In Search Of Excellence - Dana White: Podcast Interview on His First Fight, Joe Rogan, the Mafia, & Building the UFC | E111

Episode Date: May 14, 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 - Introduction03:18 - Dana's Tough Childhood10:12 - Dana's First Fight17:58 - Dana's Work Experience as a Bellman25:18 - Move to Las Vegas27:15 - Timing is Everything34:29 - Is College Important40:44 - Cleaning Up the UFC43:06 - The Ultimate Fighter Breakthrough48:09 - The American Dream, Hardship, and PerseveranceSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

This guy was a scumbag and used to terrorize us. Come over and beat on our door. I was scared. That guy yelling at my mother. That was the day that shit all changed. I said, you ever fucking stick your head over this wall again and say anything to us, I'm gonna beat the shit out of you.

But when you talk about fighters, a lot of these guys would have been dead or in jail. They got to live a life they would have never even dreamed of because of what they were capable of doing with their hands. Funny because these people are not wired the way that we are wired. I hear a lot of people say, feel sorry for them that they have to do that. They feel

sorry for you. That you sit in a car and bumper to bumper traffic every day and you go sit in your fucking cubicle and get yelled at by some fucking 22 year old who just fucking graduated college. My guest today is the incredible Dana White. For the last 23 years, Dana has been the president of the 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 in debt, into one of the greatest and largest sports franchises in history. And he is viewed by many as the greatest sports promoter in history.

He is also the founder and owner of Power Slap, a fast-growing slap promotion company, which we're going to talk about later in the show. Dan, it's great to be with you. It's great to see you again. Thanks for being on my show. Thanks for having me. So you were born in Connecticut. You were raised in Massachusetts. Your parents divorced when you were young. Your dad was an alcoholic. Can you tell us about you going to see Beverly Hills Cop with your dad? Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of Beverly. When you were nine years old.

There were a lot of Beverly Hills Cops moments with my dad. You know, my dad would, I had one of those dads. It's weird you're asking me this question because I was literally thinking about this this morning. It's like, you know, you ever see these people that are like, oh, I had no role models growing up and I didn't. Everybody has role models. Yeah.

They're not necessarily the good role model that you're thinking of, but we all grow up with role models. And you can either choose to be like somebody or you can choose to not be like somebody. And I think that there were a lot of things in my upbringing. I wouldn't change one thing about the way that I grew up. I love the way that I grew up. I learned a lot from both of my parents on, you know, what I didn't want to be and what I did want to be as a parent and life and things like that. I think that my dad, you know, wasted a lot of good time and I think my dad wasted a lot of talent on alcohol. There was another incident when you were 15 years old with a neighbor and a dog that also influenced your life forever. What happened there and what were the lessons you learned?

Well, that's one of the things about when you grow up in a house and you're like the man of the house no matter how old you are. And there was this guy who lived behind us in our neighborhood, and he knew that it was a single mom with two little kids, and this guy was a scumbag and used to terrorize us, like, all the time. Come over and beat on our doors and shit, you know, and I was scared. And then one day I was sitting at the kitchen table. I was 15 years old. I remember this like it was yesterday. And I hear somebody yelling. And I realized it's that guy yelling at my mother over the back fence.

And that was the day that shit all changed. I literally jumped up from the kitchen table, ran out back, jumped up on the wall. I said, you ever fucking stick your head over this wall again and say anything to us? I'm going to beat the shit out of you. And the coward that this guy was, the 15 year old kid who finally challenged him, we never heard a word from that guy ever again. And that was the day that everything changed for me as a, you know, as a human, I would say. So let's go back to when you were five years old, your grandmother's house. Holy shit. You investigate my whole life here let's go back to when you were five years old, your grandmother's house. Holy shit.

You investigate my whole life here? What did I do when I was five? Well, you were five, you were at your grandmother's house, and you saw your first fight. And tell me what you remember about that fight. Who was in it, and what did you recall on that day? I don't remember if I was five when I got in my first fight. I don't remember the age that I actually was, but I got in a fight with the two twins. Not your first fight, but the first fight you saw on TV. Oh, I thought you were talking about the first fight I got into. I was going to say that was the twins next door. Well, tell us about the twins. The twins. Don't ever fight twins. Let

me tell you that. Don't get in a fight with a twin. I got in a fight with one of the twins. I started winning and the other twin hit me in the face with a snow shovel and messed my face up, knocked my teeth out, did a bunch of stuff to me. Yeah, don't fight twins. Remember that, everybody. The first fight I ever saw, yeah, I was a young kid, and I was at my grandmother's house, and all my uncles were there, and it was an Ali fight.

And I just remember the energy in the room and the buzz and how everybody was reacting to this fight. And I loved it. I loved every minute of it. And that's what started to give me, you know, sort of the direction that I wanted to go in in life. I knew that I loved fighting and I loved everything about it. And by the time I was 19, I knew that that was exactly what I wanted to do forever. Right.

So let's go back. What were you like as a person or as a kid? We all know what you're like today. You're a pretty famous guy. We all see your social media. You're tough. You're funny. Great promoter.

But what were you like between 5 and 15? Well, thank you. 5 and 15. I don't know. I'd say I was... Were you outgoing between five and 15? Well, thank you. Five and 15. I don't know. I'd say I was... Were you outgoing? Were you popular? I mean, yeah. I had lots of friends and I was very outgoing.

