UFC president Dana White addresses Luke Rockhold’s complaint about medical care

Luke Rockhold’s former middleweight champion voiced his displeasure with the current administration of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Rockhold was spot-on with every detail, including fighter compensation, the bonus structure for fight nights, and more. UFC president Dana White’s thoughts on medical treatment for fighters have stuck with him.

“These guys don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re letting Dana just run the show and suppress the sport,” Rockhold told reporters.

“They need to grow. This whole f*cking thing needs to grow together. Our lives are on the f*cking line. Healthcare needs to be taken care of. Our f*cking health needs to be taken care of. Mine has not been taken care of.”

Dana White was aware of Rockhold’s remarks, and he disagreed with the assertions that Rockhold made. In addition, the boss of the UFC said that the company has been working on plans to provide long-term healthcare for its fighters once their careers as competitors inside the octagon have come to an end.

“That’s something we’ve been working on since day one,” White said.

“While they’re fighting here, these guys are very well taken care of, and so is Luke Rockhold.”

Throughout his career, the former champion has struggled with a variety of health problems on multiple occasions. Rockhold disclosed, just prior to UFC 199, that he had been training with a ruptured medial collateral ligament (MCL). Despite this, he continued with the competition and was ultimately defeated by Michael Bisping. After the fight, his knee became worse, and he underwent a stem cell therapy. This ultimately led to the cancellation of his main event bout against Ronaldo Souza that was scheduled for UFC Fight Night 101.

In the beginning of 2018, Rockhold would compete against Yoel Romero for the vacant interim middleweight belt. They would meet in the cage. However, a “nightmare” injury to his surgically repaired leg occurred a few months later, and it forced him to withdraw out of his UFC 230 match against Chris Weidman.

Rockhold was forced to pull out of his fight against Sean Stickland at UFC 268 due to herniated L4 and L5 discs in his back, which derailed his effort to return to competition in 2021. According to White, despite all of the difficulties he was experiencing, he did not need to be concerned about his medical care.

“Luke Rockhold was above and beyond taken care of with the issues that he had here,” White said. “I don’t give a sh*t what health insurance plan you have, they would have never covered the things that we covered for Luke Rockhold when he was going through his stuff. Everything he said was absolute f*cking gibberish and absolute bullsh*t.”

“Everybody who fights here gets unbelievable healthcare,” White said. “Unbelievable healthcare. I mean, we don’t even sew people up with regular doctors. If it’s bad enough, we send them to plastic surgeons to get sewn up.”