In Search Of Excellence - Dana White on Suga Sean O'Malley, Conor McGregor, and Building the UFC Podcast Interview | E112

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

My guest today is the incredible Dana White. For last 23 years Dana has been the President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the leading mixed martial arts company in the world. During these 23 years, Dana has transformed the UFC from an unwanted, unloved, unsuccessful company heavily indebted into one of the greatest and largest sports franchises in history, and he's viewed by many as the greatest sports promoter in history. He is also the founder of Power Slap, a slap fighting promotion company owned by Ultimate Fighting Championship showcasing his innovative spirit in sports promotions. 00:00 - Introduction01:16 - Sold UFC for $4 Billion03:25 - Reflecting on Past and Future06:03 - The American Dream08:05 - Joe Rogan's Impact10:14 - Innovating Fight Production13:24 - Discovering Conor McGregor15:20 - Importance of Superstars in UFC17:55 - Story About Jon Jones20:31 - Motivation Post-UFC Sale23:49 - Dana's Current Motivation27:48 - Impact of Money31:15 - Family and Prioritizing Children34:03 - Importance of Preparation36:45 - Loyalty to Joe Rogan and Donald Trump42:26 - Starting a Company: Reality vs Expectation44:26 - Sphere Live Event46:52 - Power Slap: New Venture48:30 - Philanthropy: Helping Those in Need51:53 - Emotional Impact of CharitySponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

was Keenan Ivory Wayans, and he had Joe Rogan on. And Joe Rogan was talking about the UFC, and I saw it. We were talking earlier about gut. People would say, what made you bring the fear factor guy in and do all this shit? I fucking saw Joe Rogan speaking about the UFC, and I was like, that's the fucking guy I need. Conor McGregor, he's like, yeah, I know him. I've been watching him. I'm blown away by this kid.

So when we leave each other that night, I get in the car, and I called Lorenzo. I said, let me tell you what. I don't know if this kid can fight or not, but if he can even throw a punch, he's going to be a huge fucking superstar. If you really want to build your business and you want your business to become successful, the early years, you are a slave to your company. It was very, very weird. You want to talk about dark, nothing darker than the whole COVID bullshit. Everybody rolled over and everybody was willing to say, okay, everything that we worked so hard for, we're willing to lay off fucking massive percentages

of their fucking companies. People who've been with them for fucking years, people who miss kids' practices, miss kids' plays to help build this fucking business. You just become a number on a fucking spreadsheet that has to go away. You're listening to part two of my amazing conversation with Dana White, the greatest sports promoter in history

and the president of the UFC. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two with the amazing Dana White. We'll get into some of the numbers in a little bit more detail later, but the Cliff Note version is you sold the company 2016 for four billion dollars and that ended up being a 166.68 compounded annual return over a 15-year period of time which is absolutely nuts what are the three main elements that contributed to the ultimate success of that business if you could name three factors yeah a. A couple things. First and foremost, the live event.

If you come to a UFC live event, we've got this thing so dialed in. And so nobody leaves a UFC live event and goes, yeah, I don't ever want to see one of these again. You invited us last time. My son and I was unbelievable. Like, this is fucking awesome. The live event is whatever. And the other thing is it's very easy to lose sight when everything starts to happen and you start to make money and the company grows. And you get all these ancillary things that spin off the brand, whether it's gyms, merchandise, video games, whatever it might be. And then you get caught up in the bullshit with movies and TV shows and all

this other stuff that if you stay focused, this is the only thing I care about. I stay focused on who we are and what it is we really do, the core of the business. And what that is, is finding young up and coming talent, putting on the fights that matter and the fights that people want to see, and then the live and television production. That's what I focus on. As long as you stay focused to what the core of your business is, all that other shit means nothing without the core being intact and being in place. And I'm literally a psycho about that stuff

When you sold that company for four billion dollars Did you ever think back to when you were a doorman making 150 dollars a day? What were your dreams as a kid and did you ever imagine your wildest dreams? You'd be worth four hundred million dollars and built one of the most successful sports franchises in history the weird thing about me is i have no rear view mirrors on life i don't fucking look back on anything i don't look back on anything there's things that'll pop up in my head i'll be like oh yeah i remember that and shit but as far as the business is concerned i don't think like that i i don't think like people say you ever think about what you created and what you've done and all this other shit and your legacy.

And now I'm thinking about what, what, what are we doing in three years? It's not big enough. It's not, we haven't reached the potential. You know, everybody, everybody's full of shit. You can't fucking listen to anybody. When we sold, everybody said that Ari overpaid for this thing. He got fucking screwed. And this was the dumbest purchase of all time.

The UFC had peaked. These are the people that know nothing. They literally know nothing about this business. And it's the people that are supposed to be the experts. And there is no fucking, there's one fucking expert, okay? And he's sitting fucking right here. Okay. We blazed the path for this thing. We, we, we're still doing shit that has never been done in this space before. So all these guys who claim to be experts and claim to know,

don't know jack shit about our fucking business. Okay. And all I think about is next year and the year after next year. And I'm thinking about, we are so far from hitting the ceiling of what this thing is going to be. It's like power slap. You know, everybody was shitting on power. So this thing's 14 months old, 14 months.

You're still shitting on it. Still shitting on it. I love it. Keep shitting on it. Shit on it. The haters. It's the same thing that happened to the UFC. People can't wrap their head around the fact that this is the kind of hate UFC got in the old days.

It's exactly the same. But these are the do nothing, know nothing fucking media guys. When you talk about media, right, what have they done? What have they ever built? Who's ever depended on them for a fucking paycheck? What have they done? What have they ever built? Who's ever depended on them for a fucking paycheck? What are they an expert on? What the fuck have they done that they consider themselves to be an expert on anything ever, right? You're giving an opinion.

You might have an opinion. Everybody's got a fucking opinion. But you're no expert about anything that has anything to do with business because you've never fucking done it. What's your message to all the kids out there, not only kids, but young professionals, even people in their thirties and forties who have a dream and talk to the bellman now working at the Four Seasons. What's your message to that guy today about if anything's possible? Everything is possible. Everything is possible. Everything is possible.

It's one of the things that I love the most about this country. There's two things. You have the American dream which is fucking absolutely real. The American dream is incredible. If you have the right idea in the right place in the right time and you work hard enough it will absolutely happen for you, right? And then I look at Las Vegas as like a little America, because Las Vegas is the land of opportunity.

This city, it doesn't matter where you came from, what college you went to, if you didn't go to college, who you know, who you don't know, when you come to Vegas, there's just so much opportunity here, right? This is a city that you can go out with $100 in your pocket, have the greatest fucking night of your life, and come home with $1,000 in your pocket. You know what I mean? I love that about this city. This city is the anything is possible. They talk about New York,

the city that never sleeps. I've been to New York many times. They fucking sleep. This city does not fucking sleep, man. This place is 24 hours action, the greatest shopping, the greatest restaurants, the greatest entertainment. Everything is in this city. Every fucking night. If you follow me on Instagram, I come around the corner in Summerlin and there's this view of the entire city. And every night when I drive home I just have this moment of like fucking gratefulness and this unbelievable clarity where I'm just like, God damn I love this fucking city. I'm so lucky.

I just had the greatest day of my life. And I've had many fucking great days in my life. And that's how I feel every night when I drive home. I literally video it like this while I'm driving and I post another amazing day in the greatest fucking city in the world. And I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. And every day I jump out of bed ready to kick some fucking ass. And every night when I drive home, I just turn that corner and I go, I just had the greatest day ever. I love it.

In the success and growth of any business, I think there's always one or two things that really kind of prop us up. It's kind of a fulcrum, right? Our company, our tech company, nearly died so many times. Tell us about your trip to New York, going through those tapes, Wayland, Keenan Wayland, and Fear Factor, and... Oh, Ivory Keenan Wayans. Yeah, Ivory Keenan Wayans.

And then, I think a lot of people don't know how important Joe Rogan has been to the success of the New York team. It was Keenan Ivory Wayans. We both fucked his name up. Yeah. Sorry, Keenan. Keenan Ivory Wayans. So I... When we bought the company, it was a huge shit show.

I had to fly to New York and pack up the office. There was one employee, me. I had to fly to New York and pack the office up, put everything in boxes. All the shit that I thought was important or could be important and ship it back and the stuff that wasn't, throw it away and get rid of it. So I'm literally, you go in this office office there's fucking tape stacked up to the roof i don't know what's vhs could be possible exactly yeah could be possible something that's important what was it so i had to sit there for fucking hours popping every tape in and seeing what it was and one of the things that i popped in was keenan ivory wayans he had a talk show and he had Joe Rogan on and Joe Rogan was talking about the UFC

and I saw it. He was talking earlier about gut. You know what I mean? Most people would say, what made you bring the fear factor guy in and, and, and do all this shit. I fucking saw, I saw Joe Rogan speaking about the UFC and I was like, that's the fucking guy I need on the broadcast. And I ended up reaching out to Joe, and Joe was one of the greatest decisions I ever made in my entire career. So, yeah. But anyway, I had to fucking pack the office up and ship all the shit back, but through that process, and you know, I found Joe Rogan. HBO didn't innovate, you did.

Talk to us about some of the things that you did and some of the things that they didn't do that made you leap them by a million years. Well, one of the things that they didn't do that made you leap them by a million years? Well, one of the things that they did is like they would always want to, it was always quiet like they were at church while the guys were standing up there talking. At our event, the music's fucking blasting in the back. The guys are screaming in the microphone because there's fucking energy in that place, man. And what happened early on was like boxing

and even the UFC guys in the old days, they didn't give a shit about the live event. All they cared about was the television production, right? No, you're running two shows at the same time. Actually, the people that are live event are paying way more money than the people that are buying on TV. You're sitting home on your fucking couch.

You just clicked it on for 50 bucks or whatever the fuck it costs, right? And the people there, some of them flew in from other countries. They had flights, they got rooms, they had to pay for their food, all their shit. They should have a great experience, right? So this was always my thought process about the live fights. Now, you still see it today. Try and watch a boxing event. These guys, 35 minute gaps in between fights. And these guys talking about the same shit over and over. When you watch the UFC, it moves, it flies fight after fight, after fight, after fight, there's no dead time. There's always energy. And it's like a fucking rollercoaster ride, right?

Like this the whole night. And what I do is I sell holy shit moments, right? So whether you're home watching with your friends at home, or you're in a bar, or you're at the live event, there's going to be these moments where you all jump out of your seat at the same time and go, holy shit, you look at each other and the great energy and the buzz that you get. That's what we do with the live event, the production, you know, if you're at home or if you're in bars. Every one of them is a different experience. Years ago, this was seven weeks before you...

And then the other thing when you were asking about production, the other thing that we do is there's always new technology that comes out in production. We're always first or one of the first to jump on new tech technology to try to integrate into our production that I feel HBO never did. HBO fucking Showtime, the shittiest fucking organization of all time when it came to live combat sports. They fucking suck at what they do. These guys' offices are lined with Emmys. You know how many fucking Emmys I got? Two.

You know how many Emmys my guys should have, my production guys? You should be stepping over fucking Emmys when you walk through my office. But that shit's all political anyway. But Showtime won fucking Emmys, the worst fucking production guys of all time. Anyway, I had to throw that in there. I like shitting on Showtime. There's a guy, Ireland guy, who's making $233 a week on welfare checks. And you meet him over there one day. And then you call Lorenzo and you say, hey, what'd you tell him at that point in time? No, no, no. So what happened was I went over to Ireland.

I received some award from one of the colleges over there. And I went out. That was when social media first started. I had Twitter. So I told all the fans, meet me at the bar tonight. I'm buying drinks. Fucking all these people show up. Everybody keeps talking about this guy, Conor McGregor.

Conor McGregor, Conor McGregor, Conor McGregor. For some reason, whatever it was, I don't know why I was drinking too, but I thought he was a heavyweight. So I come back and I tell Sean Shelby, our matchmaker, I said, this kid, Conor McGregor, he's like, yeah, I know him. I've been watching him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We ended up signing him. So he flies out to Vegas and he and I go to dinner together and I'm fucking like, I'm blown away by this kid. Right. So when we leave each other that night, I get in the car and I called Lorenzo. I said, let me tell you what, I don't know if this kid can fight or not, but if he can even throw a punch, he's going to be a huge fucking superstar. And, uh, you know, the story of Conor McGregor

being on welfare and all this other stuff, it's just another thing that goes to show. You can take somebody that didn't go to college and didn't. Conor is a tremendous businessman. I mean, Conor is one of the best partners, if not the best partner we've ever had when it comes to being in business with somebody. And if you look at all the brands that he has built off of his brand, very, very sharp kid. And when you hear him speak, he's very articulate about fighting. And again, when you talk about fighter IQ, like Tyson, Conor's fighter IQ is off the

charts. So many leagues need star power to grow. You've got golf, you've got Tiger Woods, you had Michael Jordan forever, LeBron James. Can you tell everybody just how important that is to have your superstar and is Sugar Sean O'Malley, who is on my show sitting here in your chair, is he the next Conor McGregor? Yeah, I think everything's based on star power. And you will have this circulation of stars that come in and out of the the the company um but absolutely i mean started with chuck liddell and

matt hughes and you know uh then got we went through anderson silva and george saint pierre and then you get into ronda rousey and conor mregor era. Yes, they're all key and they all built different segments of the business, right? Conor ignited Europe like crazy and then got to a point where the rest of the world became Conor McGregor fans. Ronda Rousey showed what was possible for women and now the women's fighting is, you know, the fight on UFC 300 between Weili Zhang and Yan, gonna be a badass fight, these women are very technical and absolutely badass, and yeah, it's all, we just built the PI Performance Institute down in Mexico, the amount of talent we're gonna be ripping out of Mexico for the next three to five years is going to be off the charts.

But, yeah, it's all star-driven. So many people think Conor McGregor is the greatest UFC fighter of all time. You don't. Who is your – you said someone in particular is the greatest fighter of all time. Conor McGregor is the biggest superstar in the UFC ever. Who's the best fighter you've ever had? Jon Jones. Jon Jones is the greatest.

You could actually call him the greatest fighter of all time. Because when you talk about styles, do you know what he does to a boxer in a real fight? He mauls him, right? Jon Jones is one of the baddest human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. So I'm a football fan. Grew up in Detroit. Was a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan. We had a phenomenal year. Cliff Kingsbury, who was my second guest on the show, is also a good friend. He was coach of the Cardinals. John's brother played for the Cardinals. And my wife and I had very good seats, thanks to Cliff. And there's this dude sitting next to me. Everyone's coming up to him.

It was annoying as shit. The aisle, I'm here, my wife is here, and everyone's reaching over, right? Hey, you know, take a photo, take a photo. So halftime rolls around and said, hey, man, like, can you tell me what's going on here? Then I wasn't a fight fan, knew nothing about him, didn't recognize him. And we had a really nice conversation. He said, yeah, you want to take a picture with me? The guy could not have been any nicer if he tried.

Who was it? Jon Jones. Oh, Jon Jones. Jon Jones. He was sitting next to me. I couldn't understand who all these people were. Got it, got it, got it. I mean, 100 people were coming.

It was so fucking annoying. I'm trying to watch the game. Right. Right? But you know what? He shook everyone's hand, took a picture with every single person and it didn't bother him one bit.

He could not have been any nicer. It's one of the greatest things about our sport too is that the fans, everybody's very approachable and if you show up at a UFC event and you're a fan of somebody, you're probably going to meet them and you're probably going to get a picture with them. You can't say that in the NBA or the NFL or any other sport.

What's the greatest fight of all time? Fight? That's a tough one because we've had so many incredible fights. To pick just one and say that was the best, it's almost impossible to do. Let's talk about money, which I think is a great motivator for so many people. You made reportedly $400 million on the first sale. You make a lot of money today. You said that first sale fucked you up, felt like it was a divorce, was the end of something. Then you had a conversation with Rob Dyrdek.

What did he tell you, and why did you think you were fucked up? Because that's everyone's dream. You made hundreds of millions of dollars, and for so many people, it's everything. I'm trying to remember what the Rob Dyrdek story is. Dyrdek and I have talked about a lot of things. You know, Dyrdek is a partner of mine in Throw One, another company that me and the Fertitta's own with Rob. But I wouldn't say that it was, I had a conversation. The problem that I had when we sold is I didn't want to sell.