And it's like, I don't know if you ever experienced this before, but when I got older, I talked to some people that I grew up with and went to high school with. And they talked about how bad they hated high school and went to high school with, and they talked about how bad they hated high school. I hated high school because I hated school, right? I didn't like school. Yeah, I kicked out twice, but we're going to talk about that in a minute. Right, but school, school is fun. I love school. You know, you learn so much in school forget about the knowledge side of it you know people and personalities and and and things like that my school experience was incredible and I talked to these people that I felt had the same type of they were my friends and I felt that they had the same same type of

school experience that I did and I find out that that wasn't true it's like today we were just talking about this the other night at dinner, me and my buddies. So there was this guy named Barry Bogart. I don't know what ever happened to Barry, but he was a football player. And he was a year older than me. Now me and Barry both grew up in families that didn't have money. And we went to Bishop Gorman here in Las Vegas and it's a wealthy school. A lot of wealthy kids went to school. And, you know, it's one of those schools if you

didn't have the right clothes or the right car and all that kind of stuff, you felt, I never felt that way. That shit never bothered me. But Barry Bogart, you know, I don't know how this works, but, you know, to pay for school, he had to work in the kitchen, right? So think about that. Think about how that must feel to be a kid and have to work in the kitchen and serve your other classmates while you're at school, right? The balls it takes, the heart, you know, to get up every day and do that. Embarrassing as shit. Exactly, right?

And Barry Bogart did that. So, you know, we're kids, we're punks, we're stupid. So we're at the table one day and a guy's eating his fries and there's a hair in his fry. And I said, oh, Barry Bogart was probably, you know, in your fries. So I'm walking down the hallway. And when you think about this story, if this was today, right, Barry Bogart's parents would get called in, He'd get kicked out of school, whatever.

Barry Bogart comes out of nowhere, grabs me by the neck, slams me against the lockers and says, if I ever hear you talking shit about me again, right? And while he's saying this, he's unbuckling my belt and unbuttoning my pants. Remember the old school ketchup bottles? He literally pulls out and goes and empties that thing right in my fucking underwear. Right? And I'm like, I'll never say another fucking thing about you again. I go to the bathroom, fucking take my shit off, throw them away, and go back to fucking school. You know what I didn't do? I didn't tell my mother.

I didn't tell the teacher. I didn't even tell the story to like fucking three days ago, but that's how you handled shit back then. You know, today it would be considered bullying. No, you know what? I opened my mouth and talk shit about a guy who could have fucking murdered me. Right. And he came over and handed, you know what? And props to Barry Bogart because Barry Bogart could have kicked the shit out of me, but he didn't kick the shit out of me. Gave me a little fucking humiliation and sent me on my way and said,

don't ever do this again. And guess what I never did again? I never said a fucking word about Barry Bogart. I didn't even mention Barry Bogart's name again until like three days ago. So, yeah, I don't even know how we got on this story, but yeah, Barry Bogart. I hope you're doing well out there, buddy. There you go.

When you empty ketchup in someone's pants, I mean, how do you get the rat out of there? It's certainly like... You don't. You throw those underwear away. It's like someone chopped your dick off. You put your pants back on and you finish your fucking day and you keep your mouth shut. That's what you do. You know what I mean?

If you're acting like a punk and you're talking shit about a kid who has the heart to go in there every day and do what he did to have to go to that school and play football at that school, not to mention the fact that he was a big, tough fucking football player, right? Yeah. Keep your fucking mouth shut or God knows what he's going to do to you next. Right. That's how, that's how justice was served back in the eighties. So you're a boxing fan. What would happen to fucking Barry Bogart today? If that happened, that was in a school, he'd have to go through psych evaluation and they'd have to fucking, he'd be kicked out of school. He'd be arrested. They'd probably get sued. You know what I mean? That's what's wrong with society today.

We need more Barry Bogarts. You love boxing. You loved it as a kid. You saw Muhammad Ali. At 17 years old, you're a senior in high school. You got marvelous Marvin Hagler, 36, 2-2 record. You've got Sugar Ray Leonard, 35-1. You said it was a life-changing moment,

and you said you've watched that fight a million times. What was so great about that fight, and how can you really watch a fight a million times? Yeah, it's because I taped it. That's how you watch it a million times. I mean, why again and again? I taped it on VHS because it was so good. I loved everything about that fight.

Sugar Ray Leonard walked out, too. I can feel it coming in the air tonight. And the buzz and the electricity around the fight. And then the fight itself. I mean, you know, Marvin Hagler's trying to take his head off. Sugar Ray's doing what Sugar Ray does, hitting him with combinations, stealing the end of every round with flurries. It was a, and it was one of those matchups where you had the two absolute best in the world and the fight that all the fans wanted to see. Everything about that fight was amazing. I'm from Detroit. Tommy Hearns was the guy. And we all wanted to see Tommy against both

