize fighters against the UFC.
“You’ve been in the business for a long time,” Buckley began. “Obviously, you have respect for what you do and you do it very well. You’ve got a lot of facts about the UFC and different fighters, but personally, I feel like when we come on your show, you try to use us as a weapon against the UFC, right?
“You use your platform, but you try to set us up lowkey with certain questions when those conversations and what you’re trying to talk about could get us in trouble.”
Ariel Helwani responds to Joaquin Buckley’s accusation
Helwani was quick to disagree with Buckley’s statement, respectfully responding with:
“Honestly, I don’t agree. I’ve been doing this show since 2009. You think I’m trying to make the fighters look bad? I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I have the fighters on because I love the fighters and respect the fighters and I want to give them an opportunity to tell their story and be able to learn more.
“I want to learn more and I hope that other people learn more when they hear from you guys. I’m not trying to weaponize anything. That would be crazy and I would be wasting my life doing anything like that.”
Helwani went on to ask Buckley for specific examples. It was then that Buckley promptly said that he was “through” and exited the interview, bringing an end to the awkward incident.
You can watch Joaquin Buckley’s full appearance on The MMA Hour by jumping to the 33-minute mark of the below embed:
