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Most MMA fighters seems to have extremely thin skin, lets be honest lads.
Ariel is a better promoter than Dana, is what you're telling me.The majority of Ariel's "beefs" stem from Ali, who unlike "Khabib and his crew", is most certainly not a fighter.
People calling out Ariel for "inciting" fights usually seem incapable of realizing something critical about the platform.
Just indulge me while I unpack this crazy thought: he talks to fighters, about whom they are fighting, currently and prospectively; why they want to fight them; and their opinions on which fighters are good and which fighters suck. Fighters having opinions about these things is a huge part of promoting themselves. Maybe the most important part. Inevitably, he asks questions to facilitate this process. It's a symbiotic relationship, where he gets news, and allows fighters a hand in building narrative. "Inciting" fights is a big part of promoting fights. We could even say it's synonymous with it.
Maybe there are a few isolated incidents where Ariel crosses the line, but the vast majority of people accusing Ariel of this without evidence base it on a fuzzy perception of mma journalism and, well....they're all marks.
For 50 mins??!
Curious about the number. It's truly fascinating watching this mma fighters vs mma journalist play out, maybe because he's the only journalist in the game who actually beefs with fighters lmao. So, from what I recall, here are the fighters who won't give him interviews.
Khabib and his crew.
Hill
DDP dislikes him, altho he did appear on there recently.
Jones recently.
Chael too but idk, he might bury the hatchet later.
Who else?
Too polarizing for many? who cares about them??? You dont have an opinion of your own?
Most of what makes people mad is that he doesnt let people get away with lying and bullshit. Thats why Chael was mad.
Chael: You little weasel HHJ.
Ali has blacklisted all his fighters I believe.
I think he was mad at him,but they made up. Rampage is a bit sensitive some times.
I never believed that was real tbh.
They were buds, you could tell because Ariel wasn't shitting his pants.
Khabib Nurmagomedov
Matt Serra
Tito Ortiz
Jamahal Hill
Henry Cejudo
Gina Carano
Sean Strickland
Jon Jones
Dricus du Plessis
Jason Miller
Ben Askren
Giga Chikadze
Darren Till
Brendan Schaub
Paddy Pimblett
Kevin Owens
Booker T
Off the top of my head, there are probably just as many that I didn't mention
He pissed off Booker T?
Fuck, I hate Ariel now, legit.
Kevin owens too? Damn. Never knew he pissed off pro wrestlers too. I know Tony Khan hates him too.
Mayhem Miller
i dont have specific examples off the top of my head. you have to watch these shows regularly and just pick up on these personality changes, when he starts dipping into playing the devils advocate too much, trying to get these fighters to say something bad about the UFC which in turn gets them in trouble, etc.
No worries. I remember he pissed off dustin by asking him about ppv point so there's that too lmao.
I agree but it's Ariel is not completely transparent either. He shills for WWE and I don't why people don't remember but UFC was on fox, and Ariel worked as a fox analyst, he was a complete shill for the UFC too.
I've seen almost all of Ariel's shows since maybe a year or two before the Pandemic (when he first started w/ ESPN), so going to try to answer some of these with what I remember.
This is true. Ali tells his fighters not to go on Ariel's show, which Ariel always points out is funny considering the fighters are paying Ali to manage and not the other way around.
Rampage and Ariel have always had a playful friendship. Rampage once had a beef with Ariel and was legitimately mad at him because they were talking on Ariel's show and Rampage was relaxed and some how the topic of Rampage's dating life came up and basically Rampage said he was single or something like that but his girlfriend was in the room or saw the video and it basically ended their relationship and Rampage blamed Ariel for making him comfortable and then getting info out of him that he didn't realized he was giving. As told by Rampage on Ariel's show years later, she had a nice booty and Rampage was mad he lost that due to their interview. They are back to being Friends again, and Rampage was just on The MMA Hour a couple of months ago.
Matt Serra - Dana Shill
Tito Ortiz - Lol, who isn't Tito feuding w/ in the MMA World, he blames everyone for his own issues.