these guys. We did. Tommy lost every fight. Unfortunate as a Detroiter, but Hagler was amazing. Love Hagler. He was. He was an absolute savage. He was like the smaller version of Mike Tyson before Mike Tyson. You know what I mean? He was mean. He was nasty. People were afraid of him. And yeah. I was on a flight from Detroit. It's a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago, and I'm in coach, right? I'm in law school. I'm a coach. And it's a red eye. I hate red eyes. And Tommy Hearns is sitting next to me and coach, which I thought, gosh, you know, the demise of one of the greatest fighters of all time has no money, I assume, because he's sitting in coach, and he was in the middle seat. I actually had the aisle, and I thought, gosh, that's really interesting. And what I noticed is his hands were twitching. I thought, gosh, that was really sad to me to see. I mean, obviously people get sick, head injuries, but I just thought, gosh, you know, this was my idol, one of them growing up, and, you know, here he is sitting next to me on a plane. Right. On the red eye. And I think a lot of us, when you see guys like that, that we grew up and idolized,

but when you talk about fighters, you don't realize what the sport of fighting takes a lot of these people away from. A lot of these guys early on would have been dead or in jail if it wasn't for fighting. So they got to live a life that they would have never even dreamed of because of how they were built and mentally how tough they were and what they were capable of doing with their hands. And the same thing applies today to MMA and other combat sports. It's funny because these people are not wired the way that we are wired.

They are very special human beings. They're so different. It's like I hear a lot of people say, oh, I feel sorry for them that they have to do that. So it's fucking funny because they feel sorry for you that you sit in a car and bumper to bumper traffic every day. And you go sit in your fucking cubicle and get yelled at by some fucking 22 year old who just fucking graduated college. And you're 42. And, you know, the list goes on and on. But these guys, they go in, they fight, they get paid a chunk of money.

And then they go off and do whatever they want to do until they have to fight again and make more money. It's actually a very fascinating psyche and lifestyle and just the way that they're built. Mike Tyson was on my show, and I know you know Mike, and the story there is incredible. There's a lot about Mike that people don't know. He's gone broke. He's had more times than he could possibly count. That's very interesting now that, you know, see he's got a big

fight coming up. And what do you think about that fight? And why is he doing it? For the money? And he, listen, he's definitely doing it for the money, but he doesn't need the money. Everybody thinks that Mike needs, Mike's doing very well. Yeah. We become, I've become super tight with his wife, Kiki. They're amazing people. Amazing people. And Kiki is one of the greatest things to ever happen to Mike. And by the way, when they met, he had $80 in the bank, which a lot of people don't know.

Yeah. Kiki is amazing. It's one of the best things to ever happen to him. And they do very well. And Mike did a great job of sort of rebuilding himself, you know. The thing that I love the most about Mike Tyson is his brutal honesty. You ask him a question, and it could be something that you probably wouldn't tell anybody, he'll lay it all right out there, man. He is one of the most honest human beings ever.

And when it comes to fighting, his fight IQ is off the charts. And I love everything about Mike Tyson, man. So we'll talk about Mike now a little bit. You're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. And I think when we think about starting new businesses or buying new businesses, we think about, all right, this thing hasn't come out yet or I can make something a lot better. So boxing for a long time sucked.

And there are a lot of things that you didn't like about it growing up. Tell us what you didn't like about it, HBO and your good friend Larry Merchant and what you were thinking at that time. And did what you saw then, did you think, all right, someday I want to make this better? Yes. There were a lot of things. And if you look at HBO, which was the gold standard of boxing at the time, the only thing that really had changed in 30 years was HD.

I mean, it was all the same shit. Even the same announcers, same everything. And I never loved boxing's announcing because you always had these guys that, first of all, I'm not buying the pay-per-view for the commentary. I'm buying the pay-per-view for the stars. I'm buying the pay-per-view for the fighters. I'm buying the pay-per-view for the fight. And you've got these guys on there that are just talking shit the entire time about these fighters and speaking negatively about them. Whether it was Larry Merchant, you know, jumping in the ring and getting into an argument with Floyd Mayweather and saying, if I was 30 years younger, I'd kick your ass. Right.

You didn't kick anybody's ass. Let's see that one. It's just this type of stuff used to drive me crazy. So when I would watch HBO boxing, I would mute the commentary and just watch the fight. So that obviously production was a huge, huge part of it, too. Yeah. But there were a lot of things about but there were obviously a lot of things about boxing that I love, too, like the way that when when we when guys walk in through the bowels of the arena for the main event and then come through the tunnel. And that's 100% boxing. And I've never changed that. We kind of goofed around with some fireworks and shit back in the old days, but that's goofy.

And I don't even know why I tried that, but I did. And then I just settled with the traditional old-style boxing walkouts. I love them. They're the best. They give you goosebumps. And when you get that energy of a big fight, and you're waiting for them, you know, the arena's dark, and you're waiting for the first guy to walk, and then all of a sudden he pops up on the screen from the back of the arena, the place goes nuts, and then they go nuts again when he walks through the tunnel and then they get the last pop when they get up onto the octagon and walk into the cage it's just fucking beautiful

electrifying it's beautiful i absolutely love it fun so you're this fancy high school and you got kicked out twice before you graduated you tried college college, Quincy College, UMass. UMass. You dropped out after a semester. You worked as an asphalt paver, a bellman. You worked as a doorman and a bouncer. A bouncer, yeah, I was a bouncer. You were a bouncer at the Black Rose Bar.

