My Mom's Basement - QUARANTINE MINI-POD: DANA WHITE

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

Uncle Dana come down to the Basement this week to discuss the decision and plan to move forward with UFC 249 on April 18th, his ongoing back and forth with the MMA media, how he’s been holding up in the quarantine himself, and more.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. We have a 20-minute interview with the man, the myth, the legend, the goof, Dana White. I think, as I've said before, other than, you know, Jared Karabas or Clem, he may be the most frequent return guest on the entire show. Before we get into that, let me tell you once again about Beat Elite. I've been telling you about it all week, yesterday, the day before. Basically, this stuff is powder made out of beets that you put in water before workouts. What it does for you is it promotes your endurance, your oxygen efficiency throughout your body. It improves your energy, your stamina. It makes you feel better. It makes you feel like you want to work out. I know it's

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so you won't find a deal like this elsewhere, and that is livehuman.com, L-I-V-E-H-U-M-A-N.com slash mom, M-O-M, livehuman.com slash mom. You will get 20% off your first purchase. You got to help these people out while they're helping us out. Now let's get right into this interview with Dana White. All right, welcome to My Mom's Basement. I am here, a quarantine edition of My Mom's Basement with the one, the only Dana White.

It's what I needed during this quarantine, a check-in with Uncle Dana, keep me sane. How are you doing? How are you holding in there? I'm good, buddy. It's been crazy. I've been up since six o'clock this morning working on stuff. And every week in this business is challenging. This week is very, very challenging. Through this whole thing, when this started weeks ago every time we would set something up it would fall down the next day and it's just uh it's been different but i love shit like this i love challenges like living in the chaos i literally i swear to god you you you hit the nail right on the head that is exactly what i always say i love chaos and if there isn't chaos i create it so the last time

we did this this is next level chaos but fuck it i'll i'll i'll do it yeah the last time you and i did one of these we opened the interview talking about how excited we were to each go see the red hot chili peppers and rage against the machine all that's not happening now we're doing an interview via skype i'm probably maybe the first person to interview you wearing Ninja Turtle pajama pants. You're in your pajamas. Because we're in this quarantine zone, and you're going back and forth with the media. We got to address the elephant in the room right away, Dana, right away. Before we get going, before we go into this interview, I'm heartbroken, man.

I knew this was coming. I got to read you this quote. I'm going to read this quote out loud just for context so everyone knows the full scale of this thing. Go online and look at some of these people. And this isn't a knock. This is just a fact. The weakest, wimpiest people on earth cover the biggest, baddest sport on earth. Tell me I'm wrong.

But. Except for you. I didn't mean you. I meant all the other guys. Is that an official statement from you you did not mean me can i get down letterhead can i get down letterhead no i meant everybody else okay good because i got so many tweets everyone said uncle dana turned on you he hates you now people said oh it's because you're political alliance no no no me and uncle dana

we're still we're still buddies let me start Politically, I don't play that shit anyway. I don't do any of that stuff. First of all, we live in America. We're all Americans. Whoever you voted for, going to vote for politically, whoever you are, that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is who you are as a person. I don't care about those kind of things. And yeah, the media, I get really fucking crazy when these guys write bullshit and lie, like this story that came out today. A guy wrote today, UFC is going to be laying people off, and he's fucking gloating about it. First of all, it's a lie.

It's not even true. He saw a statement that Endeavor is laying people off. And then he said something like, hey, Dana, you got bosses now. You know, you might want to check. No, I don't, motherfucker. You have no idea what my situation is. You fucking lying little weasel. You know what I mean? Listen to me to me i'm gonna say this again i don't give a fuck how long this lasts how long this fucking goes on i'm not laying anybody off it's not fucking happening you know and there's a lot of things that i will fucking do to make sure that that doesn't happen and i'd make those decisions okay yeah so it won't. So you've been going back and forth with the media a ton this week, obviously, because of this whole coronavirus thing. UFC 249 scheduled for April 18th, originally at the Barclays Center, is now moved to a new location.

It's still up in the air as at least as of the latest I've heard. And you're saying the fights are still going on as well as they were or now new fights are what's the latest on that right now yeah we're still working on i mean this whole thing listen the one fight that everybody wants to know about is habib and tony yep happening okay um rose namajunas hit me the other day i hear you keep talking about khabib am i still fighting yes she's still fighting she's still training she wants to fight and raj still training. She wants to fight. And Drodge is in. And Drodge wants to fight.

And there are more people. But we're going to run into some problems with some people. It depends on wherever this thing is, which I'm not saying. I'm not telling them. Do you have the location? Is it set? I know. I'm not telling the media anything. I'm not telling them anything. Okay. Because

every day when I wake up, there's a bullshit story or somebody doesn't like this or somebody doesn't like that. I don't give a fuck what you think, what you like or don't like. On April 18th, you either want to turn on the TV and watch this fight or you don't. You don't even have to fucking show up because there's not going to be any fans there. You don't have to come cover it. You either want to watch it or you don't. I don't give a fuck either way. This thing's happening somewhere on April 18th.