Jamahal Hill - True, Jamahal Hill got angry at Ariel and believes that he was low key talking s*** about him while Ariel was interviewing Jiri. Ariel had Jamahal on his show to talk about it and they got in an argument and couldn't come to an agreement, then Jamahal tried to get Ariel on his new podcast and they exchanged twitter words. Basically Jamahl feels Ariel was "subtweeting" in real life convos, some people have alluded to it in other post and it's hard to come up with an example, but esentially Jamahal felt Ariel was insinuating things about him (whether in his own head or true is up to each individual watching to decide. Personally, I never noticed it and thought Jamahal (who I like) was being sensitive about nothing and was taking out his frustrations of being injured and losing his belt as a result on Ariel.
Henry Cejudo - They don't really have a beef, Cejudo has been on as recently as before his last fight. I know Ariel used to get annoyed b/c he would try to interview Triple C and Captain Eric would always try to distracting stuff in the background to get noticed by Ariel or to get him to ask about them, but even he [Eric] was on the MMA Hour the Monday after the fight. Perhaps something has came up since then, but I don't recall.
Gina Carno - Gina and Ariel used to have a downright flirty relationship, but when Gina came out and compared COVID restrictions by the Government to The Holocaust, Ariel (a Jewish person) came down hard on her in a video and essentially ended their friendship. She likely felt he was piling on when her life was at a bad time, so they are very much no friends anymore.
Sean Strickland - Not really a beef. Sean's been on Ariel's show twice doing the Crazy Sean gimmick, Ariel was a bit freaked out the first time and didn't have him on for awhile after then they traded barbs back and forth about who was a real man, who gets laid, etc. Sean was laughing the whole time. I think he said something since that Ariel doesn't love fighting or something and is just here to make money, but they don't really have a feud at all.
Jon Jones - This is true, not sure exactly what Ariel did to piss off Jon, but Jones has obviously done a lot of dumb stuff outside of the cage, so I'm sure things Ariel has said about those while covering it was enough to cause a rift here.
DDP - Not really true, DDP didn't like how Ariel was covering the potential match up of him vs Israel, DDP's manager came out with some scathing social media post about Ariel, Ariel since has had DDP on his show and they talked it out. They aren't best friends, but they aren't feuding.
Jason Miller - Not necessarily true, pretty sure he's been on Ariel's show recently talking about his recovery and his mental health, etc. (this was before his latest arrest). If there is a rivalry it probably directly relates to Miller's level of substance abuse at the time.
Ben Askren - Ben and Ariel have a similar relationship to Ariel and Chael, they don't always agree and they like to banter back and forth, sometimes to the point of getting heated, but they are never really rivals. Though I think I did see some tweets flying back and forth a month or two ago, so maybe they are.
Giga Chikadze - Never heard of this alleged beef, is he an Ali guy? (if so that would explain it, if not, I'm not sure.)
Darren Till - Was just on a week or two ago, they have buried the hatchet of whatever caused their beef. They briefly talked about it and argued about who should apologize but both laughed it off and are in a good spot.
Brendan Shaub - Follower. Dana doesn't like Ariel, Joe is friends with Dana and somewhat piggybacks with his opinions on Ariel, Brendan likes whatever Joe likes. Brendand hasn't talked s*** about Ariel since he got eviscerated by him on multiple occasions. They probably don't like each other all that much, but the beef is pretty much over as well.
Paddy Pimblett - This is true...Paddy tried to make Ariel pay him for interviews, then tried to throw Ariel under the bus to look cool for his new boss Dana White, only to be proven a liar, an idiot and essentially threw away his good will with fans by the way he acted (and then robbed Jared Gordon of a win and acted like an even bigger tool). These two definitely hate each other, but this rivalry is a one sided beatdown.
Kevin Owens - This was true. Ariel once ate at a Pizza restaurant in Montreal w/ a friend and didn't like the service so he complained about it on Twitter. It turns out the owner of the restaurant was a very good friend of Kevin Owens, and Kevin didn't like that Ariel buried his friends restaurant and possibly hurt its business so he didn't like him for many years. They've since made up and even done sit down interviews for BT Sport (TNT Sports now) in the UK.
Booker T - Not sure this is entirely true...during COVID DC and Ariel had their show, and Booker T does his podcast. DC was getting into WWE (doing some ref work, they did talk about him commentating, but it never happened). During these shows Ariel would often go into "heelwani" mode and act as a manger Hype man for DC (who was also doing a wrestling schtick) and they would cut promos on Booker T and his podcast assistant. This kept going and elevated to the point where peopel weren't sure if Booker T and Ariel really had beef or not. But they've since seen and talked to each other multiple times at WWE shows and all is good.
