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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So Dana, I just watched you do a weigh-in and people would be happy with that type of turnout for an indoor event, let alone a weigh-in where people get their names announced, they hop on a scale. Yeah.
This thing is huge. Well there's, you know, when you come into Fight Week, you have, you know, my favorites are, it would be number one is the fight, number two are the face-offs, and number three would be the press conference leading up to it. When you're a fight fan, those are usually your three favorite things. Right. OLLI made the weigh-in special. Yeah.
It used to be a formality. OLLI changed the game completely, but I think even after OLLI, I mean, Tyson's weigh-ins were incredibly exciting. You know, De La Hoya and Trinidad and, I mean, all those guys that came after that became big stars, all the weigh-ins were always fun to watch. And the weigh-ins are the opportunity where you get to see how mentally, physically, and in every way, shape, and form, how prepared are the fighters. If a guy looks away during the face-off, or doesn't look in shape, looks weak, looks whatever, it's, as a fight fan, it's the time where you really look and make your decision on who you think is gonna win. See, I watched you out there, and that's what I thought, unless you're an actor. I think you're checking out the fighters as they're doing it.
You're looking at it. I love this game, man. I love everything about it, and to be able to stand in the middle every Saturday between, you know, the best fighters in the world, getting ready for the fight the next day is one of the coolest things that you can do. It's why some of the people you see behind us get, you know, they pay to have that experience.
And like, I pulled the young kid up to stand right there for Paula Costa and Strickland, and then the main event. It's like, that's like once-in-a-lifetime type stuff. That's also the dad in you, isn't it? Yeah, well, it's just, it's the fan in me.
It's the fan in me, is what it really is. I love it so much, I can't, and I do it 23 years now every Saturday, so I can imagine what it's like for some of these other people that have never done it. You said recently that this is the number one sports league in the world, in the country. What do you feel about it? In the world, yeah, I mean, in the world. When you think about the UFC, you know, back in the day, when you were working here, you know, people would laugh if you thought that this would overtake boxing.
John McCain tried to stop it. Yeah, and here we are today, and it is a global sport. We have the largest pay-per-view provider in the world. We break records everywhere we go. I'm pretty sure we're gonna break the record, the arena record here this weekend. I want to beat the Rolling Stones.
So, you know, when you go into venues and you start beating, like, the Rolling Stones and some of these massive acts that come to these arenas, it's, I love that about it, too. You bought it for 2 million with the Fertitta Brothers, and they say it's worth about 16 billion now. What does that mean to you? Um, not much, obviously. Really?
Yeah, not much. You're a competitor, though. But it was never about the money for me, and it still is.
If it was about the money for me, I would have been gone in 2016, but I like to build, when you look at what we set out to do, me and the Fertitta Brothers, we've done it, but we're not really there yet. When I grew up, you had Channel 3, Channel 5, Channel 8, and Channel 13. Then, by high school, there were 33 cable channels or something like that. Then there were, you know, a thousand channels.
But what we really wanted, the thing we used to dream about was that there would be a day where everybody could watch the same fight at the same time on the same channel all over the world. So, when you think about it, you think about 16 billion, um, what is our ceiling? 8 billion people. 8 billion people is the ceiling on this thing. Yeah, I think that between Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, Disney, and the list goes on and on, there's gonna be a Channel 3, Channel 5, Channel 8, and Channel 13 again, but it will be global.
The question is, how's this gonna play out over the next 10 years, and who are gonna be the top players in global television streaming? Do you remember a time when they were saying when Dukku Kim and Ray Mancini were fighting, and he dies in the ring, and they say, you know, in modern America, it's, there's really no place for boxing. It's too brutal. There was a time when people were saying, and I remember interviewing Joe Frazier, and he's pushing back, saying boxing's still a great sport, and it's a science. People have to understand it.
And now, look at where we are. I would say that this is more physical than boxing. All contact sports are different, are dangerous. They're all dangerous, you know what I mean? You assume some type of risk, and any contact sports, whether it's football, lacrosse, boxing, MMA, the list goes on and on. Even in soccer, if you are a person who doesn't, the heading, you know, everybody can make an argument about what's safe and what's dangerous. What's crazy about the UFC is, in the 30-year history of this company, there has never been a death or serious injury in the UFC.
