Dana White responds to Demetrious Johnson – and this one seems especially egregious

We’ve always known that rankings were a malleable thing in the UFC, subject to swift and sometimes confusing change. We just didn’t know how malleable until UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson managed to get himself demoted with a written statement.

Two months ago, UFC President Dana White said Johnson was the “pound-for-pound best fighter” not just in the UFC, but in the entire world.

“It’s hard to not call this guy the greatest of all time,” White said after Johnson’s submission victory over Wilson Reis at UFC on FOX 24.

Johnson (26-2-1 MMA, 14-1-1 UFC) hasn’t fought since then, but he did pen a statement detailing some difficult negotiations with White and UFC matchmakers, who he claimed were trying to “bully” him. And now?

“The media claims he’s the pound for pound best fighter in the world,” White told TMZ.com this week. “I think Conor McGregor is the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world.”

White’s willingness to waffle on issues like this is nothing new, but this one seems especially egregious. It’s just so obvious. In order to be the top dog in White’s eyes, you have to be in a position to make him money. The moment you’re no longer in that position – or should you become less willing to play along – his opinion changes.

Johnson’s mistake, it seems, was not immediately agreeing to a fight with former UFC bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw (14-3 MMA, 10-3 UFC). Johnson’s version of the story is that he wanted certain guarantees, financially and otherwise, before he’d defend his flyweight title against a man who’s never made that division’s 125-pound limit.

The way White saw it, that smacked of a confidence problem.

“He didn’t want (a percentage of) pay-per-view (sales),” White said. “He wanted upfront money, no pay-per-view. He wasn’t very confident in his abilities to sell pay-per-views. He has the lowest-selling pay-per-view in the history of the UFC in the modern era.”

It’s true that Johnson, who’s No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie flyweight rankings and pound-for-pound rankings, never been a star at the box office, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still the most dominant champ in the UFC. That this seems to mean so little to the UFC president is telling, though not surprising.

White is a salesman, and for years he was exactly the kind of salesman the UFC needed: brash, aggressive and highly quotable. Where it gets tricky is when sales interfere with sport. The UFC is a business, but it’s also the biggest and most important MMA promoter in the world. That makes it a sort of de facto steward of the entire sport, like it or not. But here’s an instance where the UFC’s business concerns threaten to reshape the landscape in some troubling ways.

According to Johnson, one disconcerting moment in his recent negotiations came when White threatened to close down the flyweight division entirely if Johnson wouldn’t do as he was told.

You might expect White to refute a claim like that, which he did in a sense, but only in a way that made things worse.

“Never once did I threaten him to shut down the division,” White said. “I told him that we had been talking about shutting down the division for years. He knows that.”

Obviously, the problem isn’t a lack of talent at flyweight. Johnson, who is probably the most complete and well-rounded fighter in the world, is proof of that. The UFC’s concern seems to be that it doesn’t bring in enough money, so who cares about those athletes who have dedicated themselves to chasing the dream that the UFC’s been selling?

It’d be a shame to see one of the world’s best fighters end up suddenly unemployed just because he didn’t do enough to fill the UFC’s coffers. It’d also serve as a reminder that, for UFC executives, this sport is a means to an end.

Nobody begrudges the UFC its right to make money off its powerful brand, but White might do well to remember how that brand was built. It’s all based on a simple premise, the idea of putting fighters in a cage together for a trial by combat to determine who is the very best. But if that determination depends too much on sales rather than skill, the calculation gets tricky. The integrity of the sport starts to seem like it’s subject to someone else’s profit margin.

You’d think that after all his years in this business, White would recognize that delicate balance, and maybe he does. Maybe it’s just hard to remember when you’re so busy changing your mind and even your own rankings based on the bottom line.

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