Let me throw this disclaimer out right away. I take no pleasure in picking on Sage Steele. She is one of the few voices of reason ever to come out of ESPN.
Steele is fierce. She is smart.
But in this one instance, she was neither. And the look on UFC President Dana White’s face says it all.
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Sage Steele’s Incredible Blunder
What exactly prompted Dana White to make that face? What could Sage Steele have possibly said that would make him recoil in horror and begin cursing?
How’s about, well over an hour into the interview, it apparently dawned on Steele that she was not talking to podcaster Joe Rogan.
“What’s Joe Rogan’s dream?” she asked. Mind you, this was immediately following her declaration to the man in front of her that “I love you.”
A confused White echoed the question back to her.
“Joe Rogan, Dana White,” Steele attempts to recover, patting White’s leg. “What’s Dana White’s dream?”
I’m guessing his dream is to not be called Joe Rogan. Yet, here we are.
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Did She Really Do This?
White proceeded to ask the question on everybody’s mind. Essentially, was she serious?
“Did you just think I was Joe Rogan?” White asks Sage Steele.
She replies, “I totally did, I totally did.”
It’s unclear if Sage Steele just momentarily had a lapse or if she legit thought she was speaking to Rogan and not Dana White the whole time. Because it’s kinda up in the air.
‘She Just Called Me F*cking Joe Rogan’
To his credit, White joked about the situation and even suggested his bald head may have been a factor in Steele’s confusion.
“She just called me fucking Joe Rogan!” White says to someone offscreen before turning back to Steele. “You thought I was fucking Joe Rogan!”
“I was bald before Joe was ever bald!” White fired back.
Steele later commented on the mistake and seemed to address it with sarcasm. But she also called White ‘Joe’ earlier in the interview.
White, at this juncture, was focused on putting ‘Yum Yum’ socks on and didn’t catch her calling him ‘Joe.’
Sage Steele was in attendance at UFC 299. She was there when the former President walked in alongside White. So you’d think she knows who he is.
It’s probably just a couple of slips of the tongue on her part. But White’s face alone was enough to make covering it worthwhile.
