On Ronda Rousey, Vitor Belfort and the benefit of talking about not talking

Vitor Belfort

What a lucky week for those interested in learning how best to manage a tricky situation under the media microscope. We got two lessons in that very topic in just the past two days. One was more of the “How Not To…” variety. The other was a little closer to a blueprint for other fighters to follow, albeit one with some room for improvement.

It started with the Young Dinosaur, Vitor Belfort, who managed to earn himself some bad press by doing no press.

Belfort was one of several guests scheduled to appear on Ariel Helwani’s “The MMA Hour” this past Monday. Helwani said he booked Belfort through Belfort’s wife, Joana Prado, on the Wednesday prior to the show. Then, the day Belfort was scheduled to appear, Prado began asking for assurances that Helwani would only ask Belfort about his upcoming fight, and not about the controversy stemming from a recent Deadspin story about Belfort’s past testosterone use.

In other words, Belfort’s camp wanted to avoid discussing the biggest Belfort-related news in months. When Helwani pointed out that this would be a glaring omission that would reflect poorly on all parties, Belfort’s wife informed him that the fighter wouldn’t do the show at all. Seems like she might not have considered what would happen next.

Because, see, when you pull out of a scheduled media appearance at the last minute, you should probably expect that the media outlet you just left hanging is going to tell people why. And when people hear that the reason you don’t want to be interviewed is because you refuse to even let yourself be asked about a legitimate news story involving you, that’s not a good look. It makes you seem scared. Ashamed, even.

It makes you seem guilty, if only because we usually assume that an innocent person would leap at the chance to proclaim his innocence in public.

Clamming up and hoping it will all blow over might work when dealing with minor controversies. But this? This is a big deal, and it’s exactly the kind of big deal that threatens to hang like a dark shadow over his entire career. If he won’t talk about it, that leaves an empty space in the conversation, and that space is bound to be filled by other voices.

Ronda Rousey

Contrast that with the very, very different sort of controversy that Ronda Rousey confronted at Tuesday’s media day in Glendale, Calif. After her mother’s incendiary comments about Rousey’s coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, she had to know the topic was going to come up. That’s kind of inevitable when your mother gets on camera and says she’d like to run over your coach with her car.

Judging by her tone and body language when the question came up during a 45-minute media scrum, Rousey wasn’t thrilled about it. She also made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about it, even if she did it by talking about it.

“Any reaction and response I have for my mother, she’s going to hear it from me and not a media outlet,” Rousey said when asked to comment on her mother’s criticism of Tarverdyan.

See that? It’s a neat little trick. It’s the no-comment that also has some comment buried in it. It allows us to see that Rousey might not be happy about the drama stirred up by her mother’s comments, but she’s going to keep her complaints inside the locker room, so to speak. That invites us to consider the possibility that maybe Rousey thinks her mother should have done the same thing.

Of course, we don’t know for sure, because Rousey went on to assert that the issue wasn’t “anybody’s business.”

That’s where, if you’re Rousey, you get on shaky ground. Tell us that your personal life – who you’re dating, what you two talk about outside the gym, all that – is none of our business, and it’s hard to disagree. You have the right to have a private life, even if our culture often treats the personal lives of celebrities as if they exist only for our entertainment.

But this isn’t just about familial relationships – it’s about fighting.

Rousey’s mother has been a vital and well-publicized force in her development as a martial artist from childhood to the present day. When that same woman offers an opinion on Rousey’s choice of coach, it’s news. It makes us wonder if there’s discord in the training camp. To the extent that any part of Rousey’s professional life is our business – and if it isn’t, what were all those cameras doing in her gym? – this definitely falls in fair game territory.

But addressing it only to say that you’re going to handle it privately, that’s at least better than nothing at all. Then you’re at least talking about why you’re not talking about it. That’s smart. It might even be a model that other fighters, including Belfort, could learn from.

Because if there’s one thing you know for sure about the age of constant communication in which we live, it’s that shutting up and running away to hide isn’t a viable strategy. If you won’t talk about the issues that concern you, someone else will. And if you forego the opportunity to defend yourself, just imagine what they’ll say.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.