Not many other sports can say that. Right, and you made it rounds. You put a time limit.
You put weight classes in. You're only fighting once a night. That has a lot to do with the rules you guys put in. That was not the way it started. Well, we ran towards sanctioning, whereas the old owners did not. You know, we want to be a regulated sport, and we spend millions and millions of dollars in health and safety to make sure, you know, if you take athletes and make sure you do the proper medical testing on them before they fight, during the fight, and after the fight, you make the sport as safe as you could possibly make it. You know, they keep saying that America's gone soft, or the world's gone soft, and everyone's got the manna getting touched with their sensitive side. There's a lot of adrenaline in your stands, in the octagon, and the people promoting it, the people on the stage. Are you the anomaly?
Probably, yeah. I would agree that the world has gone soft, and I would agree that we are not in any way, shape, or form. You also say, but if you are not, and you're savage with today's landscape, you can make killing easier, if you get that mentality. I literally just, every time, we have a great intern program at UFC, and all the interns met with me on Wednesday, and I always speak to them all, we come in, we do a Q&A, and I say this all the time, I mean, when I grew up, there was a lot of old money, you know what I mean, and if he didn't have old money, it was harder to make, it was harder to, there's a lot of disruption now. If you'd have told me 25 years ago, taxi cabs would be gone, the cable industry would start getting busted up, and everything was going to go global, and streaming, the internet, the social media, and all this stuff, there's never ever been more opportunity in my lifetime than there is right here, and right now, and if you are one of these young kids who has some heart, and some grit, and some determination, and you want to win, there's never been more opportunity than there is right now. So a 19 year old Dana White had to go make a living, you had to be a bellhop, you had to be a paver, you had to have side jobs, you, or else there's no safety net. For people that have a safety net, there's no urgency, or your kids, that because of your success, they don't have to worry about what they're going to eat.
How do you keep the hunger if you don't need to be? And different than hunger, I think, I say this all the time, the big problem with a lot of people in life is, they don't know what they want to do for the rest of their life. I was very lucky in that I always knew what I wanted to do, but...
Which was? Being in the fight business. It wasn't this, was what I, but I wanted to be in the fight business, right? No matter what it was, and I started my way from the bottom, and I worked my way up to the top, but these jobs, like paving roads, being a bellman, and all this stuff, these are the type of jobs you have to have growing up, so you know what you don't want to do, you know? You know what it's like to really work hard, like people tell me all the time, you work hard. I mean, I get to work every day at 9, and I leave at 9. Now you know who works hard? The guys up at EJ Paving in Massachusetts who are paving roads every day, and digging ditches, and guys that pour concrete, guys that are doing roofing jobs.
That's hard work, so you have to have those type of jobs to understand what real hard work really is. And also, you have taken this hard work, and you said, okay, America, I'd like to shine here, but I also want to be a force around the world. What are you doing now with Abu Dhabi? What are you doing now in Saudi Arabia?
What are you doing now to expand this global brand? Well, the beautiful thing that I've always said since day one, I said this will eventually be the biggest sport in the world, because no matter what color you are, what country you come from, what language you speak, we're all humans, and fighting is in our DNA. We get it, and we like it, and it makes sense, and everybody understands it.
And when you find a guy who is the baddest dude or woman in the world, and they come from where you come from, and they speak like you speak, and they look like you, everybody rallies around them. So, you know, there isn't a fighter in the world, a country in the world that we can't find a fighter from. And like I told you, as it continues to expand, we're streaming, and we go into these places that we've never been. We're gonna go to Saudi Arabia for the first time. We're working on Africa. We haven't been to Spain yet. I just opened a performance institute down in Mexico City. Some of the baddest dudes to ever walk the face of the earth have been Mexicans. So imagine the Mexicans that are gonna come out of this place in the next five to ten years. So you build a facility, and the fighters will come?
A hundred percent. The one thing that we've done, when you think about this, think about a business that's ever existed in the history of the world that has produced trillions of dollars in revenue like boxing has. And at the end of the day, there's nothing there. We built a league. We reinvest in the sport and in the UFC every year. Millions and millions, tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars that we reinvest into the company and into the sport to, you know, sort of reach this vision that I have of being local. Cutter hosts the World Cup. Fox goes over there.
