After Greg Hardy’s first UFC fight booking set off a tricky situation for the promotion and the media that cover it, what did we learn? Retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss in this week’s Trading Shots.

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Downes: Ben, the UFC’s move to ESPN is only a few weeks away. Live from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Henry Cejudo and T.J. Dillashaw will fight in what may prove to be the death knell for the men’s flyweight division.

That’s not why the event has been getting so much coverage lately, though. It’s because the promotion decided to make that date Greg Hardy’s debut. Any time Greg Hardy fights, it makes news, but this one was especially inflammatory because he’s booked on the same card as Rachael Ostovich, a recent survivor of an alleged domestic violence incident.

I don’t want to discuss the original booking. That’s been done plenty already. Rather, I’d like to examine the reaction to the booking.

You have UFC President Dana White acting indignant about the whole situation. As far as he’s concerned, Hardy is on the roster and we shall never speak of it again because, “you can be sensitive about anything.”

Then you have UFC staff reportedly telling journalists that they were basically not allowed to ask questions about it at the UFC 231 pre-fight press conference. This lead to a the Mixed Martial Arts Journalists Association (of which you are president) releasing a statement, which … uh … asked for clarification?

Confusion seems to abound. Hardy will be a controversial figure for the rest of his career. What’s the proper way to cover him and the promotion that seeks to gain from his name? Other than shaking its head in disappointment, what place does the MMAJA have in the discussion?

Fowlkes: The reason the MMAJA got involved was because of that request from a UFC PR official moments before the press conference started. That’s just not how press conferences work. You can answer the question or not, but when you step up to a microphone in front of a bunch of reporters, you have to field the questions they decide to ask – not try to limit the scope at the last minute without any prior discussion.

And it would have been perfectly fair to ask White about the Hardy booking. It was his first public appearance since the news, and that news was everywhere, from Deadspin to The Washington Post. The fact that a UFC official even made that request shows that someone was worried about the topic coming up while the company was trying to promote its pay-per-view.

You mock the MMAJA’s response, but it actually helped us move in a positive direction. We opened a productive dialogue with the UFC over it (company officials mostly described it as a miscommunication, which I’m not sure I buy), and we also got time to discuss the issue with White on Friday. Of course, that’s when he insisted that it was a non-issue and threatened to walk away if people didn’t stop asking about it. Because some things never change.

The Hardy thing is a story for a reason, and will continue to be. After once insisting that violence against women was something “you don’t come back from,” White has changed his tune to “he’s on the roster.” That’s a significant shift, and you can’t wipe it away just by getting the OK from Ostovich, who understandably doesn’t want to be linked with Hardy or the UFC’s decisions about him, but who isn’t the only person allowed to have an opinion on Hardy.

The ability to push back as a collective group when a promoter tries to brush past necessary questions like this, that’s one reason we formed the MMAJA. I can’t be unhappy about how it functioned in this instance.

Downes: Well, I assume you were a major influence in the response, so I don’t expect you to be unhappy with the response, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t know if I’d characterize my tone as mocking (although I understand coming to that conclusion). Rather, I wonder about the effectiveness any collective action can have.

To me, “opening a dialogue” has the same results as “raising awareness.” As you note, the UFC called it all a miscommunication and then White stonewalled any further discussion.

As much as this situation was the UFC’s own doing, it isn’t the only party to the larger issue. ESPN spent a lot of money to lock up the UFC for five years. It wants a return on that investment. Look at the headline on ESPN.com: “Former NFL player Greg Hardy to debut with UFC on Jan. 19 in Brooklyn.”

They’re leading with Hardy because it they know Hardy’s name will get new eyeballs to the sport and (hopefully) more subscribers to ESPN+.

Clay Travis did a great job pointing out the apparent hypocrisy from ESPN. As ESPN devoted time on the Monday Night Football telecast to chastise the Washington Redskins for signing Reuben Foster, they’re trying to profit from Greg Hardy.

It’s one thing to be critical of the UFC, but how do you keep ESPN honest? Especially when (I presume) there are ESPN employees in the MMAJA. The network has received a lot of criticism for how it covers the NFL (another lucrative partner), and there’s no reason to think it won’t carry water for the UFC as well.

With anything in life, there’s a temptation to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I’m not saying that the MMAJA should put some yellow vests on and head to the barricades, but what do you say to those who think the MMAJA will go the way of the MMAFA? When you think about it, there’s not much difference between the obstacles facing fighters and journalists collectivizing (other than a couple weight classes).

Fowlkes: That’s where you’re wrong. There are major differences in the obstacles. Unlike the fighters, the journalists have no powerful forces from without actively working against us. The UFC has been polite and professional with us. Other promoters have been downright encouraging. So have most of our employers. Our struggles, such as they are, are pretty much entirely internal and structural.

That doesn’t necessarily make them easy to overcome, because there are real challenges to getting any group of people to work together, but it does mean that we can’t blame anyone but ourselves if we fail at it.

You’re right that ESPN’s role in all this is worth some scrutiny. That’s bound to happen when you report on the sport but also have a broadcast deal with the biggest player in the space. But if you look at the reaction this past week from ESPN’s MMA reporters, both those who are MMAJA members and those who aren’t, it’s not like they’re holding back on their criticism.

Still, that’s one reason why I think it’s important for the MMAJA to be made up of people from all kinds of media outlets. Some of us have bigger public profiles than others, but everyone gets the same chance to voice an opinion and convince others of their position, and then we all get one vote to cast.

You don’t want people employed by the UFC’s broadcast partner to have too much influence, but they’re important journalists in this sport and you lose something if you keep them out of the conversation.

You might think opening the dialogue isn’t important, but it is. Even if everyone in that dialogue continues to just be themselves. For the media, the important thing isn’t getting a certain type of answer. It’s having the ability to ask the questions that need to be asked.

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Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who has also written for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.