Listen, I want to see the fight. I'm one of these people that does want to see this fight because it's been five times now where it's been canceled, rebooked, canceled, rebooked. I saw you posted the meme where the two of them look like old men. Hysterical. You've been memeing it up since the coronavirus hit. Putting this on, was it more important to you that Khabib and Tony went on as a fight because it's been canceled so many times and the fans want it so bad? Or was it more the show goes on no matter what? Hey, UFC wants to be the only show in town. Which one would you say? Not even that we want to be the only show it more of the show goes on no matter what hey UFC wants to be the

only show in town which one would you say even though we want to be the only show in town the show must go on listen I I've done everything that I'm supposed to do I've been in my house I've been quarantined my kids haven't left try keeping 17 and 18 year olds in the house they're going fucking crazy right now yeah yeah and and we're doing everything that we're being told to do by the governor, by the president, by the CDC, we're doing everything we're supposed to do. But we can put on a safe show with no fans and do all this stuff. We can do it. We have the facility to do it. We have the, we have all the resources to do it. We can get this thing, we have, uh, all the resources to do it. We, we, we can get this thing done. So yes, the show goes on, but I'm also one of these people that I'm not going

to hide in my house for months. I can look at everybody always makes fun of how red I am, right? I don't know why I'm this red. I'm probably going to have a fucking heart attack in about three days. Who the fuck knows? Heart attack, cancer. Oh, damn. Don't talk like that. Don't talk like that. Listen, there's one thing that's going to happen for sure. I'm going to die someday.

I don't know how. I don't know when. But it's going to happen. And if it's going to be the fucking coronavirus, then so be it. I'm not hiding in my fucking house for months. That's definitely not going to happen no matter who tells me to fucking do it. Yeah. I'm not.

And let me let me say this. I'm having a fucking blast right now. OK, now my oldest son is going away to college this summer. Right. Yeah. He was supposed to report the football camp. Fourth of July weekend. My youngest son is a year younger than him.

He'll be leaving next year. I never get time like this with them. They got friends and girlfriends and all kinds of shit. They ain't sticking around here. They're always out doing something. Now they're stuck to the house. We're actually doing things that we haven't done

since they were little kids. Me and my boys are doing two, three workouts a day. I'm having a fucking blast, man. I can do this forever. Believe me, I got the house and the means we can do this shit forever. Listen, I've seen the office. You could, you could, you know, quarantine yourself in there for months. It's true. If you, if you think my office is nice you see my fucking house all right hey if that's an invite i'm in if that's an event i'm in you can come to my house yes we'll do a tour can we do a tour yes oh my god are you serious done people will lose their minds after the coronavirus people are gonna go crazy over there um what is what does dana white look like when he's lounging around in the house, though?

What? What do you look like when you're lounging around in your house? What do you wear? Same shit. You wear jeans? Jeans in the house? I got sweatpants on. Sweatpants. All right. Just making sure. My roommate wears khakis still. It's very bizarre. We're, you know, we're quarantined anyway. He wakes up,

he showers, and he puts khakis on to sit on the couch. He's very professional. Who's trent he works for barstool he's the bachelor guy the luggage guy do you know the luggage guy at the bachelor oh yeah yeah yeah that's him um so my point is this i could do this shit forever right this yeah this great but this isn't what we should be doing. This isn't, I'm not hiding from the fucking coronavirus, man. I'm not going to do this for months. I'm not going to do this for many more weeks.

I'm ready to roll. So I was going to ask about that going forward. Are you even thinking right now? I know how chaotic UFC 249 must be, but are you thinking about the future? Are you thinking about UFC 250, 251? Or is that, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it? No, no. We started working on, uh, on fights today.

And now obviously we're going to run into all different types of problems with flights and, um, visas and yeah, visas and all kinds of stuff, but we're going to make sure we get all these guys, their fights. And, uh, no, we'll, we'll, we get all these guys their fights and uh no we'll figure this whole thing out we work on it every day and is there anything that can happen between now and then say i i know that you've been in contact you've said we're in contact with all the right people all the right doctors if those doctors were to turn around to you now and say hey this thing has become something different, then would you consider canceling?

Yeah, of course. Okay. So moving on from this, I know that you've been talking about it all week. I'm not going to be the guy that's pushing you to cancel the event. I know the media will probably say that I'm a shill for doing that, but I don't know what more we could get out of you from there. Well, it's not about pushing me to cancel the event. I mean, you're going to- I don't want it to be canceled, personally, because about pushing me to cancel the event i mean you're gonna i don't want

it to be canceled personally because i just want to see the fights i don't know what i'm talking about when it comes to the coronavirus no matter what the subject is you're gonna have people on this side people on this side it's it's always going to happen on any subject so um i don't know i just we'll see how this thing plays out, obviously, if doctors came to me and said this thing can't happen, then it wouldn't happen. But if they can't, then when? How long do you hide from this thing? How long do you sit in your houses before and say, what's going to happen next flu season? This thing's just going to fucking disappear forever?

