After about three days of silence following ufc-vegas-110" class='tag-link'>UFC Vegas 110 and the snowballing controversy that has engulfed the MMA world, UFC CEO and President Dana White is breaking his silence in regard to the situation involving Isaac Dulgarian.
Dulgarian was involved in a highly controversial fight with Yadier Del Valle, which saw Dulgarian, who was originally pegged as a massive favorite earlier in the fight week, fall victim to a first-round submission via rear-naked choke.
As the fight time got closer, however, the line on Dulgarian being a favorite massively shrunk.
In an interview with TMZ, White claimed the UFC were informed of the matter and confronted Dulgarian and his team.
"Probably about 1:00 pm that day, we're with a company called IC360, and they are the best bet monitoring company in the business, and they reached out to us and they told us that there was some unusual action going on with that fight," White said. "Do we know anything? You know, we didn't. So, what we did was we called the fighter and his lawyer and said, "What's going on? There's some weird action going on in your bet..."
Dana White Gives His Side To Isaac Dulgarian Situation
White says that Dulgarian and his team said they were ready to go for the fight and nothing suspicious was going on -- this coincides with Ariel Helwani's reporting on the situation.
White says the promotion took action after the fight played out as it did.
"Literally, the first thing we did was call the FBI," White said, adding that he had two meetings with the FBI on November 4.
White, however, took aim at the reporting of MMA journalist and New York-based promoter Harry Mac, who alleges that over 100 fights have been flagged for unusual betting patterns by the FBI.
"Now, you see people out there talking, 'Oh, there's hundreds of fights under...' - it's total usual clickbait," White said. "IC3, our company, they monitor all all of the betting. Like I said, they're the best in the business. There aren't hundreds of fights being investigated. all clickbait BS.
"We've been with them for years and we get a report after every single fight that we do."
White added that he is in direct contact with FBI Director Kash Patel about the investigation. He added any fighter who has made comment about being offered to throw a fight -- such as Vince Morales and Vanessa Demopoulos recently did on social media -- will be contacted by the FBI for an interview.
White ended with a strongly-worded message to his fighters.
"If you try to do this, I have been very vocal and open about this; we will be your worst enemy," White said. "We will immediately go after you, guns ablazing, with the FBI and whoever else we need to get. We will do everything we can to make sure you go to prison."