I had enough money. I'm not motivated by money. I'm motivated by winning. I like to win. And when you win, money is what happens. You know what I mean? And when I got, I was bummed out that I wouldn't be working with the Fertittas again every day.

I was just in a weird place when that whole thing happened. And Lorenzo basically said to me, Dane, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move on. Be happy for me. You're my best friend. Be happy for me. And that's what sort of woke me up.

And I said, what do I say to that? Right? I get it. And then it was more of a worry about who am I getting into business with next? Because nobody would buy the company unless I stayed. Nobody was buying this thing unless I agreed to stay for a certain period of time. So the question was, who am I going to be in business with next? Well, it ended up being Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell. At Endeavor Agency, which is the largest or second largest talent agency in the world.

The largest. The largest. Now it is. And I'm having a blast. Me and Ari work really well together. Patrick White sells a fucking stud and, um, I, uh, I love it. You know, I'm, I'm having as much fun, if not more fun than I had in the past. I, I have more opportunity to do a lot of other things that I want to do. I'm not just in this, in this UFC box. I mean, I own a ton of other businesses that I want to do. I'm not just in this UFC box. I mean, I own a ton of other businesses, and I get to, I'm having a blast.

Yeah, so it couldn't have turned out any better. I was worried, and I was all caught up in, and I was like, well, fuck. I thought we were going to go on and do something else together, which I'm still here, and we're still doing tons of shit together so it couldn't have worked out any better a lot of fighters fight because they want to be great fighters a lot of fighters fight for the money can you be a great fighter if you're in it for the money yeah I think that you know

money fucks everything up at the end of the day. You have to be a certain type of person to not let money fuck you up. I'll give you an example. Like our company was like sort of a Microsoft. There were people that had a percentage of the thing. Most of those people when we sold retired and left and, you know, went and did nothing or whatever the fuck they're doing. I could never do that because it was never about the money for me anyway. I love doing this. I love building brands. I love taking things that people say can't be done and doing it. Um, but I get it for people that are about them. It's always this thing. It's like when you and I were growing up, not so much anymore these days, but when you and I were growing up, everybody was

like, yeah, I'm going to fucking retire and sit on that beach with the pina colada and all that bullshit. How many fucking days are you going to sit on a beach and drink fucking pina coladas before you lose your mind? Right? It's just, I just went on vacation. I didn't want to go. I went to Costa Rica with my family. My, my daughter, my daughter is the only one that can get me to do shit that I don't want to do. So she wanted to go to Costa Rica. I didn't want to go to Costa Rica. I ended up in Costa Rica and I had a fucking blast. It was a great trip. Four seasons? No, we, we rented a house down there. Okay. Yeah, the four seasons. Yeah, we rented a house down by the four seasons.

Exactly. That's exactly where we were. And after day fucking four, I was like, if I put sun lotion on my fucking skin one more time and sit out in the sun one more time, I'm going to lose my mind. So it was like the perfect amount of time to go relax and then come home. But these people that think they want to retire and you start doing that shit and you do it every day and not stay in the game and not get up and have to stress and worry about shit every day, that's what I love. I love that shit.

I'm never going to retire, ever. I will die working. What motivates you today the most? Again, I like to win. So the way that I look at my life is I say to myself, how can I be better today than I was yesterday in every aspect of my life? How can I be a better person? How can I be in better shape? How can I, uh, how can I run the business better? How can we, you know,

how can we make this promo better than the last fucking promo we did? How can we make this fucking fight better than the last one? That's why every year, every single year, 23 fucking years in a row, we beat the year before. Every year. And then we're coming out of a year and I'm like, I don't know. This might be the end of the fucking run. I don't know how we beat last year. And we do. Because I'm always focused on what's next and how do we get better than we were yesterday.

You talk about money fucking people up. Yeah. So, yeah. I go off track. You got to pull me back on the fucking tracks every once in a while. So when you're a fighter, you know, and you come into the sport and you want to win a world title and you want to do this and you want to do that, then you start to make millions of dollars. It's impossible to be the same type of fighter you were. You're not as hungry as you were and all this other stuff,

unless you are wired a certain way. And the guy that I always think about with this is Tom Brady. So Tom Brady took less money, right? Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. I don't know if Tom Brady was ever the highest-paid quarterback when he was on his run. You didn't see him running around doing endorsements and all this other shit. He focused on football.

He focused on winning. He focused on staying with a group of people that were focused on building a dynasty. He would take less money so that they could bring more good players in and build a great team. Then once he hit that goat status, right? And it could not be denied anymore that he's the greatest of all time. Look at the shit he's doing now. He's got endorsements like fucking, he did a, what did he do? A fucking half a billion dollar deal with Fox for commentating. Amazing, right? Right. Now he's

making all the money based off everything that he has worked on for the last, always took care of his body, never fucking, you know, uh, partied and did all that shit. I don't know if you could do it any better than Tom Brady did. Yeah. And it's the real deal. I was at a wedding in Baker's Bay in the Bahamas, and Tom was essentially the best man. And he was there. He wasn't drinking with all the Patriots, but, like, Bus Walker was there, and Amendola was there. These guys are whooping it up.

Tom and Giselle went to bed. He was there at 9 o'clock. He was like, guys, got to go. And every morning before anyone's waking up, he was with his trainer every single day. And you saw it on the beach. That guy traveled everywhere with him. Yeah. I mean, that's the real deal.