The first two and Ariel are good now, see my comment right above this about each of those situations.
Ariel hates Tony and in-turn Tony now really hates Ariel. For context, Ariel used to be managed by Nick Khan, who is now the President of the WWE. Ariel had started doing some appearances and work for WWE, and this was while the Vince McMahon sexual assault allegations were big news. Also, in WWE's competitor, AEW, CM Punk and The Elite (a group of wrestlers who helped found AEW) got into a real backstage brawl at one of their PPV's after CM Punk basically buried their company to the media at the scrum. This caused all to be suspended while they did an internal investigation. Ariel had Tony on to do an interview and just hammered him about all the negative news, and Tony Khan just kept saying I can't legally talk about that while trying to move on to a more puff piece style interview about their show that night, thigh highlights and talking about how he was a fan of Ariel, but Ariel kept at it, which caused Tony to keep responding with very little b/c, as he claimed, he couldn't discuss it. After the interview, Ariel called it one of his worst all time and proceeded to make fun of it for multiple shows. Meanwhile he did an interview w/ Triple H of WWE (The Head of WWE Creative and also the son in law of Vince McMahon), which can only be described as a puff piece. He asked him nothing about any legal stuff and only about the positives of their upcoming shows, etc. Causing many fans to compare the two interviews. Later, Ariel appeared in Montreal for a live WWE PPV and was an onscreen reporter for WWE. Tony took to twitter and said Ariel is a biased hack and they had some more words exchanged, but basically they don't like each other at all.
He was just on before his last arrest talking about what a good place he was at mentally and physically. Him and Ariel had a nice chat and they seemed solid. I think they're fine. At least I think he was on recently. I know I watched a Mayhem interview recently and I want to say it was on The MMA Hour but can't say 100% sure that is where I saw him.
This is essentially what Jamahl Hill's beef with Ariel is. He heard Ariel saying or doing something when he interview Jiri that he took offense too and he hasn't been cool w/ Ariel since.
Dustin likes Ariel a lot. He may have got annoyed at one question, but his last appearance was him talking about how Ariel is one of the few real ones in the game and that he's always been good to him. They're friends not rivals.
There was a time at one point in his career where you could say he wasn't transparent, but he's pretty damn transparent these days. He's talked many times about "the biggest mistake of his professional career" working for Fox (but the actual checks he received were from the UFC due to the deal Fox and UFC had). He says he totally compromised his journalistic integrity by doing that and has not only regretted it, but vowed to never do something like that again. Now he has another job w/ BT Sports (now TNT Sports) in the UK for their WWE coverage, which is how he did that, and he claims he has never been paid by WWE, and that he instead does it because it's fun and something he's always wanted to do. Plus, as he says, he's not a Wrestling Journalist, so he doesn't feel the same rules apply. As for his Boxing jobs, I believe he does get paid for those, but to him the gigs he works are bipartisan and he also isn't a boxing journalist, so I guess the same rule applies to that as WWE. I say it's a bit morally grey, but also can kind of see his point.
Okay that was a lot more typing than I anticipated, but at least it burned some of my slow Friday away. Hopefully that answers some Ariel feud questions for ya'll.
I think Brunson was there 2 or 3 weeks ago and Kayla goes there every 6 months always saying the same stuffAll of Ali's fighters have boycotted Ariel with Burns and Belal having open beefs with him
I think Brunson was there 2 or 3 weeks ago and Kayla goes there every 6 months always saying the same stuff
Outside PFL, BKFC, Youtube Boxing fighters or people feuding with the UFC, there is no interest for the fighter to speak to HelwaniYes this is true, but so was what @AmbassadorFright said.
Ali tells his fighters they can't do Ariel Helwani's show. Most of them listen to him.
Ariel, always points out how funny/stupid this is because they are paying Ali, they don't work for Ali he works for him, so he shouldn't be banning them from anything.
Hence, why Kayla and a select few others will come on, because they see the relationship as Ali works for them and not the other way around. They aren't afraid of any backlash. Also, I want to clarify that I don't think all of Ali's fighters feel like they HAVE to listen to him about not doing Ariel's show, but probably realize it makes their working relationship (both w/ Ali and Dana White/UFC) a lot easier, so they don't do Ariel's show.
No worries. I remember he pissed off dustin by asking him about ppv point so there's that too lmao.