UFC President Dana White on TRIGGERnometry Podcast (Transcript)

And the end of that story was, he now works at the UFC. That’s got to feel good. Stuff like that.

DANA WHITE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s been a lot of that. So think about this. So we’re based in Vegas, right? So I need production people, I need good sales people. And all the sales and production people are either in New York or they’re in LA. Nobody wanted to move to Vegas.

And at that time, you know, Vegas is a much smaller city then there were no live sports there except for us in boxing. So, yeah, it was hard to get those kind of guys. Now we have, we have all those. We have the best of the best.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I get a sense from you though, like, proving people wrong is kind of a fun thing for you, right?

DANA WHITE: I do, yeah, I do, yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it, but yeah, I do. I love proving everybody wrong. Yeah.

Advice for Young Men: The World is Wide Open

FRANCIS FOSTER: You know, Dana, there’s a lot of, especially young men who watch your interviews because they see you as an inspiration and as a role model. A guy who’s gone from a regular blue collar background to have the kind of business success that you’ve had. What would you say to those young men? Maybe a 22-year-old guy who’s sitting in his bedroom watching this interview on his laptop, doesn’t see a lot of a way out or much hope in his life.

DANA WHITE: Well, I can tell you this. When I grew up, it was very hard to disrupt and very hard to break into. You know, if there was a massive business that had been around for a long time, very hard to go head to head and try to compete with them. Now it’s the wild, wild west. The world is wide open and for the taking for anybody.

All these disrupting businesses that have come in, I mean, when I was, I’m 56, if you’d have told me that there’s, you know, taxi cabs, that business was going to be in trouble in a few years. You know, these things that we, you know, the Yellow Pages would go away and, you know, all the things that have happened in the last 25 years.

I’ll give you an example. When we were trying to get TV deals, a guy came into my office and he’s like, “I want to show you this, this thing called streaming. It’s going to be huge and it’s going to take over, you know, television and all this stuff.” So he plays it for me on a computer and it goes buffering, buffering, buffering, plays three seconds, buffering, buffering. I’m like, “Oh, yeah, this is going to be really f*ing big. Yeah, this will blow TV out of the water.”

But how fast technology has come in such a short amount of time, and for me and my businesses, technology has been incredible for us, you know? And I’m always jumping on the newest technology.

So the answer to your question is if you, if there’s anything that you love and you want bad enough and you figure out that’s what you want to do, and you get up every day and you just work toward it. I mean, you two, we’re not sitting at this table in New York City right now, because that’s not what you did. You woke up one day and said, “I think we should do this.” And here you are. You’ve been in America for three weeks, and you’ve done 33 interviews.

You know, that doesn’t happen overnight. You have to have vision, and you have to have a plan. You have to get up every day and work toward that plan. And anybody can do it. Anybody can do it.

The Reality of Hard Work

The bigger problem with it is people say they want this stuff. And being here in America for three weeks or four weeks, whatever you’ve been, and doing 33 interviews is a grind. It’s a grind. And you’re away from your families. You have children. It’s easier said than done.

You know, putting in the work to achieve what you think you want to achieve isn’t as fun as a lot of people think it is. I think it’s a lot of fun. I love it. I was built for this. This is what I love to do. And if you out there are listening and you think that’s you, go for it. Nothing’s holding you back. Nothing’s stopping you. And there’s never been a better time to.

So back in the day, we were talking about movies yesterday or TV shows. How hard it was to land a TV show, you know, 35 years ago, almost impossible. And 25 years ago, when we started the UFC and we got the Ultimate Fighter on, we had to pay our way on for $10 million. Anybody right now can go jump on YouTube and start their own channel. And the odds of it being successful are pretty good.

Believing Through the Dark Times

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s interesting that you say that, but what kept you going through those long, dark nights of the soul where you think to yourself, am I going to make it? Am I going to not. You’re looking at your bank account. It’s hemorrhaging money. The business isn’t as going as well as you hoped at that particular point, what kept you going?

