“What should the repercussions be? You tell me,” White said at UFC Vegas 67 media day. “I take 30 days off? How does that hurt me? I told you guys when we were going through COVID, COVID could last 10 years, I could sit it out and — you know what I mean? What would be the problem? It’s much like COVID, actually. Me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters. It doesn’t hurt me. I could have left in 2016. I don’t know. Do I need to reflect? No, I don’t need to reflect. The next morning when I woke up — you know what I mean? I’ve been against this. I’ve owned this. I’m telling you that I’m wrong.
“But listen, we’ve had plenty of discussions internally, with Ari [Emanuel], ESPN. Nobody’s happy. Nobody’s happy about this. Neither am I. But it happened, and I have to deal with it. And what is my punishment? Here’s my punishment: I’ve got to walk around for however long I live — is it 10.4 years, or is it another 25 years — and this is how I’m labeled now. My other punishment is that, I’m sure a lot of people, whether it be media, fighters, friends, acquaintances, who had respect for me, might not have respect for me now.
“There’s a lot of things that I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life that are way more of a punishment than what, I take a 30-day [or a] 60-day absence? That’s not a punishment to me. The punishment is that I did it, and now I have to deal with it.”
“It was obviously a horrible personal experience, and there’s no excuses for it,” White said. “It’s something that I’m going to have to deal with and live with for the rest of my life. And one thing that I do want to clarify with this thing that I didn’t talk about on TMZ, because I didn’t expect it and I didn’t it coming, is the people that are defending me. There is never an excuse. I’m sure you guys have read some of the same stuff that I’ve seen. There is no defense for this, and people should not be defending me over this thing, no matter what. All the criticism that I have received this week is 100 percent warranted and will receive in the future.
“Everybody has an opinion on this, and they’re right to have their own opinions. I was very opinionated on this too, and I still am. It’s crazy that I’m sitting here even having this conversation with you guys.”
“Nobody knows you better than your kids do,” White added. “My oldest is almost 22. So for 22 years, he’s grown up in a house with me and my wife and the rest of our family. They hear and see everything. They know everything. So whatever perceptions people might have about you, nobody knows better than your kids, and as long as — my kids know exactly who I am. They know exactly who their mother is. And that’s what’s important to us. This is a personal family matter that played out in public, and our biggest focus was our kids. You want to talk about people being disappointed? Who’s going to be more disappointed than your kids are? And that’s what we’ve really been focusing on.”
“You don’t. You don’t bounce back from this. You don’t ever bounce back from this,” White said Wednesday. “For the rest of my life, like I said, however long that is, people are going to label me that. I did it. That’s it. I did it. … You don’t bounce back from it. You wake up every day and try to be better than you were yesterday, and you make sure that that never happens again. Whatever steps you’d have to take to make sure that you’re never in that situation and that never happens again, that’s what I need to do. And it’s a fact. There’s a couple things in life that you don’t bounce back from, and this is one of them. That’s a fact.”
“I would’ve stayed home on New Year’s Eve,” White said. “If I could go back and change anything, I would’ve stayed home on New Year’s Eve.”
