UFC Charlotte is Saturday and Victoria could not be more excited about this guest...

Are we good? We're good. Alright.

Victoria is such a big, you are such a big UFC fan. I am. You are so excited. Oh my gosh. Did you say hi? I did.

Alright, Dana White, Dana White, Mr. UFC. So, thank you very much for doing this. You made Victoria's day. Good morning, thank you. Thank you, Victoria. Say, say you're welcome. Come on, come on. Thanks, Dana. Alright, that's good. First of all, happy 30th anniversary of UFC.

Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's been a fun ride, man. What's crazy is we're coming up on our 30th anniversary and we're almost at UFC 300 now. I mean, time is flying. You're at 288, correct? Yeah. We just had 288.

I want to get the numbers right. Did you ever think when you started this that you would be still doing this? Yeah, you know, when you start, when we first started, we were doing five events a year. So, you know, my partner and I, Lorenzo Fertitta, always used to joke about, you know, how old we'd be at UFC 100 and here we are coming into UFC 300 because now we do over 44 events a year. So, yeah, now I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

I love it. Does it generate itself or do you, I mean, the amount of effort that you put into all of, you know, when you first started, all of the bouts, all of the cards, all of the shows, has it become easier to pull off or harder to pull off? Yeah, no, I would definitely, you know, when we first started, it was me and a couple of other employees.

You know, now I have over 350 employees and we, you know, we have offices all over the world, but, you know, it still requires, you know, I, you know, I get into the office every day at nine o'clock and I don't leave till seven, seven thirty every day. So, you know, we're still grinding, but it's a different type of busy than it was 20 years ago. Oh, I would imagine Dana White is joining us here on the Adam Gold show.

Has it turned out as you envisioned or did you kind of adjust what you thought it would be where, you know, as we, as you moved on? Well, I mean, if you look at interviews with me for, you know, back 15, 20 years ago, I say that I think this has the potential to be global and possibly be one of the biggest sports in the world. And that is what it's become. You know, you don't know all the specific details and that, you know, I mean, literally everywhere in the world now, we have a fighter from, from everywhere. I mean, there isn't a place on earth that there isn't somebody who is training to be an MMA fighter. So it's, it's, it's been incredible.

Actually, it's, it's been incredible. Dana White is with us. You were a boxer as a, as a kid, and I grew up in the, in the New York metropolitan area. And I was a fan of boxing. I used to go to the Golden Gloves at the felt when we had a, something called a felt forum at underneath Madison Square Garden.

So I'm familiar with, with, with boxing. But I was always discouraged because it seemed like the sport was corrupt might not be the right word, but it might be. But they were always denying fans of the fights that they wanted to see. And that still goes on today.

Your philosophy on that appears different. Yeah. Being a big boxing fan like you, I felt the same way. And it got to the point with boxing where, you know, you get all excited for a fight and then when it was over, you turn the TV off and go, they got me again. You know, big fights you wanted never happened. And then when the fights that did happen, you know, you they, you know, you had two multimillionaires running away from each other, you know, just trying to win to get onto the next pay payday. And it was really, remember Arturo Gotti.

Yeah. So I used to see Arturo Gotti, man, this guy would be in wars and have these unbelievable fights on HBO and lose and then sign a new big deal with HBO again, because people love the way Gotti fought. It wasn't about whether he won or lost. People love the fights. And when you match the best versus the best all the time, that was the other thing in boxing.

You had to have a perfect record. If you weren't 37 with 36 knockouts, you know, you felt that people didn't care about it, but that wasn't true. People wanted to see the best fight, the best, some wins, some lose, but they want to see great fights.

And that's what we deliver. We stack the card with, with great fights top to bottom. We do a segment every week, and this is not a gambling comment here, but we do a segment every day, not every week, called Place Your Bets. And every week, I kid you not, every week, Victoria has three bets and they're all that week's card. I don't know any of the people she's talking to me about, but she is an absolute, she devours this stuff.

