Here’s Karo Parisyan’s comments on his UFC 106 withdrawal:

“There’s a lot of problems going on. They won’t re-license me unless I (expletive) pay them,” Parisyan told MMAWeekly.com. “I had to pay the $32,000 fine in order to fight. I never paid because I never had the money. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back.”

“Everything is over bro. I’m just going to go home. Everything is (expletive) up. I’ve got to think about what I’m going to do for my career,” added 27-year old Parisyan. “I’ve got to think about what I want to do as far as fighting goes.”

Karo Parisyan out of UFC 106 @ MMA Weekly

While some have taken Karo’s comments as a lack of “desire”, this sort of inability to process what needs to be done to deal with external problems–or even day to day pressures of life–is a classic component of panic and/or anxiety disorder. These conditions are often accompanied by other mental health issues (depression, for example) and are no laughing matter. People suffering from these conditions find even simple actions overwhelming–as if they know what needs to be done to deal with a particular circumstance but can’t cognitively ‘connect the dots’ to initiate and complete the action.

There’s a lot of ‘worm cans’ that could potentially be opened with this story, and Zuffa needs to play it right to avoid a PR nightmare. This has a lot of elements that could easily cause it to cross over into the mainstream media–many whom already buy into the old ‘human cockfighting’ canard. It doesn’t take a media genius to spin this into the UFC using and discarding a fighter with psychological problems–its got all of the soap opera elements that the mainstream press loves. The various mental help non profits could also jump on the bandwagon, and further fan the flames making Parisyan an example of employer insensitivity to mental health issues. The smart way to play it would have been to say something like ‘At this point, Karo Parisyan has no business fighting in the UFC or anywhere else. He’s got a lot of problems, and we’re going to see that he gets the help he needs. Until he does, any question of his future as a professional fighter is irrelevant.’

As we noted in our earlier post, hopefully Dana White will have a more appropriate response after some reflection. It would go a long way to preempting what could be a lot of bad PR in the mainstream sports and general media that could cause a lot of headaches and potentially bigger problems. In addition, it would be the decent thing to do.