People say, why are you going over there? Saudi Arabia buys Liv and they're competing with golf. They might do the same thing with tennis. How do you feel about this? Yeah, Saudi's making big moves. I mean, if you look at what they're doing with boxing right now, some of the biggest fights that would have never happened are happening because of Saudi Arabia. That's how crazy boxing has become. It takes Saudi Arabia money to make some of these fights.
But, you know, it's a good thing. Compete. Compete, man. You got to compete. It's what I always say, you know, you know, people have called us a monopoly and all this stuff for years.
A monopoly? We're just the best. We're the best at what we do. There's no barrier to entry. Anybody could get into this. You could start a league tomorrow and pay the guys whatever you want. You could do whatever you want. But a lot of smart, talented, big business moguls have got into this sport and tried to compete with me.
And they couldn't do it. But everybody, there's no barrier to entry. Anybody can get into this thing tomorrow.
So, listen, you have to have that competitive spirit and you got to want to compete. And, you know, I ended up meeting with with Sheikh Turkey from from Saudi Arabia. We're doing things with him now. I've been really close to the royal family of Saudi of Abu Dhabi for many, many years. And they've been instrumental in helping us build this business, not just, you know, in the Middle East, but all over the world.
Fight Island during COVID happened in Abu Dhabi. I mean, they've been incredible partners to me. The one thing that sticks with me and when I think about you is loyalty. And I think about to the story I always wanted how Joe Rogan went from the guy in Fear Factor to, even though he looked like an athlete the whole time, to the perfect announcer for you. I did not know he worked for you for free. I did not know you heard, saw him on another show and I think a VHS tape and say, I got to find that guy.
Can you describe this, the Genesis's relationship? When we first bought the company, the company was based in New York. So I had to fly from Vegas to the New York offices and go through and figure out what was going to come back to Vegas and what I was going to throw away.
Well, they had a wall as big as this wall here full of tapes. So I had to go through every single tape and one of the tapes that I popped in was the Keenan Ivory Wayans show. He had his talk show back then and he had Joe Rogan on, the Fear Factor guy. Big hit by the way, big syndicate show.
Yep. And he was, he said, you like this ultimate fighting stuff too, right? And Rogan just goes into this, you know, talking about how incredible the sport is.
What these guys would do to some of these movie stars that do martial arts and what they would do to boxers and all this stuff. And I saw him and it just clicked and I go, this is the guy I need. This is who I need to be my, my commentator. So I ended up reaching out to Rogan and, uh, you know, we hit it off and that's it.
He said, wait a minute. So you're telling me I can come to the sport that I love the most in the world, have the best seat in the house and talk about it on TV. Amen.
He did the first 13 for free and the rest is history. He's now the biggest podcaster in the world. And, uh, he's the greatest combat sports commentator of all time. And it's all instinct, isn't it? It's what it's instinct. Yeah.
He knew that excitement is just roar. You also talked about broadcast that bothered you. You know, we were watching, I'm a big boxing guy. Uh, I lamply Larry merchant, whether it's Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman, you said that, uh, critical commentators were ruling these events for you. They didn't have enough respect for the fighters.
A hundred percent. All those guys were terrible. They were terrible at that time. HBO boxing was the gold standard of sport, but nothing had really changed except HD.
You know what I mean? They put on a good event, they put money into it, but I would have to mute the commentators all the time. You don't feel they spent enough respect for the fight. I'm not buying this event to listen to you idiots. Okay. Who think, you know, all this stuff about boxing and you know, Larry merchant jumping up and telling Floyd Mayweather, if he was 30 years younger, he'd kick his ass.
Yeah, no, you wouldn't. I mean, and the amount of disrespect to even think that you could and the disrespect to say that and lamply and all those other guys, they were clowns to me and I use them as what not to do when we, when we, they're buying this thing because of the athletes, they're buying those fights because of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, you know, and all the other great stuff fought, not because of the commentators. Right.