Wow, man. You did your own work. And then you were a doorman at the Black Rose Bar. Wow, man. You did your homework. And then you were a doorman at the Four Seasons Hotel. So tell us about your top side of shoes and what your friend, who was another doorman, told you that day. The doorman, I was a doorman, a bellman at the Boston Harbor Hotel. And the doorman was from the Boston Harbor Hotel. It was a kid named Joe Cav, who is actually now a promoter in, in, in, in Boston. But I literally was standing in the lobby one day, you know, it was, you've been to these hotels, you walk into the hotel and the guys are standing up against the marble like this all day. And can I help you with your bag, sir? And,

you know, standing in there one day and I'm literally going, what the fuck am I doing here? And I'm 19 years old. I make great money, cash every day, plus you get a paycheck. What's great money? What's great money back then? Huh? Like, what's great money?

Well, you could leave with $150 a day. Cash? Yeah, in 1988. That's a lot. You know what I mean? $150 a day in cash. Plus you made minimum wage, which was like fucking four bucks or whatever it was back then. Right. And you got health insurance, 401k, dental, all the other stuff that you think everybody wants for the rest of their life. And

it just, it wasn't for me. I didn't want to do it. And I said, I'm 19. I got nothing to lose, right? If I go out and try this, the worst thing that can happen is I fail. And then I'm back in here carrying bags again. I mean, I can do this when I'm fucking 40. I might as well go for it now. So there was this, you know, and back then, especially in the 80s, where do you go? You don't go to college for this, right? So I sought out this kid named Peter Walsh, who was a legend, fighting legend in Boston. And this wasn't a guy you went looking for. Let's just put it that way. So I went out, started looking for Peter. I find him and I said, hey, I know this is crazy, but I want to work for you. I want to learn. I want you to teach me everything about the fight game and I'll work for free. Now, South Boston at this time was fucking crazy. I mean, this place was a crazy place. His wife thought I was a fed. His wife thought I was a fucking federal agent.

It's like, what guy comes out of nowhere, right? Asked you to do this and says he'll work for free. None of this makes sense. This guy's got to be fucking FBI. And he took me in and the rest is history. I think it's an interesting strategy. I'm in the venture capital business, the investment business. I have a small firm. We hire amazing people. It's hard to get a job with us. I think a great strategy for young people is to do exactly that. I'll work for free. You don't have to pay me. Take a chance on me and let me prove yourself. Is that your advice to people even who want to come work with you? Because I know a young kid who wants to work for you and is working with you one summer, and I think he gave that pitch to someone at your company. I would never let anybody

work for me for free, but what we do is we have probably one of the greatest intern programs in all of sports. When you come work for us, you work on real shit. Like we don't have you running coffee and making copies and shit like that. You come in and you work on real things. Like kids who come into the legal department are working on real legal stuff. You know, production kids are working on real production, social media, the list goes on and on. And I meet, as soon as you come into the intern program, you start by a meet, you have a meeting with me, the whole team, we talk and everything else. And then when you exit, they all do a meeting with me. It is one of my

favorite things. I love meeting with these young kids from different parts of the country, from different schools, listening to what their goals are and what their dreams are and listening to their questions. And the other thing that I like to do if you're not in college, like lots of people will hit me up and like, hey, this is my product and I'm, you know, and I try to help them and, you know, whether it's posting something or giving them advice or money, whatever it might be, I love giving back and trying to help these young kids that want to be entrepreneurs. Yeah.

You know, make it. We have a summer intern program as well. It's 36 kids. It's a 12-week formal program. I spend 60 to 90 minutes a day with the interns talking about lessons, how I did it, spend more time talking about my failures and successes, because I believe we learn more from our failures than successes. We got 2,000 applications this summer so far. 4,000 applications so far? All right, we got 4,000

applications so far. These guys run the program, but it's life-changing. There need to be more things like this for kids and more opportunities to learn. And, yeah, I love that kind of stuff, man. I love trying to help these young kids. In this society that we're in now, with all this woke bullshit and all these fucking, you know what? I can't stand this whole, you know, these companies letting people stay home and work at home. It doesn't work. You get it. Yeah. Does not work.

And the people that the employees that are staying at home, they get fucking nothing. You get nothing out of it. So today I was late to this podcast. You know, I was late to this podcast because this is what happens to me every fucking day. I go to work and I have a list of shit that needs to be done that day. Right. You know how much stuff pops up that is not on the list that we take on head to head? And we sit in a room with stuff that we didn't expect to happen. Everybody comes up with ideas. And every day, it just gets bigger and it gets better. Because when you're in the office every day grinding with like-minded people that love what they do as much as you do, great shit happens.

Now, when you're at home, you have nothing but distractions. You're not getting the best out of yourself. You're not delivering the best of you to the company. And the company isn't delivering the best of them to you. Nobody fucking wins when you're at home. And every time I say this, you get all these fucking jerk fucking jerk offs on the internet going, Oh, that's bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. I know exactly what I'm fucking talking about. And if you're from, if you're, if you have a company where everybody's working at home, God fucking bless

you. Okay. You're not making as much money as you could. Your employees aren't going to make as much money as they could. And it's not a good thing for anybody right you can't build a successful company you need the DNA of your team I mean everyone needs to be there my team we have a small team everyone needs to be there small office it's it's critical to our efficiency and our success as well 100% and shout out to Matt Hickerson and Lucas Martin they came right out of my intern program superstars. So super, super pumped to have them on my team.

That's awesome. I got a bunch of interns that work for me too now. It's the best. I love it. That's awesome. So you're doing well in Boston. You open a couple of gyms. And then what happened?

