Din Thomas defends Dana White: “I’m all for Dana making all the fights happen”

Although he was directly affected by the UFC having to postpone recent fight cards, MMA coach Din Thomas is praising UFC President Dana White for his efforts to push forward.

Thomas was supposed to be in the corner for Tyron Woodley’s scheduled fight against Leon Edwards in London, but the UFC pulled the plug on that event even after they scrambled to move locations and possibly opponents for the main event. During an interview with On The Mic podcast, Thomas defended Dana White for his urgency and push to keep the UFC events continuing on.

“He’s not asking fighters to do nothing they don’t want to do. Every fighter wants to fight, he’s just trying to keep it going.”-⁦@DinThomas⁩ defends ⁦@danawhite⁩ for pushing to keep UFC events going.

Full interview: https://t.co/BNtZxv1qhN pic.twitter.com/cwsvArhoM8

— Mike Pendleton (@MP2310) March 25, 2020

“Listen, I’m all for Dana making all the fights happen. He’s not asking fighters to do nothing they don’t want to do, every fighter wants to fight, he’s just trying to keep it going. There’s a lot of reasons why I’m sure Dana wants them [fights] to happen, one, there’s no other sports so it’s a good time to showcase MMA to fans because there’s nothing else going on. Two, it’s not as though fighters are like ‘Man I don’t really want to do it but I guess I have to do it because I need a paycheck.’ it’s not really what they’re saying, they all want to fight regardless of the Coronavirus, I mean of course they want their paycheck but they all still want to fight because they’ve all been training.”

Thomas would continue on by saying the idea that Dana White is a bad guy for wanting to put on fights, which has been portrayed by some in the media, is ridiculous because fighters have been wanting to fight despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The idea that Dana’s like this bad guy because he’s trying to put on fights is ridiculous because they all still want to fight. I mean if you test them [fighters] and they come up negative, boom, all you’re dealing with is two fighters and a referee in the vicinity that we’re talking about. Keep everybody else six feet apart, but if you got three guys in the cage, everybody’s all good, I don’t see what the risk is.”

Despite the criticism that White has received during his efforts to keep UFC events going, Thomas is applauding those efforts and says he wish White could’ve saved the UFC London main event between Tyron Woodley and Leon Edwards.

“I don’t understand what the problem is that everybody’s giving Dana a hard time about this. I think it’s great that he’s doing this. It was devastating for us that Tyron [Woodley] prepared for this camp to fight Leon Edwards and they had to pull it off, I wish Dana was able to get that fight going.”

While many have been criticizing Dana White, Din Thomas, who was directly impacted by the postponement of an event, is in approval of the UFC President’s efforts to keep going. As for what’s next for Tyron Woodley, Thomas says he and Woodley would like a fight against Colby Covington over any other option.

on 3/25/2020