We don't want to hear their opinion. Did he help sell that sport at that time? Well, he was critical. What's interesting is the relationship between Ali and Cosal. You could tell that Ali hated him in the early days and they would go back and forth, but, uh, they, they ended up respecting and liking each other at the end. But there was no, there was no love between those two in the early days when they first started.
But in your head fighting mentality, would you also have the sense of production where they come from? I don't know. As my thing was is that I was such a fan. I felt like I knew what other fans and we did a deal with HBO. I don't know if you know that, but we did a deal with HBO. We're going to put fights on HBO. HBO came in and started going, yeah, we're going to have to turn this music down. This guy said, Whoa, no, no, no, no, no.
You guys are not running our production and telling us what to do and how big, how big are you at this time? We had already signed the deal. We were done. So I literally called Lorenzo and said, yeah, we can't do this deal. He's like, what do you mean we can't do this deal? The deal is done. We have a deal. We got to get out of this deal. And Ari got us out of the HBO deal.
Ari Emanuel. Yeah. Uh, but were you worried about this?
You blowing your chance? Like HBO was the gold standard. We say to yourself, this is a risk. No, I believe that if we had let HBO do what they wanted to do, it would have hurt us and hurt our brand. And yeah, and when you first made it stale and old and, and, and, you know, like boxing was, because you had this vision and the Petito brothers, you guys were friends before you were partners. Yeah. And that had a lot to do with it. Uh, what do you mean as far as what you were like, you guys had a trust for each other where you tell them, oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And, and, you know, I'll tell you another story. So CBS tried to come in and, and, and make us an offer to buy us at one point.
Right. And I was in Hawaii on vacation and, uh, ironically, I'm usually late to everything. I was on the call early and the Showtime guys were on the call early because they, I didn't know they were going to be on. I thought we were talking to Les Moonves. So by the time Les Moonves and Lorenzo got on the phone, me and Showtime were fighting, going at it, literally F U F U back and forth. And they, those guys got on and heard us going back and forth. And the call literally, that was the end of it. So Lorenzo calls me right back immediately and goes, I guess we're not doing a deal with CBS.
I said, yeah, sorry. We, uh, we, we, we got into it a little bit. I, I hated the guys at Showtime. A bunch of those guys worked for the UFC when we first started out, I thought their production sucked.
I thought they were terrible at what they did and I was very vocal about it. And then it just so happens, we're talking about CBS making us a billion dollar offer to possibly buy the company. And by the time the Lorenzo and Les Moonves get on full blown war on the phone. Right. That is fantastic.
I never heard that. Never told it. Okay. Well, I'm honored. Listen to the all new Bret Baier podcast featuring common ground in depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Bret Baier favorites, like his all star panel and much more available now at Fox news, podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
So Dana, what I also find amazing too is what you created since, especially since the pandemic ended the entrance of your VIPs. You mentioned the president of Ecuador was here. The president of Spain watches. You also like when president Trump walks in, he's treated like a rock star.
You guys usually walking together. And the one thing I think you appreciate about the former president, maybe future president is he was there early with you. How much does that matter to your relationship? Yeah.
Loyalty is really important to me and he's been a very good friend to me. Um, and he's a massive fight fan, you know, and it's not this thing, Oh, the UFC got popular. So Trump, but whatever. Trump was the guy who reached out to us when we couldn't get venues and had us come to the Taj.
We did our first two shows over there. And when you think about it, then the Trump brand here, the UFC brand here, he showed up for the first fight and stayed till the last fight for both events. He's the guy who would reach out to me my entire career when good things happen and say, Hey, congratulations.
I always knew you were going to do it. He was one of the guys too that actually got in with another group and started to compete against us. But I would never say anything negatively about Trump because he was such a good friend and such a big supporter. And then how has that relationship grown as he became president?
Next thing you know, the guy who was a fellow promoter, entrepreneur, a builder, he's president United States. Is he still calling you? Yeah, I talked to him last night.
Yeah. Um, we talk all the time. Um, he is a really good friend of mine. I really care about him as a person. Uh, his family, I mean, Jared Kushner is an incredible human being. Ivanka is an incredible human being. You know, I'm close to him and his family.
So, um, and it'll be that way till we both die. Ivanka Ivanka trains them. Yeah. So her family trains them, her kids are doing jujitsu, which was brilliant. They got their kids into jujitsu. And, uh, so what's crazy is, uh, her and Jared came to their first fight. I think it was in Miami last time we were there.
