While Major League Baseball is currently embroiled in a Department of Justice civil rights investigation over its Pride Night controversy, Dana White has made it clear that the UFC will never have to deal with such a corporate nightmare.

The UFC CEO recently appeared on Tomi Lahren is Fearless and provided a characteristically blunt explanation for why the biggest MMA promotion in the world does not hold “Pride Nights” or change its logo in June. For the head honcho, the issue boils down to a very basic philosophy: he runs a fight promotion, not a public relations firm, so he simply has no interest in corporate virtue signaling.

“I’m staring at my board of my roster of top 15 fighters,” he said. “Assuming we have some gay fighters, I don’t know how many of them are openly. I know that we have gay female fighters. I don’t care what you are, who you are, or what you do.

“That’s just—we don’t talk about that or any of that stuff. We have a T-shirt that says, “We Are All Fighters,” and it’s got the gay flag colors on it. Everybody, do your own thing. I’m just not into it. We just let everybody be themselves, do their thing.”

When pressed on why the UFC refuses to participate in the usual corporate branding overhauls in June by changing their UFC logo to match the Pride flag, Dana White did not hold back.

“You know what? You’ll never see me standing out in the middle of somewhere with a big check, with a bunch of little kids standing around,” he replied. “We do it because we should. We do it because we can. We don’t do it for attention, and we don’t do it for any other reason other than we should.

“When it comes to certain groups of people, whether it’s the gay and lesbian community, whether it’s the African-American community, whether it’s this community, we do what we should do. We do the right thing. And as long as you’re doing the right thing, you don’t have to run around and prove to everybody that you’re doing the right thing.”

But that’s not all, as he doubled down with a suggestion for other firms as well.

“It’s not like we haven’t supported the gay community in the past,” he added. “We just don’t shove any of that stuff down anybody’s throats.

“How about you just be honest and real about who you are and what you are as a company? How about that?”

To understand why Dana White wants no part of the themed-night game, look at what just happened in San Francisco. Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, J.T. Brubaker, and Ryan Walker chose to write Bible verse references on the brims of their rainbow-logo Pride caps, including Genesis 9:12-16, while reliever Sam Hentges decided to wear the team’s standard hat instead.

As a result, MLB issued them warnings for uniform violations, prompting widespread outrage, a public defense from Senator Josh Hawley, and a formal civil rights investigation by the DOJ. Now, that exactly is the kind of administrative mess that the head honcho’s free-speech policy avoids inside the UFC. At least when Josh Hokit‘s not on the mic.

It is also worth noting that long before other sports leagues felt comfortable showing LGBT athletes, the UFC was putting them in the main event of massive pay-per-views.

Dana White’s claims get backed by the UFC’s true actions

Situations like these are where it gets hard for even critics to hate Dana White, since the claims the UFC CEO made in the aforementioned interview are actually backed by actions.

Liz Carmouche made history in 2013 as the first openly gay fighter to compete in the Octagon, facing Ronda Rousey for the promotion’s inaugural women’s bantamweight title. And rather than using her orientation as a marketing gimmick, the UFC treated her simply as a world-class contender.

The exact same approach applied to Amanda Nunes, who is widely regarded as one of the best mixed martial artists of all time. ‘The Lioness’ has always been open about her personal and family life throughout her historic two-division title run.

Even then, the UFC didn’t build an annual marketing campaign around her personal life; instead, the Dana White-led promotion presented her as an absolute savage who demolished legends inside the cage.

Other elite fighters such as Raquel Pennington, who won UFC gold after years at the top, and veteran Nina Nunes have all built highly successful careers in the organization completely on merit.

As for charities, while the promotion launched the official UFC Foundation in 2022 to streamline its youth development and equality initiatives, the biggest MMA promotion in the world had already quietly donated millions of dollars to war veterans, cancer research, and groups such as Make-A-Wish without seeking public attention for it.

For Dana White, inclusiveness does not mean changing a logo for 30 days or policing what a player writes on his baseball cap. It’s about providing everyone an equal opportunity to get punched in the face for a living, regardless of who they love outside of the Octagon.