Why'd you move out to Vegas? Crazy fucking story, by the way. Yeah. Listen, I got some people always ask me, why don't you write a book? I said, because if I wrote a book, people wouldn't believe half the fucking shit in the book, to be honest with you. But, yeah, I had a run in with Whitey's guys. Whitey, for people who don't know yeah whitey bulger one of the one of the biggest gangsters of all time in american history ran uh south boston and other parts of boston for many many years in cahoots with the fbi right and that's why his wife peter's wife thought i was a fed because they were you

know that kind of stuff was going on in boston at time. And, yeah, I had a run-in with these guys. And basically they said, you know, I owed them money. I didn't owe them money. And they gave me, you know, they basically said, I got a call at my house one day and they said, you got until tomorrow at like 1 o'clock to pay us. I said, or what? Or are you going to find out?

And I literally hung up the phone, picked it back up, called Delta, and it back up, called Delta and flew back to Vegas. And the craziest thing about that story is, and you know this better than anybody, everything in life is about timing. And had that not happened, I probably wouldn't have gone back to Vegas when I did. Then I come back and you just, you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together of these series of events that lead you to sitting in this chair right now talking to you. And it's crazy when you start to break it down and think about it. Me and Lorenzo Fertitta sat around and had a few drinks some nights and talked about all the things that align to

get us together again and to do the things that we've done. I mean, there was a buddy of mine named Adam Corrigan that I went to school with here. He had money, I didn't have money. He was a really good kid. Fucking picked me up and drove me to school every day. Now I had a blanket policy. You know when you're like 25 to 30, everybody you know starts getting married. I went to nobody's wedding. Blanket policy.

I don't give a shit who you are. Not going to your wedding. I'm busy. I'm building the business. I got shit to do. There's no fucking way that I wasn't going to go to Adam Corrigan's wedding. This kid drove me to school every day. Love him.

So my wife had something else going on. She couldn't go. The only thing worse than going to a fucking wedding is going to a wedding by yourself. Okay. So I go to his wedding and I run into Frank and Lorenzo. Who you hadn't seen for like four years, right? No, I hadn't seen him since 1987. And this is 1996.

So almost 10 years. Okay. And I run into them at the wedding. I would have never ran into them anywhere else. We talked that day. Hey, I heard you're into boxing, this and that. We'd love to train with you, da, da, da. We've been together ever since that night.

Literally been together ever since that night. So I don't go to that wedding. That doesn't happen. Timing is everything. Timing is everything. Timing is everything. So one night you're out with these guys. You're at the Hard Rock Hotel. You're having drinks with them. You see Tito Ortiz and John Lewis. No, we see John Lewis. Oh, you see John Lewis. Yep. Okay. What happened next? So it's me and Frank Fertitta. See John Lewis. Frank Fertitta

goes, that's that ultimate fighting guy. I said, yeah, I know him. He says, I've always wanted to learn ground fighting. I said, well, let's go, I'll introduce you to him. We go over, we start talking to John. We set up a lesson for Monday. And we tell Lorenzo, Lorenzo comes and does the lesson with us. That's it, we become addicted to jujitsu. We start training three, four days a week. John Lewis starts to bring fighters in that

we start to train with we start to realize wow these guys are pretty smart and they're this and they're that and we start to fall in love with the sport and that's a wrap we end up we end up buying the UFC just off that night out at the hard rock again timing the fact that me and Frank out of all the places to go in Las Vegas, we end up at the Hard Rock. John Lewis is at the Hard Rock the same time we are. Frank says something about John Lewis. I know. It's just when you start to put all this shit together, it's crazy.

UFC's first fight, November 12, 1993. How about this? These guys start coming in and training with us, and for whatever fucking reason, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz asked me to be their managers managers and I start managing them. So when I start managing them, the old UFC had done some shit to Tito. I get into a huge contract battle with the old owner of the UFC, Bob Meyerowitz. Finally, Bob Meyerowitz flips out on me and says, you know what? There is no more fucking money. Okay. There's no money. I don't even know if I have enough money to put on the next event. I said, got it. Here you go. Hung up the phone, picked it back up, called Lorenzo.

He was in Florida. I said, I just fucking hung up with Bob Myers from the UFC. They're going out of fucking business, man. I'll bet you we could buy this thing and I think we should. What the fucking odds are that? I mean, all these little things that you string together and you know it's it's crazy but if i didn't manage tito and chuck would have never happened so first fight of ufc november 12 1993 as you said it wasn't doing well it's kind of not kind of it wasn't the shitter people didn't really like the sport you bought bought it for $2 million. They own 90%. You own 10%. You're 33 years old and they put you in charge. You never built anything of scale. You never really run anything. What was it that they saw in you where they said, Dana, it's yours to run? Well, I ran gyms and small time businesses, never at a level of the amount of money that

we were dealing with, but Frank Lorenzo and I had never produced anything. We knew nothing about production whatsoever. We'd never put on a live event. We'd never done any of this shit, but we were hardcore fans and we knew what we liked. We knew what we wanted. We knew what we wanted to see. Now it was just about, you know, learning all these different pieces of the puzzle and then building the right team. What were they paying you at the time when you started this thing? I owned 10% of the UFC and I was making $100,000 a year. That's enough to live. Yeah. I was taking a pay cut from the business that I owned before that.

