Matt Brown pushed back on Dana White after the UFC CEO described the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting scare as “awesome.”
Brown spoke in a video shared by MMA Fighting and Damon Martin. The former UFC welterweight has personal history with the subject. He was present during the 2004 Alrosa Villa nightclub shooting in Columbus, Ohio, where four people were killed and three others were wounded before responding officer James Niggemeyer shot and killed gunman Nathan Gale.
Brown said White’s reaction caught him off guard.
“I’m absolutely flabbergasted, or blind, it took me completely blindsided when he come out, when I seen the short little clip of him saying that was awesome.”
Brown said his own experience shaped his response.
“And I think I have a little bit more justification in criticizing that, being that I’ve been in a mass shooting before. I guess you call it a mass shooting, three people died, I think. But I’ve been there like when there was a shooting going on, which most people probably haven’t, right? It is not awesome in any sense of the word.”
Here is the clip:
https://x.com/MMAFighting/status/2049118937808310583
Brown Says There Is Nothing Cool About A Shooting
Brown said the issue was not only White’s word choice, but the reality of people being in danger.
“Like it is not f*cking cool one bit. And for him to say that, like I did not appreciate that, right? And not that my opinion matters, whether I appreciate it, but you know, there’s people whose lives are at risk there.”
Brown said he was not fully sure about the injury details from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner incident while speaking.
“I don’t know if anybody even got shot. Like did anybody get shot or died? I don’t even know. One, I think what they said last night, one, one cop or one Secret Service person did get shot, but he was wearing a vest, so he survived, but you didn’t get shot.”
He then explained why calling the situation “awesome” bothered him.
“So like that, that really blows my mind as someone would say that sh*t. Like that was awesome. When like a dude got shot, you know, maybe again, okay, he survived, but like he got shot. Like he had, he survived, like it’s a traumatic experience for him and there’s not a single f*cking thing awesome about that.”
“Like people don’t need to be going around shooting people and there’s nothing cool about that. That’s what I don’t know why anyone would even say that was awesome. Like that, that’s the weirdest, most oddball thing I’ve ever heard anybody say.”
Brown also referenced witnessing the Alrosa Villa shooting, where Damageplan guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott was killed on stage.
“Like I said, I could have an opinion. I would imagine vast majority of people agree with me, but you’ve been through it. You were at a shooting. Like there’s nothing awesome about that. I watched him get his head blown off too, right?”
Brown then brought up Niggemeyer, the responding officer who ended the shooting while Gale had a hostage.
“When you know, Officer Niggemeyer, which you got to give him, you know, all the respect in the world, that dude’s life has been traumatized from this incident, right? He had to come in and he had to make a decision in about two or three seconds because the shooter had a hostage, right? And he has to make a decision. Do I pull the trigger or not, right? I mean, what a situation for him, right?”
“He had to make it a sit. He wasn’t even on duty. He was an off-duty officer just in the area or something and seeing the call and comes in and he’s, you know, his whole life changed right there. And he actually hasn’t been on the force since anyway. My point is like, it was a traumatic experience for a lot of people.”
Brown said the trauma extended to witnesses, victims, and responders.
“And not even just the people that, you know, witnessed people get shot or the people that, you know, actually had to shoot like Officer Niggemeyer or, you know, or the people that even seen anything happen, like it was a traumatic experience for a lot of people. And I think it’s very disrespectful to think that that was, to say that that was an awesome experience for anyone.”
Brown said he does not bring up the shooting often, but he also does not avoid acknowledging what happened.
“Like I’m, I usually don’t even really, I don’t really bring it up, you know, it’s not something that I want to go around like preaching about, but it is something that happened to me. So like, I’m also not ashamed or, you know what I mean? I’m not like awkward about it. Like it happened and you lived through it.”
Brown retired from MMA after a career that ran from 2005 to 2024. He competed in the UFC welterweight division after appearing on The Ultimate Fighter 7 and finished with a 24-19 professional record. White remains UFC CEO after leading the company’s rise for more than two decades.