And you talk about fucking money, fucking people up. Our technology company had a lot of young programmers who were in college. And they got stock options. There were a couple of kids who were 18 years old, 19 years old in one case, who made $50 million as a 19-year-old, right? He was there early, got 10,000 shares of stock. We had a split of 18.6 to 1, and you can do the math, right? When our stock is at $345 a share, you never know where people sell their stock, right? You got lockups and you're still working at the company,

but these guys made a ton of money. Most of them dropped out of school. And it's sad, very sad to see. So people think money's great, but it can be a curse as well. Not all wealthy people are happy. I know so many fucking rich people who are the most miserable motherfuckers I've ever met in the world.

Money is a tool to have fun. If you look at it any other way, you're fucked up. I don't worship money. Money, I don't care. I've given away more money than I thought I'd ever fucking make, to be honest with you, number one. Number two, if you are miserable in life period, you're really going to be fucking miserable when you get a bunch of money. Okay. Cause there's a lot of, a lot of problems that come with money. If that's the way you think. Um, I don't ever fucking chase money or I'm not a big money guy.

Listen, I ain't knocking money. Money is absolutely fun to have. And, and, uh, you can do a lot. You're not sweating the fucking light bill. You know what I mean? Or the car payment next month. But, um, life is about memories and experience, right? When you have, when you have kids, when I'm gone and my wife is gone, all you have left are your kids are going to remember things that you did together, experiences that you had and a time that was spent. That's what money is awesome for creating these memories and experiences with people that you care about that when you're gone, first of all, you experienced them and got to do them. Yeah. about that when you're gone first of all you experienced them and got to do them yeah and then when you're gone these are all the things that that they remember

and even on a much smaller scale with the type of money that that we had growing up my mother would always make sure that every summer we spent like two weeks at the beach and those two weeks at the beach when i look back it, are some of the greatest memories I have as a kid. You know what I mean? That's what fucking life is about. I've got five kids, three in college, seniors, twins who are graduating, Wisconsin and Cornell. My son, who you met, goes to Menlo College. He's a sophomore.

We've got a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. And one thing I did with all my kids starting at six years old, oneon-one trips you're busy I'm busy there's always a million reasons not to go and as a dad it's one of the most special successful things that I've done I mean these trips that we take are incredible as your kids get older and you know this as well they're in college they got their friends it's hard to see them and like one of my friends said well you bribe them with these good trips I mean I don't give a shit what I'm bribing them with but if i get to spend a week with my kids without any phones i mean they're still on their phones but just dad and daughters and dad and son i mean

my son comes out here we go once a year in las vegas we race ferraris out on that track he likes to shoot guns we go shooting guns you know we went to your your, we played golf at Summit when we were here. And it was just, you know, one of the greatest, he said that it was the greatest weekend I've ever had. And these memories are incredible. And you don't need to have money to do it. I agree. I agree. Listen, hanging out and spending time with your kids is probably the fucking greatest thing that you will ever do in life. And I say this all the time, we fail in life. We fail in life. We make mistakes and we do things. One thing you can't fail at is being a parent. I mean, that's the one thing that you really have to. And I got to give my wife a lot of credit. My wife's Italian. She's fucking crazy

Italian. You know, everything. She didn't give a shit about any of this stuff. Could give a fuck about any of this. She Could give a fuck about any of this. She is all about the family and the family doing things together and the family, you know, that's her life. She don't give a shit about anything else. When we talk about success, one of the main ingredients of my own success is something I call extreme preparation. So that means when someone's preparing for a meeting or a podcast, they spend one hour, 30 minutes, I'm spending 10 hours. For a meeting with Marriott and my beaches company called Sandy, we built a Yelp for beaches. So I've cataloged over 100 categories of data, more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. We had a meeting with Marriott. That's brilliant. Thank you. So we had

a meeting with Marriott and I love cold calling. I go to these conferences, I cold call as a kid. I sold t-shirts door to door. CEO of Marriott's at the milking conference out in Los Angeles. I waited, I mean I hover. I just wait for her to speak, nice to meet you. I have this company, Sandy.

They knew my tech company very well, which I'm very lucky. It gives me sort of a brand and credibility. I told her about the idea just like you. She said the same thing. We set up a meeting and when she set up the meeting, it's with six senior people, right? I got a senior vice president. I look on LinkedIn, 14 years. I'm like, this is fucking great. I mean, Miriam, we want a sponsorship, maybe global sponsorship or a startup. We had, I don't know, what do we have at that point? Four or five people.

We have 13 people now. And I'm like, oh God, this is gonna be the fucking greatest thing, we're gonna get Marriott. We got all these people on the phone. Usually it doesn't happen that way, right? You get somebody and they get someone else, someone else. We prepared 70 hours. I went through, I'm not exaggerating,

50 versions of that PowerPoint. It blew them away. We didn't get the deal. I don't give a shit, right? And they said, this is the best presentation that we've ever seen. We will get Marriott at some point and it'll be a 10 times better deal for us.

