Dana White responds to furor over Forrest Griffin's rape tweet: 'It wasn't a joke'

If you're one of the several readers who believed that Forrest Griffin's tweet about rape wasn't funny, it's probably because it wasn't intended to be a joke.

That's according to UFC President Dana White, who told Mauro Ranallo that Griffin's comments were "completely misunderstood" and that his tweet "wasn't a joke."

"It wasn't a joke ... I contacted Forrest and Forrest is a mess now about this whole thing. Believe me, take it from a guy who has been in this situation. What happened was, Forrest Griffin said he woke up that morning and turned on his television and the whole thing about (Joe) Paterno and what's going on over there at Penn State, he said he literally switched the channel to another channel and they were talking about a woman who had been raped. The third channel he went to was another story about rape. His thing was that 'rape is the new missionary,' like it's vanilla, like it's normal, when you change the channel it's on every channel ... you don't go out on Twitter where you can only do so many characters and say something like that. Then once everyone started attacking him, he started attacking back on Twitter. It's one of those situations. Let me tell you what man, I'm the first guy who always says 'people will make mistakes' and this and that will happen. Forrest Griffin is a very, very good human being."

Griffin came under fire for the comment, likely because it fell so close to his recent win for "most creative tweet" in the promotion's social media contest, one that offers financial incentives for talent who best utilize Twitter.

Hear more from White, including his comments on how the public's perception affects his promotion's FOX network television deal, after the jump.

For more on Griffin and his Twitter controversy click here.