MMA Junkie<\/a>). \u201cAnd that\u2019s what in the end has happened here is politically. You need to understand, when you\u2019re going against the government, you\u2019re probably going to go against something that in the end is probably going to cause you a problem. And if you think that you could beat that? We couldn\u2019t beat it in the past. It was a lot of problems and it caused problems for the UFC in the past, caused problems for the sport, and you start getting senators, you\u2019re getting governors coming down on you?<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s lot of power there, man,” McCarthy added. “And eventually Disney and ESPN said this is bad publicity, this is bad for us, we\u2019re going to shut it down. It wasn\u2019t Dana that shut it down, it was his bosses that basically shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCarthy continued, admitting he understands White’s determination to make good on his promises and give the fans a long-awaited fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson, which was expected to headline the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis became almost this whole point of now, \u2018I said I was going to do something,\u2019 being Dana, \u2018and I\u2019m going to prove that I can do it.\u2019 And his whole thing was the Tony-Khabib fight, and I\u2019m kind of in there with him. Let\u2019s just be honest, I want to see that fight. And it\u2019s been shut down four times and man, I don\u2019t want it to be shut down a fifth time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what\u2019s right, in that, there\u2019s a pandemic going on. It may not be a problem for a young person, athlete-wise. But you\u2019re going to have a problem where they have people they\u2019re coming back to, and if they get sick and give it to someone else, there\u2019s just bad issues involved with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you think of these comments from John McCarthy?<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on\u00a0<\/i>BJPENN.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0on 4\/13\/2020. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran MMA referee John McCarthy believes the top dogs at Disney and ESPN asked UFC President Dana White to cancel UFC 249 because they were concerned about the optics of going ahead with the event during a public health crisis. McCarthy weighed in on the cancelation of the card, which was most recently expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54430,"featured_media":344908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10176,39610,61249],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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