She was very excited when John Jones came back. So is there a fan demand for fighters like him or just Conor McGregor or somebody else that we need to see these guys again? Yeah, I mean, there's tons of stars in this sport. And the great thing about us being global, like I said, is, you know, when you have these guys that are from these different parts of the world, they have an entire country behind them. So it's not just, you know, the United States or whatever. Some of these guys, like a lot of the Brazilian fighters, Australian fighters, the fighters from the UK, the list goes on and on Canada. And for the first time ever, a market that I've been trying to build now for the last 30 years is Mexico. And now we have three Mexican world champions and we have another Mexican fighting for a world title here coming up pretty soon, Irene Aldana. So, yeah, it's very star driven. Dana White is with us.

I only have a couple more things for you and I appreciate your time and I know you're a busy man. How do you kind of fight against doing things more for the show than for what is a good fight on your card? Well, you listen, sometimes there's fights that might not necessarily make sense, but the fan demand is so high. You do it and I'll give you the perfect example.

Okay. Floyd Mayweather versus Conor McGregor. Ridiculous fight to make. It just made no sense. When you get these MMA guys fighting boxers, it makes no sense. But the demand for that fight became so massive. I was like, the hell with it. Why would I not do it? Let's do it. Let's give them what they want.

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Chevrolet. I think that when you have a guy who is arguably the greatest boxer of all time, finding a guy who doesn't box, I think it's ridiculous. But, you know, the fans wanted it. So we made it happen and it was, it was massive.

It was a huge commercial success. But my read on it was, man, that's the wrong boxer to put in the ring anyway, because Mayweather's whole thing is nobody touches him. And his fight, his fights to me have never been exciting. And I mean, I'd much rather see, like, if you showed me just to use a boxing fight, if you showed me Hagler Hearns, you show me the first three rounds of that, which is all we had. I could watch that on a loop, but you're a fan. You become a fan. If you never saw boxing before you watch Hagler Hearns, you walk out of there going, wow, I'd love to watch one of these again.

And that doesn't necessarily happen with boxing anymore. But when you ask me the question about when does the show exceed the, you know, the philosophy of how the fight should be made, that would be my best example. And then at the end, if the fans are upset, my thing is you wanted this. I gave you what you wanted. So don't blame me. By the way, we've been talking for like eight minutes now. I have yet to mention the fact that Charlotte, this was tomorrow night. So everybody should go down to, people are already there. I'm sure. I'll be there. Dana, be careful. I think you should increase security.

I can't wait for me, Victoria. Did you think that the women's side of this would be as big a deal as it is? I did not. I did not see that coming because again, going back to boxing, when you looked at it, it was always sort of a sideshow when the women would fight. And, you know, there was absolutely no defense.

They would just get in there and swing away. These women today in the UFC are unbelievably technical. They're unbelievably tough and they're some of the best fights of the night when the women fight.

And yeah, it's incredible. Dana White, before we let you go, I'm curious because, and none of this was meant to be disrespectful at all because I have mentioned boxing a lot. Do you look at UFC as an alternative to boxing or a part of just combat sports?

Yeah, listen, you know, I have a whole philosophy that we've talked about on how fights should be and how the show should be run and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, whether it's UFC or boxing or any other comments, but when there's a great fight on people are going to watch it. It just happened a couple of weeks ago when Garcia fought Davis, you know, I think that one took the promoters by surprise too. That fight was huge.

Everybody was talking about it and it was big. So I, you know, I don't think there's one or the other. I think that, you know, when, when good fights happen, people want to watch them. Ken, is it easier for a boxer to go to what you do or one of your fighters to go to be a boxer? Neither.

You're either one or the other. Any, any boxer that comes over here will get destroyed. And I would assume most of my guys that go over and try to box the same is going to happen. You boxed, do you also perform? Not, not anymore, but did you also try your hand at MMA? I didn't, you know, I got into MMA through jujitsu. I started taking jujitsu and fell in love with it. And then that's really how me and my partners got into, uh, into the UFC. All right. Well, UFC in Charlotte tomorrow night at spectrum center.

I thank Dana White very much. I appreciate your time. Uh, Victoria will look you up. I'm sure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You got it.

Dana White here on the Adam Gold show. The new Chevy Silverado HD puts you in command own strength with its enhanced available Duramax 6.6 liter turbo diesel V8 on the lake with its available advanced towing technology and own technology with an available 13.4 inch diagonal touch screen. The new Chevy Silverado HD own work own play own life. Learn more at chevy.com. Find new roads, Chevrolet.