Gina Carano didn’t deserve abuse from Dana White, says Big John McCarthy

Women’s MMA pioneer Gina Carano didn’t deserve the abuse she received from UFC president Dana White, says veteran MMA official Big John McCarthy.

Carano was a guest on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show this week and explained why a fight in the UFC against Ronda Rousey never happened. According to Carano, she was in negotiations with the UFC about a potential comeback before receiving an accidental text message from White in which he called her a “b*tch.” Carano broke off negotiations after that and she never ended up fighting in mixed martial arts ever again.

Speaking on the latest edition of the “Weighing In” podcast, McCarthy and co-host Josh Thomson spoke about the abuse that mixed martial artists and boxers receive from promoters during contract negotiations. Speaking specifically to Carano’s situation, McCarthy defended her and said she did not deserve to be abused by White.

Here’s what McCarthy said.

“Gina’s a different person. She’s very shy. She’s very quiet. She has her people that she talks to and she wasn’t happy about it. One of the people she used to talk to a lot was Randy Couture. then there was a text that was sent. It wasn’t mean to be sent to her but it was a mistake. Somehow it got sent to her. It basically was saying she wasn’t being easy-going in this negotiation and what was going on. And she sent it back to Dana and he said that was sent to you. And from that point she didn’t talk to him, she just iced him out,” McCarthy said about Carano.

“That’s the kind of person she is and that’s the way she should be. She should not take abuse from anybody over anything when it comes to the negotiation of a fight. She had agreed to something, they had agreed to something, and someone didn’t hold up their end of the agreement. And then they’re upset about the fact that someone’s not being helpful to them when they haven’t held up their end of the agreement. That’s what happens.”

Thomson added that this isn’t the first time that White has bullied a fighter during contract negotiations.

“There’s a level of mistreatment, abuse, that you have from your promoter the athlete. It doesn’t go that way with all promoters. But we’ve seen it time and time again with Dana,” Thomson said.

Do you agree with Big John McCarthy about the way Dana White treated Gina Carano?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 11/27/2019.