On July 10 the Ultimate Fighting Championship will hold it’s 200th pay-per-view card.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The landmark occasion for the world’s fastest growing sports company needed a head-liner and a rematch between the sport’s most high profile and marketable star, wild Irishman Connor McGregor, and the man who beat him at UFC 197, Nate Diaz, fit the bill.
It was a fight set to break all pay-per-view records and fill the company’s already healthy coffers like never before. Then it all changed. McGregor refused to leave training camp in Iceland to fulfill media commitments in the US. White didn’t hesitate. McGregor was off the the card.
Pulling the biggest star in the sport off the biggest card in the promotion’s history was a huge call from White but the message was clear – no one is bigger than the sport or the company. White wasn’t going to be dictated to, not even by the the biggest star in the sport.
Amid a fan backlash and a retirement bluff from McGregor White stood firm. White polarises opinion but there can never be any doubt that he’s the boss. It goes a long way to explaining why the company he rescued from the brink of bankruptcy with partners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta for a measly $2 million in 2001 is reportedly about to be sold for in the vicinity of $4 billion.
Which brings us to Semi Radradra. There is no way he should be allowed to play against Cronulla on Saturday. His much belated return to Australia on Thursday night doesn’t change the fact he’s turned horror Eels season into an even higher farce. There are already enough people lining up to say I told you so over his controversial selection for Australia earlier this year.
Given the media circus that has already surrounded their season, the Eels should have come out when he missed his first deadline this week and said ‘we expect him to return and honour his contract but he’s not available for selection against Cronulla’.
Given they fined troubled star Keiran Foran, with everything he’s already faced this year, $5000 and stripped him of the captaincy for not fulfilling all of his injury rehab obligations it would at least be consistent. It would also show some semblance of self-respect from a club that’s been flagrantly held to ransom.
That doesn’t appear likely and all the club’s efforts at this point seem completely aimed at appeasing Radradra and trying to fool the media into thinking they have any control over the situation.
The AVO sought by his former partner this week in relation to alleged incidences of domestic violence muddies the waters further. Radradra is of course entitled to the presumption of innocence but with everything else that has transpired this week it simply doesn’t benefit anyone – himself included – to walk straight off a plane onto the playing field this week.
Through awful governance the club has already put their fans through a salary cap scandal, it’s time they drew a line in the sand. If they don’t, or won’t, then the NRL should step in over them and do it. Not to support the poor Eels – Nathan Peats had a contract to – but to protect the integrity of the game.
The sad fact is that won’t happen. The NRL will do what it always does, wait and see with their eyes closed and fingers crossed and then try to put humpty dumpty back together again.
It’s fact that loyalty is dead in rugby league. The NRL should at least uphold the integrity of the game for the fans because where are they in all of this? Like that great modern philosopher Jerry Seinfeld says: “You’re basically cheering for the clothes.”