White on Cyborg-Magana fracas: You can’t f@$%ing put hands on someone

Last month UFC strawweight Angela Magana did a mean Tweet about the greatest fighter in women’s MMA history, Cris Cyborg. Magana had set a pic of the Brazilian entertaining children in a cancer ward side by side with an image of Billy the Puppet from the Saw franchise. Given that Cyborg’s father is currently fighting cancer, the jibe did not go over well.

Cyborg confronted Magana at the recent UFC Athlete Retreat, and after exchanging words, punched her in the face. The police were contacted, and Cyborg was cited by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for misdemeanor battery. The district attorney will decide whether or not to pursue charges. And Magana has said she will be filing a civil suit.

Magana has received a fair amount of criticism from the fighter community, but during a recent appearance on Unfiltered podcast, UFC president Dana White offered a sobering reminder.

This is the real world, said White, as transcribed by Dave Doyle for MMA Fighting. Now, when you’re in that Octagon, almost anything goes. When you’re in a f***ing fighter retreat, nothing goes.

You can’t put your hands on another human being outside of the Octagon. It’s assault, you will get arrested, in the fight world we all love to get caught up in the ‘hey, you know what, she had a big mouth and she needed a smack in the mouth’ thing, but it doesn’t work that way in real life.

White drew on some past incidents to illustrate his point. When Paul Daley lost his temper and hit Josh Koscheck after the final bell, he was thrown of the UFC for life.

Even that night with [Daley] and Josh Koscheck, the fight was over, the bell rang, and he went up and punched him in the face after the bell, said White. That’s assault.

Further, during a recent episode of “Lookin’ for a Fight” Matt Serra got into it verbally with a ring announcer at a regional show.

If you were to beat the s*** out of that douchebag announcer down in Atlanta, if that thing has escalated to the direction it was going in, you leave in handcuffs that night, said White to podcast co-host Serra. You leave in handcuffs. And it was about as equal as the Cyborg-Angela Magana thing, you know what I mean?

If you’re Cyborg, you go up and let her know how you feel. You say, ‘You said all this mean s*** about me, here’s what I feel about you.’ But what, you walk away, or you just stay away for the whole retreat. I’m not trying to be ‘Mr. I Take The High Road,’ because I never f***ing take the high road. But, assault isn’t, you can’t go and assault somebody, you can’t do it.

White did say that he is trying to get Cyborg a fight vs. TBA at UFC 214 on July 29.