UFC 250 fighters use platform to speak out on national unrest

UFC 250 took place Saturday night in Las Vegas in front of an arena devoid of fans at the organization’s Apex facility.

The walls, however, couldn’t keep the world out of the building.

Veteran featherweight Alex Caceres walked out to the cage to the Childish Gambino track “This Is America,” a song that addresses mass shooting, racism and discrimination.

“I enjoy the song, and I thought it was very fitting for the time of crisis we’re going through right now,” he said after handing Chase Hooper the first loss of his career by unanimous decision. “I feel a lot of us in the community are getting very desperate, and we don’t know how to solve the problem. And I feel we are remaining dependent on the very same system that is causing the problems.

“We can’t keep begging the same people who are coming into our communities and beating us over the head to change. They might not want to change. So we have to look at the man in the mirror and change ourselves and start taking responsibility for our own lives.”

The 31-year-old Miami native hopes to continue to make his voice heard after winning his second straight fight. While he has followed the mass protests going on in the world, he wasn’t distracted from the task at hand this week.

“These situations that are going on in the world, I feel like they’re always going on,” Caceres said. “We can just film them more. I have experienced many of these things in my life personally, so it’s always prevalent in my mind. This is the reason I try to develop a platform for myself. I need to be a voice. I need to be a leader in the community and start making a change to help people understand who we are and where we come from, why we’re living and why we want to keep thriving and not just merely surviving.”

He wasn’t alone on Saturday night, a day after UFC President Dana White said the fighters were free to speak out in whatever way they desired.

“When the country and the world, really, is going through all the things that we’re going through right now, to tell people they can’t express themselves is absolutely insane,” White said Friday. “When you look at the UFC, we’re truly a global business. People from all over the world face things that other people would never understand. To have the ability to tell people, ‘You can’t express yourself,’ whether it’s anger, happiness, fear — it’s crazy. We would never do that. We’d never try to do that.”

Aljamain Sterling’s opening statement on the subject lasted nearly as long as the 1:28 it took him to submit Cory Sandhagen in a matchup of top bantamweight contenders.

“The world is in shambles right now, especially America,” he said. “We’ve got a lot going on in this country. It’s a great country, but there’s a lot of things that need to be changed, especially the injustices happening to minorities all across America. This one is for everybody back home fighting the good fight and protesting. I support you guys. I’m with you all the way. I wish I could be home and be part of it, but I had to handle business.”

Devin Clark took the most noticeable stance of the night inside the cage, taking a knee and raising a fist to the sky as cage announcer Bruce Buffer introduced him for his fight against rising light heavyweight prospect Alonzo Menifield.

The veteran’s performance spoke volumes as he rallied from early trouble to score a unanimous-decision victory to give Menifield the first loss of his career.

It was Clark’s political statement that immediately resonated on social media, though he was unable to elaborate on the message he was trying to convey because he was immediately transported to the hospital due to an eye injury suffered during the fight.

Several UFC fighters spoke out this week and took part in protests against police brutality and racial inequality, including Randy Brown, Hakeem Dawodu, Max Griffin and middleweight champ Israel Adesanya.

“You’ve seen some of our athletes out there in different ways expressing how they feel one way or another,” White said. “The beautiful thing is that this is America. You can say anything you want to and express your feelings or your opinions. I have no problem with any of our athletes doing that – or our employees.”

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.