Soon after taking charge of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2001, Dana White had a big problem: nobody wanted to host his events.
The cage fighting competition was under growing political pressure to shut down from heavyweight opponents including the late Arizona senator John McCain, who derided it as “human cockfighting” as he lobbied state governors to ban it.
But Donald Trump, who was looking to boost footfall at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, came to the rescue. The venue soon hosted two fight nights and the pair have been close ever since, as UFC began a 20-year journey to become one of the hottest properties in global sport.
“I consider Donald Trump to be one of my very, very good friends,” White told the Lex Fridman podcast last year. “He’s the biggest fucking fight fan on the planet.”
This week White agreed to join forces with another self-confessed fighting fanatic, Mark Zuckerberg, with the 55-year-old UFC boss appointed to the board of Meta as Silicon Valley looks to foster links to the incoming Trump administration.
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board,” said White, who once tried to organise a cage match between the Facebook founder and Elon Musk, another close Trump ally. “I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future.”
Born in Connecticut, White moved to Las Vegas as a child after his mother, a nurse, was offered a job there. He dropped out of college twice, worked as a bouncer and then began training boxers at gyms and leading fitness classes in Boston.
After being threatened by notorious local mob boss Whitey Bulger he moved back to Las Vegas, a city that suited his love of gambling (he once lost $3mn in a single night of cards).
Aged 28, the foul-mouthed and high octane White fell in love with mixed martial arts while learning ju-jitsu. His instructor was a UFC fighter and introduced him to fellow trainees Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. White would go on to manage the pair, who both became UFC champions.
During a contract negotiation for one of his fighters, White realised UFC was running out of money and convinced the Fertita brothers, longtime friends and the wealthy owners of Station Casinos, to buy the struggling business for $2mn. He describes the early days as “the wild, wild west”, with rival promoters sending him death threats and the global MMA scene riddled with corruption and crime.
But among the chaos was opportunity. White sees physical combat as an innate part of being human and those who have never been in a fight as divorced from the real world. He describes being pinned to the ground during a sparring bout as “the most humbling, mind-blowing experience, especially as a man”. If two people start punching each other in the street, he believes, people are naturally drawn to watch, fascinated by raw violence.
Millions agree with him. Under his leadership, UFC has grown to become one of the most successful businesses in sport with billion-dollar TV deals and sellout shows around the globe.
Shunned by the mainstream media during its early days, UFC was forced to be an early mover into streaming, helping it build a large online community. Its YouTube channel now has almost 20mn subscribers, while Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator, is now the world’s top podcaster. Along the way UFC has hoovered up rival competitions, expanded internationally and introduced women’s matches.
The Fertitas sold to entertainment group Endeavor and a group of private equity firms in 2016 for $4bn. In 2023 the company was valued at $12bn when it merged with WWE to form New York-listed TKO. That year UFC reported revenue of $1.3bn. Talks are under way over a new bumper TV deal with ESPN.
White still runs UFC as president and CEO, and is also the owner of Power Slap, a televised contest in which participants slap each other in the face.
“One simply cannot underestimate the force of Dana White. I’ve never seen anything like it”, TKO president Mark Shapiro told the Financial Times. “Talent of all kinds just gravitate toward him.”
As the UFC’s bombastic frontman, White has cultivated a persona of being straight talking and unapologetic, with the occasional exception. After being filmed in 2023 slapping his wife of almost 30 years during an argument at a nightclub, he said there was “never any excuse for a guy to put his hands on a woman”, and that “whatever people say . . . I deserve it”.
There have been calls for White to join the new administration in Washington. During his victory speech on election night, Trump personally thanked him for his support, labelling him a “tough guy”. But White has so far rejected the idea of going into “the dirtiest, scummiest thing on earth”: politics.
Key to UFC’s success has been its structure. The company maintains a tight grip on hundreds of athlete contracts, allowing it to decide who fights who, in stark contrast to the highly fragmented world of boxing.
UFC was also one of the first sports to see the importance of storytelling. Three years after the acquisition by the Fertita brothers, the business was still haemorrhaging money. The Ultimate Fighter, a popular reality TV show that followed MMA fighters living together in a house in Las Vegas, helped turn things around. The model of using behind-the-scenes documentaries to create stars and drama has been copied widely, to varying degrees of success, by the likes of Formula One, golf, and tennis.
When the pandemic shut sport down all over the world, White chose a different path. He opted not to sack a single employee or cut any salaries but instead focused on getting fights back up and running as soon as possible. The result was Fight Island, a venue built at a theme park in Abu Dhabi where UFC produced bouts starting in July 2020, initially behind closed doors.
During the pandemic White embraced “biohacking” under the guidance of biologist and podcaster Gary Brecka, who he credits with changing his life by curing long-term ailments including sleep apnoea and leg pain.
White, who also adopted a ketogenic diet, has become an evangelist for the “superhuman protocol”, with a daily routine that includes lying on an electromagnetic mat, cold plunging, oxygen therapy and red light therapy, and has vowed never to see a doctor about his general health again.
“I feel like I am 25 years old”, he said on a 2023 video posted to UFC’s YouTube channel.
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