So there were so many problems with the UFC when you bought it. The first was the stigma, right? People thought that the fighters were despicable, terrible human beings. But tell us- And the sport was despicable. And the sport. So tell us about the reality and tell us about Chuck Liddell and actually what his background was. So Chuck Liddell was one of the guys that I managed. And what's crazy is the UFC didn't want him. I was trying to get Chuck Liddell back in the UFC, but they weren't interested in him. And he ended up becoming one of our all-time biggest stars. But Chuck Liddell, you know, he looked like an ax murderer.

You know, he had the frigging mohawk and the Chinese writing on his head and the mustache and beard. But he graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in accounting. With honors. Yeah, with honors. That's right. And that was the case with most of these guys. Most of these guys were college educated because they came from wrestling.

And the other thing about these guys was if you were in martial arts when you were a kid, your family had money. You came from a well-to-do family because martial arts wasn't cheap to put your kids into. So the original owners had basically marketed this thing as the brutal, most bloody, violent sport in the world. Two men out of the cage, one man leaves. That type of marketing worked for them for a little while, but it ended up backfiring because Senator John McCain went after them and got them ripped off cable. And when we bought the company, when you think about this, right, you as a grown adult didn't have the option to go on pay-per-view and buy this. Porn was on pay-per-view, but UFC was not allowed. And when we bought this thing, this is why everybody thought we were insane. Our goal was to get this thing on free television when it wasn't allowed on pay-per-view. So when you really look at it, when people say,

oh, you got it for $2 million, that's incredible. Yeah, people hated this thing, and nobody thought this would work. We were the redheaded stepchild of the Fertitta portfolio. All the guys that ran the business side of the Fertitta family funding hated the UFC, hated it, and knew it was never going to work. When you knew it was in trouble, you called them and you said, hey, I think there's something here. We should look at this. So is it a good idea to base business decisions, career decisions based on your gut?

100%. 100%. That's different than what most people would say. 100%. Listen, it's fucking funny we're talking about this now, too. There are people out there that have graduated from big schools, right? Smart people that were involved in the UFC that really had little to do with the UFC success. They were part of the world.

That are running around using those credentials now. Like they, you know, they had something to do with the UFC a lot of these guys that are You know that have these unbelievable college credentials Couldn't run a fucking lemonade stand. Okay, let's look. This is a fucking fact and It's all about gut listen you got it I didn't go to college and, and, you know, bring me into the fucking the budget meeting and have me rip through the numbers and do all this

shit. We're in big fucking trouble. Okay. But if you have the vision, you know what, you know what you're looking for and you know what you want to do. You take a guy like me, right? And you build a fucking team around yourself that can handle the things that you aren't capable of doing. Let's just be honest that you're not capable of doing. I am the vision for the fucking sport. I'm the vision for the fucking brand. And as long as you get people on board with you that understand what your vision is

and believe in the vision like you do, then you just get in there every day and you fucking grind until it happens. But you don't have to be. Most of the guys, most of the guys that are super successful that I've seen in life have the same story. They fucking hated school. Hated school for one reason or another, whatever it was, the structure of school or school itself, or the classes that

they had to take that were bullshit for whatever reason, a lot of successful guys hate school. And, you know, there's an argument there that school, in many ways, teaches you to work for somebody else. You know what I mean? And yeah, I hated fucking school. For me, my schooling was my ticket to something else. I figured if I do well in college, which I did, University of Michigan, greatest school on earth, then I went to law school at Northwestern.

I'm like, God, I'm gonna graduate, make $70,000 a year. This is 1993, I'm 55 years old. That was all the money in the world. There's nothing I can't do. I'm going to save. I'm going to save and save and save, live well beneath my means. I live next to the jack-in-the-box. I used to smell that shit all day long. And I'm going to save, and I'm going to bet on myself.

But I needed to have the money to bet on myself, and I didn't have another plan beforehand. So I think schooling is valuable. I think it's one of the most important investments we can make within ourselves. But I think you're right. I think a lot of people don't love school. I like college. It was fun.

I was a shy kid. Came out of my shell. Became more personable and a lot more popular. I was a very nerdy kid when I was younger. And then law school, I fucking hated. Northwestern's a great school. I'm on the board today. I have only great things to say about it. Man, I fucking hated. Northwestern's a great school, I'm on the board today.

I have only great thing to say about it, man I fucking hated what I learned. It was just a drag to have to read that shit every day, read boring case law thinking, God the last thing in the world I wanna do is be a lawyer. So my oldest son goes to USD, he graduates this year. He's devastated that he's graduating this year. He loves college so much yeah so

you know there are different types of people that like different and he's going to go to grad school he's going to come back here and work for a year he's probably going to go to grad school and he's sort of still figuring out who he is and what he wants to do for the rest of his life but uh i think right now he'd love to be a professional college student. I call him Tommy Boy. He doesn't want to fucking leave college. But, you know, he's having a blast down there. The kid's got a great life. I would probably stay down there too.

But, you know, different people are wired different ways. And one of the things about me is I never really – I was never really good at working for somebody else. I fucking – I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I didn't like, like, like the hotel business. These are things, but these were good learning experiences for me too. And the way that not only the stuff that I told you about the type of father I am to my kids, but also the type of leader I am at the job used to drive me crazy is

work started. And let's say you're a nine to five guy, right? You gotta be to work at nine. If you showed up at fucking nine Oh three, you're getting written up and you're getting, you know, I hated that shit for somebody to talk to you like that and treat you like that. And the other thing that they did in the hotel business, I hated, it was like, if you don't like it, there's 15 other guys waiting behind you for your fucking job. Really? That's how important I am to this fucking company?

