It's easy to be a heavy hitter when they throw you nothing but softballs. But what happens when you get one high and tight at 90 mph?
We found out yesterday when Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White was the victim of head-hunting, courtesy of Orange-County Register heckler T.J. Simers, who took the leader of the combat sports world and attempted to punish him for his passion.
But in doing so, failed to get one over the plate, to keep up with the baseball analogy.
Admittedly, mixed martial arts (MMA) has a number of glaring problems, but Simers had little interest in addressing them. Instead, he seemed content to simply poke the bear with a stick, then scamper away amused, while White's bald head turned purple with rage.
Here's a sample of the finished product:
By chance I'm scheduled for a media luncheon Monday with Dana White, the genius or blockhead, depending on your point of view, behind UFC's organized mayhem.
I happen to love the guy, but can't stand the sport...
White and I go about three rounds fighting over the popularity of UFC before he taps out, and he might be commissioner and control everything there is about the UFC, but I write the column here.
He gets louder when pressed to make a better argument, swears incessantly like UFC gets a commission every time he does, and maybe he never got close to graduating from college, but give him this: His marketing resume speaks to brilliance.
Read a live play-by-play of their squabble here.
White was on hand at yesterday's (Jan. 27, 2014) media luncheon to (among other things) sell the public on this Saturday night's (Feb. 1) UFC 169: "Barao vs. Faber 2" pay-per-view (PPV) event, which is expected to take place inside Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey (barring this).
What did we learn from yesterday's showdown?
Not much, regrettably, which is disappointing when you consider how long Simers had the floor. The opportunity to dig deeper into White's stance on a number of pressing issues was cashed in for a handful of tokens to play the "gotcha" slots, which most of us know, never pay out.
But you know the old saying about bad publicity.