DANA WHITE: Well, do you really believe in what you’re doing? Do you really believe. I believed to my core that the UFC could be massive, not just in the United States, but all over the world. I truly believed in it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: How come?

DANA WHITE: Because fighting works everywhere, and I believe that this was the most exciting style of fighting. I was a big boxing guy, but once I got into, into the, in the UFC, I believe that this was way more exciting than boxing was.

And I love the stories of the athletes. You know, you had these guys who graduate. Chuck Liddell was, was, you know, my first big star, and he looked like an axe murderer, but he graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in accounting. You know, it’s a great story.

Rich Franklin, who was one of our world champions, was a school teacher. You know, we had these kind of stories, whereas boxing had, “Well, I came from the mean streets of such and such, and if it wasn’t for boxing, I’d be dead or in jail.” It was literally every guy’s story.

And I think, I thought that people could relate more to the UFC fighters than they could to boxing. I thought, I felt like we would tell the stories better than boxing did. And I just, I believe this was going to, if you watch early interviews of me, I say, “This is going to be bigger than boxing, and it’s going to be a global sport.” And everybody thought I was nuts.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Chuck Liddell follows us on Trigger on, on Instagram, so he must be a smart guy. Definitely a smart guy.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Sorry, if we just, just go back to my point before, before I interrupted you. What kept you going? The long, dark nights of the soul.

DANA WHITE: I just, I believed. I mean, that’s it. I believed that this thing was going to work, and we were going to, we were going to keep grinding until we ran out of money and it was over.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And you came close.

The Moment That Almost Ended It All

DANA WHITE: Yeah, we came real close. Yeah. Lorenzo called me and said, “I can’t keep doing this. I need you to go out and find out what you can get for this thing.” I called him back at the end of the day, and I said, “Seven, eight million bucks.” And we were in the hole, 30 something million.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Wow.

DANA WHITE: And, and he said, “Okay.” We hung up the phone. And that night, I was like, it’s probably over. And he called me the next morning and literally said it, “Let’s keep going.”

And Lorenzo’s, Lorenzo’s big thing, and it’s so true, it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for you. You know what I mean? When you, when you end a real shitty day, which I’m assuming he had that day, and, you know, you go home and you go to bed, you wake up the next day and it’s a new day you start.

That’s just like, what I tell young people. I think part of the problem with people, you’re going to have this, the group of people that just don’t want to work hard. You got the group of people that are like, “I want to work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I want weekends and holidays off.” Right. Those people are always going to exist. I’m not knocking it. What do you want out of your life? Who are you? And what do you want out of your life?

For some people, that’s their life. And then you have people that are willing to work hard, they’re willing to dig in and do whatever it takes, but they’re scared to make that move. So when you have, whatever your job is, you have a job, there’s just this sort of feeling of security that people have when they have a job and walking out the door of that job and trying to go out.

And not only do you have to work for yourself and make a living, when you have other people that rely on you every day that you’re getting the shit done, that also is going to take care of them and their families. So taking on that kind of responsibility freaks a lot of people out.

UFC’s Rise and Cultural Shifts

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And then you talk about making the UFC a global sport, and it has become a global sport. Absolutely. One of the things I wonder about is, on our show, we’ve talked a lot about the way culture moves and politics moves, and we’ve seen over the last 10 years, in particular, something you call the pussification of America. I think of the world, at least the Western world.

DANA WHITE: You’re right. I agree.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But I wonder if there’s a connection between the pussification of the world and the fact that this brutal violence. I mean, I’ll be honest, when I first started watching the UFC, I was kind of watching it like this because it’s brutal.

DANA WHITE: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But it’s now really become what it’s become. And I wonder if those two things are somehow connected. Do you have any thoughts on that?

The Primal Nature of Fighting

DANA WHITE: Well, I think that if you look into the history of fighting, right from the Coliseum and then to boxing, when you look at boxing in the early 1900s and the U.S., I mean, there’s fights that, like, hundreds of thousands of people showed up to watch back then. And this was always my philosophy. I believed it then. I believe it now, fighting is the first sport ever on planet Earth. Two men were around and somebody punched somebody and it was on.