There's 15 guys right behind me that are waiting for my job? Fuck you. So that never worked for me. At the UFC, you're an adult. You're a fucking grown-up. And since you work here, you made it through a very extensive hiring process.

So you've got to be one of the best in the world, right? You know what you have to do. You know what needs to be done. We do fights every single week. Every Saturday we've got a fight going on, right? You know what your job is and you know what your work is. And you know what I don't want you to do? I don't want you to miss one fucking kid's practice. I don't want you to miss one of your

kids' games. I don't want you to miss a play, any of that shit. If you got to come in, if work's at nine, I'm in there every day at fucking nine o'clock, right? If I'm in there at nine, but you got something to fucking do, get your shit done and then come in and get your job done. That's it. Don't treat people with disrespect and don't treat people like they're fucking little kids, you know? And in the hotel business, you'd always have these kids that just graduated college and they're 23, 24 or fucking old. You are when you graduate college coming in and they would get in this management program and you'd have these guys that have been there 15 years and some new kids coming in over them

and treating them like shit and acting like if you don't like it, then we'll get somebody else to fill your job. How do you ever get anybody to jump out of bed in the morning and be excited to go to fucking work when that's what you're walking into? You know?

I don't like that shit. Let's go back to the UFC and some of the struggles because I think it's so important. One of the goals of my podcast is to motivate, inspire people. And we all have so many challenges that we have to get through. We've talked about some of yours. Now I want to talk about some of the struggles that the league had. There were some bad dudes involved when you bought the company. You had sports promoters blowing up cars. You personally had some crazy guy calling you a punk motherfucker who was threatening to kill you every single day.

How did you clean all that stuff up? And were you scared for your life when this dude's calling you? He must be a psycho if he's calling you every day. Yeah, no. He was a psycho. There was a company called Affliction. They did clothing, and they got into the fight business. And this guy's name was Todd Beard. And he would get drunk or drugged up or whatever the hell this

guy did every night and would start texting me, you know, you know, threatening to kill me and all this stuff. He was a competitor. And then the other one you're talking about with these guys and like Amsterdam who were rival promoters. They were like bombing each other and shooting each other and doing all this crazy shit. But the fight business has always been that type of a business. There's always been gangsters and, you know, those type of people involved in the fight business. And yeah, I mean, from day day one everything we did was by the book um and we basically turned it into an absolutely legitimate business where everything we do is

is uh above board by the book and you know this is also in boxing if you ever noticed everybody's always suing everybody every 10 minutes you know. We do very well in lawsuits because everything that we do is by the book. So many successful businesses go through near-death experiences. Our technology company went from $345 a share down to $0.49 a share. So I think we lost 99.988% of our market value. It went from $35 billion down to, down to i think 49 million at some point you also had a near-death experience the fertilizers had to pump in another 40 million dollars after they bought the company tell us about a conversation you had with lorenzo

how you almost died spike tv and then the ultimate fighter, Hail Mary. Yeah, so at one point, at this point, I don't remember what, we were 30-something million in the hole, and basically Lorenzo calls me one day and is like, I can't keep doing this, you know, with my family's money, you know? It's me and my brother funding this thing. They have a lot of money, but still,

$40 million is a shit ton of money to anybody yeah no matter how much money you have and at that time um i mean the fatigues weren't it's not like they were they were hurting but you know they didn't have the kind of money that they have now station casinos was the company that they owned yep and it was a very big casino at the time and over the last 25 years him and his brother have been building this thing into what it is today. I mean, I want to say back then with the UFC, they had probably, I don't know, maybe four or five casinos at the time. It might have been less. And, you know, they were just in the middle of this building phase.

So he calls me one day and says, you know, go out there and see what you can get for this thing. So, I make all these calls and at the end of the night I call him and I said, six, seven, eight million, you know, I don't know, we're 30 something in the hole. From who? There was a guy, there were a couple different guys at the time, but one of them was Dan Lambert. This guy Dan Lambert, who basically is, he's this wealthy guy down in Florida who is an incredible human being. Who has literally done more for people in this sport than fucking, I don't know who, man, than us. I mean, other than us, nobody's probably done more for people in this sport than Dan Lambert without expecting a penny back. He's super passionate about the sport, but he was definitely one of the guys that I was talking to to buy it. And Lorenzo says, okay. And we hang up and the next morning Lorenzo calls me and basically says, fuck it. Let's keep going. So that whole night I

thought this is that it's a wrap you know probably end up fucking trying to sell this thing to Dan or somebody else and you know so Spike TV and the guys in the truck and the change in management so what's that and the change in management of the Spike TV talk talk about what what happened oh man this can't be happening so we start realizing we got to get onto free tv and the way to do that would be a reality show because reality shows just started to take off and people were into them so and it was a great way for us to i always call it the trojan horse, like fighting is on TV, but you know, it's wrapped up in a package like reality and the fights wouldn't be live, they would be taped because the network

was obviously terrified of live fights and what could possibly happen. So we, this new network again, everything's about timing, this new network, the network for men Spike TV launches and we're like this is perfect for us. So we go down the network for men, Spike TV, launches. And we're like, this is perfect for us. So we go down, we pitch them. They hated it. They didn't like it. And these guys couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

We were in LA, and they were going to a Dodgers baseball game. They couldn't get out of the room fast enough to go to the game. So they don't like it, whatever. We go back to them and said, well, what if we pay for it? The Fertittas put up the 10 million bucks for the show. They like that idea a lot better. So we end up filming the first season of The Ultimate Fighter.