It was their first fight for four days. Those two couldn't stop texting me saying, this is crazy. We've been to everything you could possibly go to. We've never been to anything as fun as that. Or maybe it was 300 they went to.
I can't remember, but when they step out, what is it like? Uh, why does, what is your audience seem to like the former president so much? Well, the thing is with our fan base and our fighters, we're all very aligned and life and everything else.
And it's not that it's any real, um, political side. We're for common sense. It's all everybody's looking for. Everybody wants the same thing.
There's no difference in anybody in this room. If you let all the media bs go away, we all want to make a good living. We all want to get a house. We want some nice cars. We want kids. We want to take care of our kids. We want our kids to do well and go to college. Everybody wants the same thing.
It's not like we don't. It's just the media has created this, this divide in this country that that needs to go away and hopefully soon it will. That's why I'm honored because I know you hate the media and you've made that pretty clear lately. So I thank you. Thankfully for now I made the cut.
Uh, but the president asked you to speak at the RNC and you said that a lot of your friends said to you, don't do it. You did it and I was there. You killed it. Thank you. Uh, are you glad you did it?
Yeah. Everybody told me not to do it, but this is the guy that gave us the shot at the Taj. This is a guy that was always hitting me up whenever good things happen. And this was the guy that I considered a friend.
Why would I say no and turn? And the way that he, when he called me, this is exactly what he said. He said, listen, if you don't want to do this, I completely understand, but I would be honored if you would speak at the RNC for me. And I said, I'll be there brother. If he asks again, I'll be there.
Absolutely. And the one thing about the foreign president, he wants to be the next president again. You know, a fighter's heart, you stare in more fighter's eyes than anybody else to see what's in there. Where does he rank at 77?
Number one, number one, you take any of the greatest fighters of all time. Trump is number one, the most resilient human being that I've ever met in my life and what respect I keep doing this. You know, you've got money, you've got a great life, you got whatever.
Why keep doing this? And the one thing that I can tell you, and this is a fact, this guy loves this country, right? And he loves all Americans, regardless of what color, religion or whatever it is. He is not a racist.
He's a good human being and he loves America and he cares about this country. Period. End of story.
If he wasn't that type of guy, I would never even associate myself with him. Right. And prediction. How's he going to do in 2024?
I don't know. This is, you know, looking good. You know, they're throwing the kitchen sink at this guy right now. And like I just said, the most resilient human being I've ever met.
He just keeps marching forward. Power Slap, your latest venture. You said it's through the roof.
Can you describe it and why it works for you? It is the most successful thing that I have ever been a part of in such a short amount of time. In 15 months, this thing is a massive social media juggernaut, streaming juggernaut and financial beast. Right. Yeah. I love it. You seem to love it. I love it.
It looks brutal. Yeah. Right. That's just everything that people are saying about Power Slap is exactly what they said about the UFC in the early days.
Right. And there's plenty of people that don't like it. There's plenty of people that didn't like the UFC. But what did I tell you earlier?
There's eight billion people in the world. And believe me, enough people like it to make it incredibly successful at the Prudential. What do you expect? And number two, Conor McGregor is back. What do you expect? We have a bad ass card at the Prudential on Saturday night.
And you know, we haven't been here in a minute. So I expect this place to be rocking. We're going to break the arena record here.
And these should be some great fights tomorrow night. The return of Conor McGregor. I mean, he's the biggest star in all of sports.
He's one of the biggest stars in all sports, but he's definitely the biggest star in our sport. And when he comes back, you know, he's one of those guys like John Jones. You get him every once in a while.
When you get him, it's fun. You look great. Thank you. What are you doing? I've been doing this guy. He's a human biologist.
His name's Gary Brekka. I've been with him for two years. Got me off all my doctor's meds. I'm only on supplements. I do this whole superhuman protocol. Actually, tomorrow is my two year anniversary.
I've been with him for two years. Never felt better. Never felt healthier. Never felt clearer.
I feel like I'm 30 again. Great to see you, Dana. Congratulations on everything. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Listen to the show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music with your Prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
