During an appearance on Shannon Sharpe's Club Shay Shay podcast, UFC CEO and president Dana White bizarrely compared cancel culture to coming out as gay in the '80s.
"Do you ever worry about getting canceled, Dana?" Sharpe asked him at the 1:47:30 point of the podcast, as seen above. "What does that mean, actually? Canceled by who?" he asked in response. White suggested that he has a fanbase, both outside and inside the UFC community, that supports him regardless.
"Outside of those people in my circle, that I give a shit about, I could care less," he shared. "I've seen people talk about, 'Oh he has fuck you money' and all that other stuff... I equate it to being gay, okay? Think about this, back in the '80s if you came out and said you were gay it could destroy your career. Imagine living a life where you can't be who you really are, it's got to be a horrible thing, right? Fuck that, I am who I am, if you like it or you don't like it, I don't give a fuck. That's your problem, not mine."
White, who admitted to slapping his wife twice during a physical altercation on New Year's Eve in 2022, did not explain how he has faced a similar level of criticism queer actors did upon coming out in the '80s. Earlier this year, he also got a FedEx worker fired from his job after he posted a video of him throwing packages in the back of a delivery truck.
He said that there's always going to be people who like him and people who dislike him, regardless of the circumstances. He then went on to detail his disagreement with how Peloton allegedly handled a disagreement regarding a guest on Theo Von's podcast.
"This whole trying to cancel people thing, even the thing when I did the interview with Theo Von... The guy who was running Peloton was sponsoring his show," he continued. "Theo Von had [Robert F.] Kennedy on his podcast, they called and said, 'You need to take that episode down.' What? He's a fucking Kennedy and he's a Democrat... You sell stationary fucking bikes for a living and you think because you spend money with Theo Von you have the right to tell him to take another American down off his platform. Who the fuck do you think you are you arrogant fucking piece of shit."
White suggested that he wasn't "trying to cancel Peloton," but he has since removed their products from UFC gyms. What White seemingly failed to address, besides that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is actually now an Independent rather than a Democrat, is that a sponsor is well within its rights to withdraw support if they don't want their products associated with someone potentially problematic. That's sort of how sponsorships and commercials work.
He's not the only older white male celebrity to make groan-inducing statements about "cancel culture" in recent memory. Jerry Seinfeld, who recently directed and starred in a critically panned comedy about Pop-Tarts, said that he misses "dominant masculinity." The month before that, he railed against "the extreme left and PC crap." His Seinfeld co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, meanwhile, disagreed with his remarks.