And as human beings, even though you watched it like this, we are fighting is just in our DNA. We get it, we like it. A fight broke out out in the hallway right now. We’d all run over there and holy sh*t. There’s a fight out here. And it just brings a sort of energy to the room, you know what I mean? And us as humans, that is unexplainable.

And it doesn’t matter what color you are, what country you come from, what language you speak, we all get fighting and we like it. And if somebody is looked at as the baddest dude in the world, and they look like you, talk like you, and come from where you come from, you rally around them and it’s like, it’s like even after all these years, right, if Mike Tyson walked in this room right now, and I’ve known him for years and he’s a good friend of mine, we’d all go, holy sh*t, that’s Mike Tyson. You know what I mean?

And no basketball players or, you know, no matter how great they are, make people feel that way. Just, it’s a weird thing. And I’ve always believed in that. And I’ve always believed that, you know, this thing would work everywhere with every group of people.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I guess what I’m getting at is, do you think there’s something in this moment that’s helped you explode? Because, you know, you had these people running around saying words of violence, and then you’ve got Francis Ngannou knocking someone’s head off. Like, I think that kind of suppressed urge for something that raw is maybe part of what’s happened. I don’t know if you think that or not.

DANA WHITE: I don’t know. It’s pretty deep.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I’m sorry, I don’t know.

DANA WHITE: I don’t know if I think that. I tell people all the time, I’ll tell you. You have a three year old son, right? The greatest thing you can do as his father is teach him how to fight. You know, get him into Jiu Jitsu, get him into Muay Thai and teach him how to fight. It gives these kids a level of confidence and not just to handle themselves physically, but just to know that you can, you know, changes the mindset of girls and boys. My daughter trained too, when she was little. I had my daughter trained. I don’t know the answer to your question, but fighting definitely is just who we are as a species, I guess I would say.

Dana’s Journey Into Fighting

KONSTANTIN KISIN: How did you get into fighting?

DANA WHITE: So my uncles all used to watch the big fights on ABC over here. And, you know, like I explained that buzz and that energy that’s in the room. They watched all sports, they were big Red Sox fans. They watch the Celtics and Patriots, but there was never that energy, that feeling. There was when there was a big fight on TV and I just became addicted to it, I guess. I don’t know. I fell in love with boxing through, you know, them watching the big fights. And then I became a fight fan.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That makes sense because that’s how I feel about the UFC. You often talk about you’re in the holy moment business. And that is really the only time when I’m watching something I’ll go like, literally.

The Holy Moment Business

DANA WHITE: There’s this thing where like tomorrow night, right, the card is incredible. There’s going to be three or four holy sht moments. And what’s incredible is 13,000 people at Madison Square Garden will jump out of their seats at the same time and go, holy sht. And everybody goes crazy and you’re looking at each other and you’re high fiving. And then there will be millions of people around the world doing it at the same exact time. And there’s just, there’s no other sport that really, you know, there’s home runs and there’s the soccer goal or the, that, it’s not the same as a fighting holy sh*t moment.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. It’s just not. One of my friends, she was going to me, oh, Francis, why is it you like boxing? And I went, come and sit down. And then I played all of Tyson’s knockouts from the early part of his career, and it was like one in the morning, and she watched it right the way through. When you just see those hits go in, it’s magnetic.

DANA WHITE: It’s true. And even if it’s not a Tyson, you know, type highlight, when we, who are normal people, first of all, to be an elite fighter, you are incredibly special. You are just built in every way, shape and form differently than the rest of the world. And when we as normal people see these incredible human beings perform in their arena, whether it’s, you know, the octagon or a ring or whatever it is, it’s hard not to admire it and go, wow.

And again, like I told you earlier, they look like you, talk like you, and come from where you come from. You know, I mean, you could take anybody that, Manny Pacquiao, you know what I mean? Filipinos were all going crazy over Manny Pacquiao when he was on top of the world. Conor McGregor, who’s Irish, everybody thinks they’re Irish. So everybody’s going crazy all over the world. And, you know, it’s just, it’s a very unique, special thing.

