UFC President Dana White on MMAAA's Bjorn Rebney: 'a POS this guy is'

UFC President Dana White indicated he isn’t opposed to fighters uniting in an effort to make their lives better. But in no uncertain terms, he said the guy tasked as an “advisor” to the most recent effort toward collective bargaining is a “scumbag who knows nothing about our business.”

White was talking about MMA Athletes Association (MMAAA) figurehead Bjorn Rebney, who’s taken a combative stance toward the UFC upon the announcement of a newly formed group that seeks better conditions for fighters.

Calling into the UFC’s “MMA Unfiltered” podcast, the UFC executive blasted Rebney, a previous target while heading the Viacom-owned Bellator.

“I don’t know enough about it to really speak on it,” White said of the MMAAA. “The only thing I need to know is the biggest scumbag in the history of combat sports, Bjork, is involved in this thing.

“There’s three unions out there, all battling against each other, and if you’re a fighter, these guys are all looking to get in your pocket. It’s a business where guys are going to make money, and as a fighter, if this is what you want to do, you’ve got to figure out who’s hand you want in your pocket, and I guarantee you don’t want Bjork’s hand in your pocket.

A request for comment via the MMAAA’s PR firm O’Malley Hansen Communications was not immediately returned.

White was never very charitable to Rebney during his tenure as Bellator chief, particularly when asked about a pair of high-profile contract disputes with then-champs Ben Askren and Eddie Alvarez, who sought to test the market and perhaps sign with the UFC.

“This guy is a (expletive) typical boxing piece of (expletive),” White told MMAjunkie in 2013. “Everybody knows the guy is a scumbag.

“We’ll see what happens with Ben (Askren). First they say they’re going to let him go. They’re not going to let him go. They’ll probably end up suing him, too, and make him sit out and lose a bunch of money and (expletive) him in a deal. Bad guys. They’re bad guys.”

When Rebney was let go by Viacom and replaced by former Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker, White said, “I think this is a much better fit for them than ‘Bjork’ was.”

But with his new role as a self-described “advisor” to the MMAAA, Rebney has placed himself near the center of a fight with the UFC and the promotion’s new owners as the association attempts to win a severance payout to former and current UFC fighters, form a collective bargaining agreement, and increase fighters’ revenue share of profits to 50 percent.

The association joins an increasingly crowded field of groups looking to organize fighters, which include the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association and the Professional Fighter Association.

According to MMAAA board member and UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy, former promoter Rebney is there to give members the information they need about the fight business so they can make the best decisions about how to raise the bar for UFC fighters.

For Rebney, though, the immediate solution is to go on the attack.

When the industry-leader was sold in July for $4.02 billion, Rebney opined on an MMAAA teleconference: “They should have taken 500-plus fighters, they should have put them on first-class flights, they should have put them in a gorgeous hotel and brought them to a spectacular meeting and they should have sat down with those fighters and they should have said, ‘You have our deepest, most sincere apologies for the egregious, outrageous way you’ve been treated over the years.

“‘We’re going to fix all that. We’re going to pay you what you are due. We are going to provide for you the kind of benefits and the kind of protections and safety net that guys who put their lives on the line for an entertainment vehicle that we own deserve.’ But they didn’t do any of that. Their public statements painted a crystal clear, ugly picture of what their plan is.”

Rebney mentioned the possibility of labor strikes to shift the balance of power and said the association initially had no plans to work with the UFC.

“What’s the boogeyman to every top executive at every network who’s being asked to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year sports programming? Labor strike, and that’s what we have here,” he said. “So there’s a lot of pieces to this puzzle and kidney shots that are going to be delivered on a consistent and ongoing basis, and that’s just one of them.”

Rebney also claimed during the call that the UFC paid out only 8 percent of its revenue to fighters, while he paid 53 percent during the height of his tenure at Bellator.

Rebney didn’t clarify how he got to those numbers, but they nonetheless infuriated White.

“I hope you’re talking about Conor McGregor,” White said of the star UFC lightweight champ, who’s broken records for disclosed fighter pay. “Yeah, we’re paying 8 percent of the revenue? You must mean Conor McGregor, right Bjork? You stupid mother(expletive).”

“Then he’s saying, ‘When I was a promoter, I paid 53 percent of the revenue’ – because there was no (expletive) revenue! Now you’re paying 53 percent? There was no (expletive) revenue! If that’s the way we’re going to gauge this, back in the old days, then I was paying 250 percent of the (expletive) revenue. What a (expletive) piece of (expletive) this guy is.”

Rebney said the MMAAA has opened an office and plans to crisscross the country as it educates fighters on its current aims. As of yet, the association has yet to reveal the specifics of a long-term plan beyond a coordinating media campaign aimed at the UFC and eventually forming a union that would have greater legal authority to challenge the promotion.

But when it comes to the relationship between White and Rebney, battle lines were drawn long ago.

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