White not angry at Joe Rogan, but upset at broadcast team for Rousey question

LAS VEGAS – After appearing to snap at longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan following UFC 175's co-headliner, UFC President Dana White explained his reaction to a question asked of women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey following her decimation of Alexis Davis.

“I wasn’t upset with Joe Rogan; I was upset with the (broadcast) truck telling him to tell Ronda that she’s going to fight again,” he said at UFC 175's post-event news conference, which took place in Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center, where the pay-per-view was held.

“That wasn’t true; that was some s–t that somebody made up back there. It was the biggest idiotic move in the history of our production team.”

While the fighters, their respective teams and UFC executives looked on, Rogan reminded Rousey of the recent loss of UFC 176's headliner between featherweight champ Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes.

Rousey (10-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC) appeared to be unscathed following her 16-second win over Davis (16-6 MMA, 3-1 UFC), which was the fourth defense of her women’s bantamweight title and was the second-fastest knockout in UFC title history.

“The truck just asked me to ask you if you would fight on Aug. 2,” asked Rogan. The audience cheered at the question, and Rousey smiled.

“(I’m) scheduled for knee surgery already,” she said. “I’m going to talk to my coaches, and if they say it’s cool with them, it’s cool with me. I’ll do it.”

But while cameras rolled, White appeared to put the kibosh on that idea to Rousey and then corrected Rogan.

“I told them right up there, that’s not true,” he said at the press conference. “I don’t know where that came from. Nobody told anybody to say that.”

Details of UFC 176's headliner troubles actually weren’t news to Rousey. In the week leading up to Saturday’s fight, she told reporters she could step up to save the day if she wasn’t injured in her fight with Davis.

But at the post-fight news conference, Rousey said she needed arthroscopic surgery for her right knee and also revealed a longstanding injury to her right hand that was worsened when she hit Davis early on with an overhand right.

Rousey said she split the skin on her knuckle open and never let the injury heal, to the point where a cyst formed underneath the skin. With the punch to Davis, she opened it once again and required nine stitches backstage.

“It turns out from the last two camps, for (UFC 168 and UFC 170), I kept ripping my knuckle open and covering it up and hitting on it,” she said. “All I did was make sure it didn’t get infected. I ended up developing a cyst under my knuckle, and after the McMann fight, I should have taken it more seriously and gone to the doctor and got it taken out. I just kept dismissing it.

“Hopefully, the cyst is actually gone. But I have to go to the doctor and make sure. With the knee surgery, it’s just something more (like) maintenance that I have to do. I can walk out of there and literally be 100 percent after two weeks.

“But I’m left handed, so it’s all good.”

For complete coverage of UFC 175, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.