We got all these promises in place and whatever. And the president of the network at the time, Albie Hecht, gets fired halfway through our season. Our season's going like this. Normally when you have a season like we were having, you're on fucking buses, billboards, it's everywhere. We were fucking nowhere. And, you know, I didn't even know they were even going to commit to the stuff for the finale that they had said they were going to commit to. I keep flying back to New York. They won't even meet

with me. It was an absolute disaster. Then the finale happens and when Forrest and Stefan fought, as soon as that fight was over, I was like, I don't even give a shit if we do a new deal with these guys. We made it. We're going to end up somewhere now. We ended up going out in the alley with Spike TV and literally did the deal for the next season and our television deal on a napkin in the alley. Because of the fight. Talk about the fight, what happened, and what was so unusual about that fight. Well, I mean, the fight at the time on Spike TV, and you're talking about probably the peak for cable then, you know, cable television. And when these two started fighting, the place was going crazy.

They were stomping their feet. That was before social media. So people were calling people, going, are you watching this fucking fight right now? And the number grew. At a point during that fight, it outrated the Masters on CBS. So it was huge. And it became viral for what viral meant for that day and age. Of all the struggles when you were building that thing,

this amazing success story, what was the darkest moment? The darkest, I don't know if I ever had a darkest moment. I mean, you know, we had moments like Lorenzo calling and saying, hey, see what you can sell this thing for. We had, you know, we had battles like in New York, the Las Vegas Culinary Union was keeping us out of New York with a corrupt politician in New York. I mean, we had to deal with all this kind of shit anyway. I was kind of used to it, but I love that type of shit. I love adversity. I love negativity. I love people coming at you every day and trying to, you know,

fucking take you out. I live for that shit. So it was, I was built for this. I loved every minute of it. And I would never say there was ever a dark moment because if you want to talk about the darkest moment we ever had, it would have to be COVID, right? Going through COVID, nobody can run their fucking business. COVID never made sense to me. Wait a minute. If this is as fucking deadly as they say it is, we're fucking dead anyway. We're dead. We're going to hide in the house and you can fucking put a mask on and that's it. And that's makes no sense to me. I can go in and take my mask off and eat around all these other people and then put it back on and walk out. But we're all right. Come on, man. None of this shit ever made sense to me. So

my thing was we're going through fucking COVID, right? And what was amazing was if my hatred for the media wasn't bad enough going into COVID, it multiplied by a thousand going through and coming out of COVID. We would literally sit in the office for hours and get all these plans in place, right? Me and my lawyer. By the time I would leave, I lived 20 minutes from the office. By the time I would pull in my fucking driveway, my lawyer would call me and say, the whole thing just fucking fell apart. How's that even possible? It's been 20 minutes. And these media members, whenever we would announce we were doing something, they would all flood that state with calls saying, how can you fucking, like trying to disrupt it? So it got to

a point where when I got a deal done and we were going to announce a fight, I would announce the fight and they would say, well, where is it? I'd say it's on ESPN. That's where it is. You can't fucking go anyway. Don't worry about where it is. You don't need to know where it is. It's going to be on ESPN Live.

That's all you need to know. And then I had the New York Times every fucking week just coming after me and all these other guys. It's like, I don't know, man. It was very, very weird. You want to talk about dark? Nothing darker than the whole COVID bullshit. But you were the only league who fought during it.

I mean, people were grateful for you. It was an example for people. Everybody rolled over. Everybody rolled over, and everybody was willing to say, OK, everything that we worked so hard for our whole lives and. We're willing to lay off fucking massive percentages of their fucking companies. People have 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.

It's just, yeah, it's just everything about that's the only dark period I can ever think about. But didn't it help you because you're the only game in town at that point? People are like, oh, UFC. Geez, they're the only people. They're crazy. Yeah, we came out of it. We came out of it great and it all worked out our fan base grew 68 percent fights that should have done 300,000 pay-per-view buys we're doing a million I mean the list goes on and on of how the company excelled and grew didn't lay off one person didn't do any of that

shit but when you really look at um what happened that time, the lies that were told, the people that were pointing fingers, the people that were trying to shame people, the doctors that were destroyed, the fucking, it was just, it's probably one of the darkest times in American history, to be honest with you. It's absolutely fucking gross. And not to mention the fact that at the end of the day, the way I look at it is we're fucking Americans, man. This country was built off fucking people just going, you know, doing what people say couldn't be done and working

together no matter where you're from or what race you are, what color you are or what religion you are. This is a place where we just fucking grind and we do it together, this melting pot of humans. And it felt like during that era, all of that stuff was trying to be stripped from us and ripped apart and division and, and, and, and infighting in America. And I feel like we're at a place right now where we're starting to pull out of that. It's all, people are starting to fucking wake up. Even the nuttiest of the nutty are starting to wake up. Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing show

with Dana White, the president of UFC. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible interview with Dana.