Sometimes the best deals you have are the deals that you don't do. But talk to me how extreme preparation has been a central element of your career how have you prepared more than any other person for certain things that you've done yeah preparation is everything i was actually just in a fucking it's funny you're hitting me with all this weird shit today i was just in a meeting uh about two hours ago with a fucking guy who didn't prepare for the fucking meeting oh disaster the fucking joke no he came me, pitching to me. And I hit him with

the fucking, the low hanging fruit questions, okay? That he should rip off the top of his head. And I literally was like, this is a fucking joke that this guy even had the balls to show up to this fucking meeting and talk to me about this and have no, fucking data no no answers for my questions and he should know more about the fucking product than i should right um please tell me you kicked him out you know i won't even tell you on the thing what happened with it you're too nice if you didn't kick him out of me so man we we've had some brutal meetings at the office yeah brutal get out man i hate that shit i hate people that don't, that, that, that come in and, and don't prepare properly for fucking meetings. Um, I have a meeting on Monday, um,

in LA and I've been prepping for it for, for fucking, uh, 10 days now, you know, going, ripping through every number, making sure that when I walk in that fucking room, I'm the smartest guy in the room on, on this subject. You know, any questions they room, I'm the smartest guy in the room on this subject. You know, any questions they ask, I'm going to have the answers for. Questions they don't ask, I'm going to have the answers for. Yeah, it's everything. But that's the thing about the fight business. When I end up in a room with somebody, nobody's going to ask me a fucking question that I don't know. I know more than they know because I'm actually the one building this thing. You know what I mean? We're doing shit that has never been done before.

Extreme preparation is everything to me. And my goal is always to be the most prepared person who's walked into any room that I've been in. And I'm busy, you're busy. So if someone is pitching me on a meeting, I mean, I'm also a venture capitalist as well. So I take these meetings. The first question I ask is, what's my dog's name?

If they don't fucking know my dog's name, I'm honestly the meeting is 30 seconds. You guys have seen it I'll kick people out because it's right on my website right on my bio They don't know where I went to school or the name of my tech company Then we get into some more detailed questions and I'm going to throw them kind of the hundred mile an hour zinger Fastball just to see how much level of research that they've done. You win. You're crazier than me. You win that one.

Yeah. It's been great. I don't expect that type of preparation. We have a small team. You're a fucking numbers guy. You guys are more detailed on on lots of different things i i i'm i'm lucky that i can go in a room and when it comes to anything that has to do with the fighting you know and what i want and what i'm looking for

i'm absolutely prepared but i might have craig borsari my head of production or other key guys in the room that would have to answer some questions that, you know, on a detailed level like that. I don't view myself as a numbers guy. I built 100-page spreadsheets years ago when I was a banker. I mean, I don't do any of that stuff right now. I bet on people, just like the Fatidas bet on you. That's my business. I want to talk about something that a lot of people don't think is

important to be a good leader, and that's loyalty. And you were incredibly loyal to Joe Rogan after he got canceled. And then a lot of people talk about Donald Trump. And they say, oh, Dana and Donald Trump. But I don't think a lot of people know how you started with Donald Trump. So can you talk about both of those guys? Well, I'm extremely loyal to all my people, man. Some of my people have been with me for 20 years, 20, 21 years. So when you talk about loyalty, it's not just with big fucking stars like, oh, Joe Rogan and Donald Trump and all these other guys.

It's the fucking, it's the girl that works over in fucking medical that's been with me for 21 years and god knows what she sacrificed for the fucking job traveling on the road and all the early days and all this shit that when you get these fucking guys that when you get to to a company like ours and you start looking at uh-oh we're going into covid let's look at spreadsheets and uh they don't even look at names. You go right to the fucking number. This person makes $200,000 a year, 250. You don't even become a fucking name. Yeah. Right. No fucking way, man. I, if you're with me, you're fucking with me. And we'll figure out, let me tell you what, we'll start chopping trees. If we're having trouble financially,

we'll get rid of some of the fucking landscaping and we'll get rid of fucking this and that before we start getting rid of fucking human beings. Okay, number one. Number two, Donald Trump has been an incredible fucking friend to me for 20 years. And- Tell people what they don't know.

When people try to shit on him and put all this false information out there about the guy, I'll tell you this. Look at what he's going through right now. He's running into a new election. They're trying to fucking bury him financially. All these things that they're doing to him. Easter Sunday, he fucking calls me and says, I just want to say happy Easter to you he fucking calls me and says, just want

to say happy Easter to you and your family. You guys having a good day? That fucking Easter Sunday, he calls me and wishes me a happy Easter. You know what I mean? For this guy to, when, when, when me and my wife went through what we went through, uh, two, uh, New Year's Eves ago, he called me three fucking times a week for two weeks, making sure I was okay, and making sure she was okay. You know, how the kids, that's who fucking Donald Trump is.

Fuck all the other, you know, all the other, politics is a dirty fucking business, man. It's nasty, it's disgusting. This guy is a fucking good friend. He's a good human. After he won the election, he asked me and my wife to come out and have dinner with him we sat with for fucking four hours talking about everything he could talk about um and and one of the things that that donald trump always would say to me is like the whole racist thing he's like i ran some of the biggest hotels

and owned some of the biggest hotels in the fucking world. People from all over the world worked for me. All different colors and, you know, nationalities and religions. Never was I ever called a fucking racist until I ran for president. Ever. What these guys both have in common, they were both there for you when nobody else was. Yeah. Wasn't your first fund at the Taj Mahal? Well, again, to his business brilliance, I mean, Donald Trump saw this thing before anybody did.

When you think about he invited us to the Taj, cut us a good deal. We did our first... No venues wanted us. We went to the Taj. Our first two fights were at the Taj Mahal. Trump brand here, UFC brand down there. He brought the thing into the Trump, but he was always a fight fan of all kinds of fights. I mean, I think Mike Tyson fought at his place nine or ten times or something like that.