You're asking the wrong guy. I'm clueless about it. Me too. I am too, to be honest with you. Yeah, I feel like. wrong guy i'm clueless about it me too i am too to be honest yeah i feel like everybody i think everybody's clueless about everyone's clueless but everyone's kind of acting like experts about it and i don't know who to believe about i um i don't know if you could put the fight on i'd like to see the fight that's where i'll end it on ufc 249 it's coming it's coming conor mc McGregor today donated over a million euros in supplies to hospitals all over Ireland. I don't know if you saw that. He posted.

I didn't see that. That's awesome. Yeah, he posted actually a DM exchange he had with one of the ministers over in Ireland where he urged him to take it more seriously and seemed to really – the minister reached out to Conor actually saying, you have so much influence over young people. We would love for you to put some messaging out there. So he's donating over a million euros in supplies to hospitals. I just wanted to ask when the last time you spoke to Conor was, I know that this Corona shit is throws everything for a loop, but is your idea for Conor still Khabib or is it Justin Gaethje who's in the mix there? Yeah, Conor and I have been talking, but mostly about this, not about fights. We've been talking about the coronavirus and what's going on in the world, not fights.

So a little inkling I had when I wrote the blog where he was, I mean, I assume you saw the video he put out yesterday where he was like, we must come together. We must shut down. We must take it. It was like he was giving a Braveheart speech. I didn't see it. He's trying to get Ireland to come together and take the you know social distancing a little more seriously and i was thinking this guy knows this could delay him versus khabib that's why he wants it back is he texting you like is this going to delay me versus khabib no no no connor's connor's

talking um more as a concerned human being about what's going on than a fighter worried about when he's going to fight again. Oh, what a good guy. All right, good. Good. What a good guy. I love 2020 Conor. 2020 Conor, he's new and improved. I absolutely love it. Do you still like as a fight Khabib next for him? Yeah, I do. As long as Khabib, even, well, I guess if Khabib win or lose, that's still sort of an interesting fight, right? Absolutely. And you would put that fight on without a title in the picture. I think, I think if Khabib lost to Tony, Conor would want to fight Tony.

Conor wants the belt. Interesting. I didn't know if Conor would prefer Khabib, the rivalry or the belt. I think Conor wants the belt. Conor's all about legacy and achieving great things in the short amount of time we have to achieve them. He's all about that. Yeah, so a few quick things before

we get you out of here. Tom Brady, your guy, has gone to the Bucs. I think people are going to want your reaction. What do you got? Yeah, I'm obviously bummed about it. Listen, I said if he doesn't stay with the Patriots, I was hoping he would come to the Raiders. I don't know how the hell the Raiders don't get that deal done. It's fucking mind boggling. But yeah, so I'm, listen, first and foremost, for the rest of my life and my whole life, I'm a Patriots fan. All right. So I will be watching and cheering and rooting for the Patriots. But it looks like I'm going to be watching another team on Sundays too because for the rest of my life, I'm a Brady fan.

Brady gave us 20 awesome years, you know? You know how much fun I feel? And not just Brady. Brady, Belichick, Kraft. I mean, if you look at the group of people that were involved in that. Edelman, Gronk, you know, they all gave us, you know, some really good quality time on Sundays with our families. And, yeah, I'm going to follow Brady, too. Are you going to be following the Raiders, too?

I saw you made that video where it looked like you were pleading Brady to come there and people were posting it. We didn't realize you were saying first and foremost, Patriots. Are you sort of rooting for the Raiders as well? Well, here's a couple of things. So, you know, I'm a Patriots fan for the rest of my life, period. Number one. Number two, I'm a Las Vegas guy, man. This is where I live. This is where my kids were born and raised. And, you know, this is where my business is. So I'm always rooting for Vegas to do well. I want Vegas to do well. Do you know what Tom Brady would do to that stadium and to that team right out the gates? It would have been massive.

Tom Brady coming out in the black. Wow, yeah. It would have been massive here. And I bought a box. I own a box at Raider Stadium. Oh, nice. We'll go to some games someday. And I bought a box. I own a box at Raider Stadium. Oh, nice. We'll go to some games someday. Deal.

I'm kidding. Five rounds here. I got five rounds of quarantine living with Dana White. So I'm going to ask for a quarantine movie recommendation from you. Oh, I got them for you right now. All right. What do you got? So did you see The Hunt yet?

