Dana White attended the White House correspondents’ dinner this past weekend in Washington, D.C., when a shooter stormed through a security checkpoint and opened fire before being subdued and restrained by the Secret Service and local police.
The incident caused chaos at the event with President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and other cabinet members being rushed to safety while attendees were scrambling to hide under tables, understandably terrified with an active shooter in the building.
In the end, one police officer was shot but survived thanks to wearing a bulletproof vest and the alleged shooter—31-year-old Cole Allen—was arrested and later charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting with the event being cancelled, White was interviewed and stated that he didn’t duck under a table when the mayhem started and added the whole ordeal “was f*cking awesome … I literally took every minute of it in, it was a pretty crazy, unique experience.”
Retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown couldn’t imagine a poorer choice of words from White, especially after he lived through a mass shooting that was anything but awesome.
“I’m absolutely flabbergasted—it took me completely blindsided—when he came out, when I saw the short little clip of him saying that was awesome,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “I think I have a little bit more of a justification in criticizing that being that I’ve been in a mass shooting before.
“I’ve been there when there was a shooting going on, which most people probably haven’t. It is not awesome in any sense of the word. It is not f*cking cool one bit. For him to say that, I did not appreciate that. Not that my opinion matters whether I appreciate it, but there’s people whose lives are at risk there. That really blows my mind that someone would say that shit like that was awesome. A dude got shot. Maybe he survived but got shot. That’s a traumatic experience for him. There’s not a single f*cking thing awesome about that. People don’t need to be going around shooting people and there’s nothing cool about that. I don’t know why anyone would say that was awesome. That’s the weirdest, most oddball thing I’ve ever heard anybody say.”
Back in 2004, Brown attended a concert in Columbus, Ohio, where the band Damageplan was headlining and a man named Nathan Gale charged the stage and murdered guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, who also famously played for the heavy metal group Pantera. Gale ultimately killed four people including Abbott, wounded three more, and took a hostage prior to a Columbus police officer arriving and shooting him dead.
Brown was standing near the stage when the initial shooting happened, and he witnessed the entire ordeal unfold, including the moment when Gale was shot and killed by police.
“I watched [Nathan Gale] get his head blown off when Officer [James] Niggemeyer [shot him], which you’ve got to give him all the respect in the world, that dude’s life has been traumatized by this incident,” Brown said. “He had to come in and he had to make a decision in about two or three seconds because the shooter had a hostage. He has to make a decision do I pull the trigger or not? What a situation for him. He wasn’t even on duty. He was an off-duty officer who was just in the area or something and saw the call. He comes in and his whole life changed right there.
“My point is that was a traumatic experience for a lot of people. Not even just the people that witnessed people get shot or the people that actually had to shoot like Officer Niggemeyer or the people that [didn’t even] see anything happen. It was just a traumatic experience for a lot of people. I think it’s very disrespectful to say that was an awesome experience for anyone. I don’t really bring it up. It’s not something I want to go around preaching about but it is something that happened to me so I’m not ashamed or awkward about it. It happened, and you live through it, but I can’t wrap my head around why you would even say that.”
While Brown doesn’t carry around any long-term trauma from that horrific shooting, he knows plenty of people were dramatically affected by what unfolded on that fateful night.
He saw several people get shot and killed and that’s something he’ll never be able to forget.
“Someone got shot right next to me,” Brown said. “As I was kind of running away or thinking about it, because I’m kind of running just because the crowd’s running and I’m getting pushed and stuff. I’m like I’m not going to get shot in the back, I’m going to turn around and face this guy and literally the second I did that, someone got shot right next to me.”
While thankfully the White House correspondents’ dinner didn’t end in the same tragic way, Brown knows the intent to kill was there when the shooter came in blasting after getting through the security checkpoint.
That’s why Brown just can’t understand how White chose such a ridiculous choice of words to describe what went down Saturday.
“I’m not one to criticize what people say a lot of times,” Brown said. “Dana says a lot of stuff I think that we could all have opinions about. That’s what he does very well. He gets a rise out of people, gets opinions, gets people talking. We talk about what he says all the time, but I’m not very critical of it. I’m like he’s promoting a fight, what do you expect? He’s promoting two people going in a cage and to beat each other up in front of a bunch of drunk fans. What do you expect from the guy?
“But that one, I don’t have a lot of respect for that. You can’t say that. It was very tone-deaf. You just don’t say that. You can say anything just about except for that. There’s a million simple things to say. You don’t say that. Even if you somehow oddly feel that, it’s just not what you say.”
