UFC CEO Dana White was attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last weekend inside the ballroom at Washington Hilton when a 31-year-old schoolteacher charged through security and opened fire
, striking a Secret Service agent.White called the chaotic incident an “awesome” experience.
But retired UFC fighter Matt Brown was critical of White’s “tone deaf” response for its lack of empathy. While White and his cronies may have been out of the line of fire, several other attendees —
including the agent who was shot — may be struggling to manage the “traumatic” event.
Brown knows a thing or two about active shooters.
“I’ve been there when there was a shooting going on, which most people probably haven’t,” Brown told MMA Fighting. “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.”
Brown, 45, was in attendance during the Damageplan concert back in 2004 when a crazed gunman opened fire killing four people — including heavy metal guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. Three others concertgoers were wounded in the ordeal and a hostage was taken before the gunman was eventually shot dead by police.
Brown was an eyewitness to the carnage in Columbus.
“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.”
Brown managed to avoid injury during the ordeal.
“That was a traumatic experience for a lot of people,” Brown explained. “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.”
In fairness to White, he wasn’t the only attendee to shrug off the shooting.
Michael Glantz, an agent at the Creative Artists Agency, “wanted to watch” the action unfold.
“I’m a New Yorker,” Glantz told The New York Times. “We live with sirens and activity happening all the time. I wasn’t scared. There are hundreds of Secret Service agents hurtling themselves over tables and chairs, and I wanted to watch. First of all, I have a bad back. I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And No. 2, I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening.”
I guess it beats stuffing your bag full of wine bottles.