No. So it got horrible reviews. It's badass. I heard it's fun. It's awesome. It's awesome. The first five minutes, some real corny shit happens. And I was like, what the hell am I watching here?

Once you get past the first five minutes, fucking awesome. And I don't know who the lead character is, the main girl. You will love her by the end of this movie. She's so good in this movie, man. You have to see The Hunt. Don't believe the fucking critics. They're always goofy and pick some stupid shit that you don't like anyway. The Hunt is awesome. The lead woman in the movie is incredible. And I think I know what UFC fans like, and I think UFC fans will love The Hunt is awesome. The lead woman in the movie is incredible. And I think I know what UFC fans like, and I think UFC fans will love The Hunt. Yeah, I saw someone from Barstool either tweeted or wrote a blog, this guy Feidelberg. And he said he watched it, and he had almost the same review as you.

He said for the first 20 minutes, he thought about shutting it off, and then it turned into like a gory, fun mess, and he loved it. So fun. Such a great movie. All right, there's the movie. Oh, you got another ferrari if you didn't see ford versus ferrari you have to see it it's so awesome and it's right up my uh alley i i love hardcore knock down drag them out fucking competition and that's what that movie is all about it's incredible i loved that i really i really and i'm not a racing guy at all either i don't know anything about me neither really like that fucking movie's about

business it's about competition and it's about kicking your your competitors fucking ass and i loved every minute of that movie and matt damon does not get enough credit for what a great actor he is man that kid is fucking awesome. I'm with you. TV shows. If you're trying to binge a TV show, what would you recommend to the people? Okay. So I'm not a big TV guy. I don't watch a lot of TV, but what's this movie? Everybody, 50,000 people told me yesterday and 50,000 people told me today about this tiger fucking show. Oh, I'm hearing about that. Yeah. Tiger King. Tiger King. I know. I was told I'm starting it right after this Oh, I'm hearing about that. Yeah. Tiger King. Tiger King.

I know. I was told I'm starting it right after this interview. I'm going to do. Yeah. I heard it's great. I'm finally sold. So many people whose opinions I respect have told me to watch Tiger King. So I'm going to hit that tonight.

Yeah. All right, Sam, your, your quarantine movie snack. If you're, if you're snacking on something, what do you,

what are you snacking on? Um, that's an easy one man i i love fireballs like the alcohol no i like that too yeah um you know the fire oh the cinnamon candy that's some old people shit you don't know about that is gross that's okay yeah jesus christ that's Yeah. Jesus Christ, Dana. That's a goof candy. Come on. That's a goof candy. Your quarantine album, if you're tossing on a record. You know what, man?

I'm in a depression because fucking Rage Against the Machine isn't playing this month. So I've been playing as much Rage as I can. It's horrible. I've been killing the Rage Against the Machine lately. I want those guys quarantined in the studio together just get those four in the studio with a producer make it make a quarantine album for us you know you know what they should do all these bands are going live rage against the machine should do a live show on on fucking instagram live or or one of these things yeah oh

have you seen this fucking uh his his handle is at D nice. DJ nice. I don't think so. So when I, so he's a DJ. He's about my age. He's an old school guy, right? So he started DJing live. When I first caught on to him, right? When I first heard about it and clicked on, he had 499,000 followers. His fucking, his live feed was at 90, 96,000, like 96,000.

It got over a hundred thousand. I've never seen that. Wait, white dude with glasses? No, black dude with a hat. Okay. Cause I saw a white dude kind of looked like me was doing like funky stuff on Instagram. Same deal. He went live and it just blew up out of nowhere.

It's crazy what this quarantine is bringing out of people. DJ is killing it. But what's D-Nice at now? He's at 1.4 yesterday. He was at 1.4 yesterday. Wow. Hold on. I'm going to have him check out what he's at now. But 499, 1.4 million followers in that time span. And now he's at fucking 1.6 million followers he was at 499 when i checked him out but he keeps going live and his it's fucking he plays old school hip-hop it's pretty fucking cool i'm gonna have to check that out to do he's been doing that that's pretty fun yeah and finally and this is a softball for you this is me queuing something up for you right here if i'm looking to order a pay-per-view during this quarantine which pay-per-view should i order probably the only pay-per-view that's out there

i don't know there's probably there's probably some pornographic pay-per-views that are doing great business right now yeah they probably do well even when it's yeah but khabib tony khabib tony's the fight that we want to see I'm excited for the fight we want to see forever. Let me say, Rose Namajunas versus Andrade, too. Give them their, you know, they're the co-main event. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know what fights are still on, you know. We've got that one I saw today, earlier today. You said maybe Francis Ngannou could possibly even be on this card? That's right.

Wow, this is going to be crazy. If it happens, it's going to be one of the most historic events in ufz history one of the most polarizing as well when it happens sorry sorry sorry sorry what the fuck i've just been talking to you for 15 minutes about this fight if it happens