Luke Rockhold blasts UFC president Dana White for ‘never giving him a chance’ during his early days

Luke Rockhold has blasted UFC president Dana White and fighter Jake Paul in a wide foul-mouthed attack on the world of MMA after retirement from the sport.

Rockhold, 37, lost to Paulo Costa on Saturday via unanimous decision as part of UFC 278 – and promptly quit the sport.

In leaving UFC after a decade, he said the organisation needed to do more to improve fighter pay and provide better health care for its athletes.

The former UFC middleweight champion said White never gave him a chance while in control of the narrtive around MMA, from the beginning putting him up against athletes aided by testosterone boosters.

White complimented Rockhold on retirement, but came under criticism for his earlier choices

‘I was here to fight, dude. And people lose track of who I am, who I was, and what I’ve done,’ Rockhold told The MMA Hour.

‘Everyone was asking me, ‘If you don’t need this and you want this, what’s going to get you up in those moments.’

‘It’s f***** up — it’s f***** up to say, why do you think I was so mad at Dana? Because Dana never gave me a chance. From the moment I came into the UFC, he never gave me a f****** chance.

‘Wrote me off, never highlighted my years in Strikeforce or anything that I did, all the wins. Only my losses. Dana White controls the narrative of what the public perceives.

‘And he f***** me from the start, and it took me 16, 17 years to come back and give a fight like that, to earn my respect. Nothing I did in the past mattered until now.

‘That’s why I feel the way I feel sometimes. And that’s why I said things I say.

‘You’ve got to understand the power that you have in that situation, with the narrative you create — the public believes what they want to believe and what you tell them to believe.’

Rockhold retired after losing to Paulo Costa (right) on Saturday after years of injury problems

After the loss to Costa at UFC 278, White said he had ‘nothing but respect’ for Rockhold and his time in the sport.

‘I think everything is very public and I know Dana gave me his piece, and I do appreciate that from Dana,’ Rockhold said.

‘I appreciate that respect after all these years, and I think [UFC executive] Hunter [Campbell] and everybody else — I needed that fight. I needed that fight for myself.

‘I guess the world needed that fight, so it just happened to be the way the way it be. I’m happy with myself.

‘I proved it to myself that I’m still better than the best of them, after all these years and coming back at that percentage of me and I can still do what I did.

‘I did it. I did it, and now it’s like everything hurts more than it used to hurt. Everything hurts.’

Jake Paul had made a long rant on Twitter heavily criticising Rockhold’s final performance

Paul, the YouTube sensation turned boxer, said Rockhold’s performance in fighting Costa was ‘dog s**t’, in a long rant on the social media platform Twitter.

Rockhold responded to these claims, stating: ‘I don’t really give relevance to idiots. I’m tired of doing that.

‘I thought the kid had a better head on his shoulders, and I thought he was doing better for the sport [of MMA]. Like you said, it was cool — I’ve seen him stand up for respect for the sport.

‘But then the hate kind of got to him and made him feel insecure about his hate, and so he tried to put that off on me, because of obviously my cardiovascular system in the altitude.

‘But motherf*****, you’re doing handicapped fighting. So don’t talk. And you’re finding guys that are smaller than you, everything you’re doing.

‘I don’t think I really opened my mouth about you — don’t open your mouth about me. You just don’t f****** understand what fighting is. When you’re thinking about fighting, you’ve got to think about dying.

‘Boxing is boxing. Putting these f****** puffy little pads on your hands and all you’ve got to worry about their f****** hands.

‘Think about elbows, think about knees, think about grappling, think about kicks, think about f****** every goddamn thing you could think about. Put you in a state of reality, which you’ve lost touch with.

‘The reality of the modern day — people like that, he thinks he’s like a f****** [Muhammad] Ali.

‘Shut the f*** up. Go back in your f****** hole before I f****** smack the s*** out of you.’

However, Rockhold dismissed the idea of taking on Paul, despite the YouTuber’s previous expression of interest in fighting an MMA athlete.