Always been a fight fan, saw this thing. He was actually a competitor of mine. So the affliction fucking lunatic that was calling and threatening me all the time, Donald Trump, they did some kind of a deal for Trump and Trump Jr. to kind of be a part of that thing, right, at the time. And so people would always try to get me to talk shit about Trump because, you know, he was looked at as a competitor. I said, I will never, ever say a bad word about Donald Trump. Donald Trump gave us our, you know, and he saw it. Yeah, he got it. And he wasn't going to get a piece of the UFC, but he saw this thing. They offered him.

They came to him with an offer. Said, would you be interested in being an investor? And yeah. So the guy's always been, and I told this story a million times, but our first big story was on the cover of the New York Times. And Donald Trump wrote on that cover of the New York Times, congratulations, Dana, I always knew you'd do it. Even though he was involved in another way or whatever,

and you're the man and all this stuff. Those are the things you don't forget. When you're battling trying to grow this business and do what you do. And he's always been that guy. People love a winner. And the other thing is, when he asked me to speak at the Republican convention, this is how the conversation started. If you don't want to do this, I completely understand, but I would be honored if you would speak at the Republican national convention for me. And I'm not a political guy. Everybody thinks I'm like

some fucking crazy Republican or something. I'm not, you know what I'm, I'm about, I'm about common sense. Okay. That's what I'm for, for common sense. If you ask me now how I lean, when I was younger, I was way more of a Democrat, you know, and as I get older, I probably swing more libertarian than anything. But yeah, everybody told me not to do it. Don't do this. Don't get involved in this shit. He's not going to win. You know, like, yeah, fuck that.

This guy has been a good guy to me, and he asked me to do it. And all I'm going to do, I'm not going to go up and go, hey, Democrats are this and that. You should go. No, let me tell you who this guy is, and let me tell you why I'm standing here and why I'm doing this. This is who Donald Trump is. People start companies for different reasons. People talk about work-life balance and oh, I want to start a company, I'm going to grow up but I'm on my own time.

You moved the birth of your second son for a Chuck Liddell fight. So what's your advice to all those people out there who are going to start companies and say, man, I'm going to be able to go pick up my kids at school and I'm going to take Saturdays off and not work seven days a week. It's the funniest thing that I ever say when I see people talking about, yeah, I think I'm going to start my own business. You know why? I want a lot of free time. I want to be my own boss and I want to, yeah, you better get a fucking nine to five. Cause let me tell you what you, you, if you really want to build your business and you want your business to become successful,

the early years, you are a slave to your company. If you look at the success that we've had, I'm in the office, I'm not going to say I'm the first guy at the office, but I'm there at nine o'clock in the morning every day and I'm definitely the fucking last guy to leave every night. I don't get out of the office till eight 30 quarter to nine every fucking night. There's the whole, the old fucking saying, you know, Oh, it's easy to get to the top, but it's harder to stay on top. It's the absolute fucking truth. You know, your rise to the top goes

like this, but then what's next. And the other question is what's the top. I already told you we're not at the top yet. There's so much more room for growth in this business and so much more work to be done. If you think you've got to the top, you're fucked up. There is no top. You never get to the fucking top. There's always ways to get bigger, to get better,

to get more efficient. You're always going to grow. If you stop fucking growing, it's over. Let's talk about the Sphere. And you're going to be the first live sporting event at the Sphere. Mexican Independence Day, I think September 14th this upcoming year. How did that come about and how amazing is that going to be? So I went to the U2 show when the Sphere opened and I was blown away by the technology of the Sphere. And this is what we were talking about earlier about

when new technology comes out. And the thing that I loved was all the people were saying, yeah, it's going to be hard to do a sporting event. It's weird with a concert because you're not really watching the band. You're watching all this other stuff. And as soon as people start getting negative about something, I didn't look at all the negative aspects of the sphere. I looked at all the positive aspects of the sphere. I look at it completely. Because anybody that goes to the sphere will walk out of the thing going,

what a fucking unbelievable experience. Because it's true. But it's different and it's unique and it's never been done before. Um, and people have these things about why this can't be done and why you couldn't do a sporting event there. And I'm like, yeah, I want to do it and I want to do it now. So I literally the next day told all my fucking production guys, uh, my guy that does tickets and all that shit, you're going to the next U2 show. Go watch this thing. I want you to call me as soon as the fucking show's over and tell me what you think. And they all called me and said, this is a fucking cool experience. And I said, we're doing

it. We're doing it. So the timing, again, everything was about timing. I got into sort of a beef with MGM over a date, and MGM ended up letting me do this fight at the Sphere. And we're going to fucking kill it. My wife used to date Jim. My wife didn't date Jim. One of my wife's best friends dated Jim Dolan for six years. And the four of us had dinner four and a half years ago.

He's telling me about this thing he's building. It seemed ridiculous, by the way. People shit on Jim. They don't love him. They don't think he's a good sports owner, but he's telling us about this thing and how much it's costing. It was hard to imagine it, and they're still shitting on him now. He sure did.

I mean, they're losing a shit ton of money. The technology in this thing is un-fucking-believable. Yeah. Well, I'm here, and he's opening a bunch more all over the world. Yeah. Hopefully, they'll make money. Yeah. So let's talk about PowerSlap.

We were losing shitloads of money in the early days, too. Yeah. Yep. There aren't too many businesses that come out the gate and just start fucking cranking cash. PowerSlap is one of them that did. Power slap is the most successful thing I've ever been a part of in such a short amount of time. It's fucking insane. But you got $36 million in sponsorship money right out of the gate. Is that that's based on you? And why is it the most exciting thing you've ever done?

