- Iranian wrestling champion Navid Afkari was executed Saturday despite pleas from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) boss Dana White and US President Donald Trump.
- White told reporters after a recent behind-closed-doors UFC event that the situation was sad.
- He called Afkari a “stud athlete,” and conceded that throughout the process of trying to save the athlete’s life, the situation never looked good.
- “He knew he wasn’t allowed to protest, but he did anyway … This guy did even knowing that the penalty could be death.”
Dana White called Navid Afkari, an executed champion wrestler in Iran, “a stud athlete” whom he tried to save by enlisting the help of President Donald Trump.
Afkari, 27, was executed Saturday after receiving two death sentences.
He’d been convicted of murder in the death of a security guard during antigovernment protests in 2018, the BBC reported, but later said he confessed to the crime only after being tortured.
The UFC boss White and Trump had pleaded with Iran reconsider the death sentence, but he was executed this past weekend.
“I called the president and I told him about it, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘There’s already sanctions against them, and there’s just no recourse,’” White told reporters at a post-event press conference Saturday.
“He said, ‘Let me see what I can do,’ and he started talking to his people.”
Trump pleaded with Iran on Twitter to spare Afkari’s life, and tagged Dana White’s account in the post.
Read the article in Business Insider Australia.