Well, first of all, this thing back up for one second. I'm sorry. Tell people what it is. Yeah. So power slap, you probably saw it in 2018 on Instagram. These dudes coming out of Russia and Poland that were slapping each other. Unbelievable knockouts and all this stuff. I'm like, this is fucking crazy. And I own the UFC. And I said, I started taking a deeper dive into it and looking at it. And I looked on YouTube.

This thing looked like it was filmed on a flip phone in a barn somewhere. And the production quality was terrible. And it had 350 million views, which at the time was like a Justin Bieber video. And I was like, holy shit. What would happen if I did this and did it the right way? And the answer is 6 billion views, 14 months, 6 billion views. And think about this. We have 13 million followers on social media in 14 months. Right now on YouTube, we have more subscribers than NASCAR, the, uh, major league soccer, the PGA,

um, and, and a few others. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it is, we were on last year. We were number 15 on Tik TOK on the platform out of billions of views. This thing is a social media fucking juggernaut. And sponsors love it, you know, because of the social media aspect of it. I think philanthropy is super important to you. I know it is to me as well. You've done so many amazing things for so many people.

You gave a million dollars to the Las Vegas shooting victims. You've raised money for armed forces charities. You won a fundraiser. You raised $4 dollars for i want you to talk about connor o'grady and the girl in thailand and what motivated you to do amazing things for them um it's shit i i mean the girl in thailand has become you know super special to me i i literally would stay off the internet however many years ago this was, on weekends. And for some reason, I ended up on fucking internet on a Saturday. And there was this guy that had posted something that he had just come back from Thailand,

and he was training Muay Thai over there with this legendary coach and his daughter was dying because she needed some type of heart surgery and she was going to die in the next several days if she didn't get the money and it was going to be $50,000 and the guy was like Dana White you need to fucking put this money up right now and donate it to her. You fucking bet this much playing blackjack, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And basically coming at me like that. And people on the thing were going, whoa, he can do whatever he wants with his money. You know, why do you expect it? But this is the way I talk.

This guy was talking to me the way that I talk. And he is wrong. I was like, no, this dude's fucking absolutely right. He's not wrong. He's fucking right. I, I'm supposed to do this. It was fucking weird. Whatever the reason was. So I ended up reaching out. We find out if it's real, it's real. And I send the $50,000 over and, um, you know, her and I obviously, so when you go into their gym, there's this massive picture of me in there, and then there's a big picture of me over her bed, like I'm her guardian angel, and I pay for her schooling, and I pay for all of her medical stuff. And, you know, she's like, yeah.

Anyway, I don't like talking about a lot of this stuff. But, you know, I'm in a position that I'm very lucky that I can help other people. And I'm not one of these guys that likes walking out with the fucking big check and doing all that bullshit I do stuff because I should do it and I do stuff because I want to do it I don't do it because because I want to be recognized doing it but I don't like talking about it right so we met at the scale conference in May last year kelly o'connor shout out to her did this amazing thing i interviewed you on stage in the grand ballroom at the bellagio hotel i asked you about the girl you don't want to talk about it i don't like talking about it and you started crying on stage that is not. I did not start crying. I think you want to try and make me

cry. But you said I wasn't expecting this. This is an Oprah moment. I do not like talking about this stuff. OK, but you teared up. And even now, you know, you tear up a little bit. What what are you thinking when when you talk about these amazing things that you've done? Why is it so emotional for you? I don't know. I don't know what it is. And I don't like talking about charity work at all. I don't like it. We do tons of it because we should do it. I think that earlier when I told you about money is a tool to have fun. And if you look at it any other way, you're fucked up. Money is also a tool to help people, people that, you know, they say money can't fix all your problems. Money can fix a lot of fucking problems. If you, if you, if you use it in the

right way and in the right areas, you can save people's lives. You can change people's lives. You can make life easier for a lot of people. And I like that aspect of money. I like that aspect of money more than, listen, I'm not gonna bullshit and act like I don't have fucking nice cars and shit like that. But you can use money to do a lot of cool, fun shit.

And you can use money to do a lot of really, really good things. And that's, I like that about money. You do a lot of great things for people not about money. I mean, you're always taking photos. You did an amazing thing. For my son who

sorry who told me we shouldn't even be talking about this shit right now this is not good stuff to talk about who told me that the fight that you told me

we go to this conference my son wanted to go you can we go to this conference, you know, my son wanted to go. I'm like, you know, you can't go to this conference. You sent this video. Hey, Charlie, I can't believe, you know, your dad didn't bring it here. Thank you for being such a huge fan. You go to whatever show

you want it and the reason that I'm crying is because he said it was the greatest night of his life and so we can end the show with that I want to thank you you're an amazing guy

listen when you can do these type of things for people we should have ended this podcast 10 minutes ago. I told you guys. But this is what makes it human. This is human. When you are in a position where you're able to do these kind of things. And what you're saying to me right now, you know how many fucking fathers and sons have come up to me and said, Thank you. Some of the best moments I've ever had with my father. You know how many fucking fathers and sons have come up to me and said,

thank you, some of the best moments I've ever had with my father, some of the best moments I've ever had with my son were UFC events or watching the fights together. And this is exactly what I'm talking about. What life is all about is creating memories and creating experiences with people that you care about. And whether they're this level or this level, whatever your level in life is, it doesn't matter. It's all about these experiences.

Right. Thank you. Thank you. You're an amazing guy. I appreciate you. What the fuck you're trying to do to me. But yeah, Jesus Christ, we should have ended this 10 minutes ago. Yeah. You're amazing. I appreciate it.

I appreciate you.