What Makes a Great Fighter

FRANCIS FOSTER: And what makes a great fighter, because there must be, there must be a little bit of a chemistry to it that you, when you watch someone, you’re like, that guy’s got it.

DANA WHITE: They’ve all got different attributes that make them unique. Obviously, you have to be talented. You have to be a great athlete, and all the things that you have to be to play any sport. The difference between a fighter is you’re mentally wired, completely different than the rest of the world. Like you, if you laid them on a, you know, on a platform and measured them against all the other athletes in the world, they’re an athlete, right? But mentally, they’re completely different.

And, you know, there are certain athletes in other sports that I think, you know, have that, that type of, like the goats, the ones that you look at. Michael Jordan is a killer, right? Okay. Tom Brady is a killer, you know, and like Messi and some of these other guys that are huge Ronaldo. But the fighters, what happened when I was younger and I used to fight, and I believe that I wanted to, you know, I remember one day we were in the gym, and there was this guy that came in the gym, and he was a local, like, he was a celebrity locally. Right. Not on the national world stage, but in our hometown. He was.

And he came in one day and he was like, I hadn’t seen him in a while, and he was super punchy. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, what if I end up like that guy? Fighters don’t think like that. Okay. Real fighters don’t think like that. Nope. They’ll lose two, three in a row, you know, vicious knockouts, whatever it is, and they just keep going. They keep going.

And most of them will tell you, even, you know, yesterday, Beneil Dariush, who has had, first of all, if you break into the top 10 in the UFC, it’s unbelievable. To get to the UFC is hard enough. Break into the top 10, top five is almost impossible. To break into the top five. And some of these guys that get in there and stay there for a long time, and Beneil Dariush is one of those guys, and they asked him yesterday, you know, what? He’s like, what do you mean, what am I doing? Or what am I, I’m here to become a world champion. I want to win a world title. And that is your mindset.

And, you know, and it’s no different than what we were talking about earlier. If you’re going to get into the business world or you’re going to go out there and you’re going to work for yourself, that should be your mindset. I’m going to win a world title.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 100%.

The Champion Mindset

DANA WHITE: We’re going to be the best. We’re going to be the biggest. This is our goal. We’re going to work every day to get here, and anybody can do it. Well, I’m sure you two have stories of why you shouldn’t be sitting here right now, and I have a million of those stories, and anybody who’s ever made it, and I think what happens to some of these kids, too, is they feel like, and it’s not that they’re not confident in themselves, but it’s like, let’s say you wake up in your 30, right? Oh, man. I’m a, I used to be a bellman at the Boston Harbor Hotel.

So when people ask you what you do for a living, I’m a bellman right now. Is the bellman going to go from that to being the CEO? Well, everybody is something at one point in their life, nobody just gets out of high school and becomes the CEO of, you know, of Microsoft. Right. You all started somewhere, right? These were just jobs that you survived to pay your bills, to get you to wherever it is that you want to go.

Most people have to shake that stigma of, they feel like, who am I to, I didn’t go to college, I didn’t do this. I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. I don’t know anything. You know, all the sh*t that you can think are negative things in your life, they’re not. They’ve all built you in different ways to go wherever it is you want to go, and everybody can do it. I don’t know if I’m explaining.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’re making a, well, actually, I think people who understand where you’re coming from will really resonate with what you’re saying. Because like you say with us, we started this in a room above a comedy club with no audience, no followers, no money. We had to borrow equipment to do it, right?

DANA WHITE: Yep.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And we’ve interviewed prime ministers. You were here, you know, like, and that is a process of eating sh*t for seven years in a row.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, because that’s what.

DANA WHITE: How many times did you hear no, how many times did you hear, oh, this is ridiculous. You guys are wasting your time. Get a job. It’s true.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, right.

DANA WHITE: And even when I do PR, like Lena will take me out, we’ll do some show. You know, Dana used to be a bellman at a hotel. I was 19 years old. Yes, of course. I was a bellman, you know, and people say, oh, it’s like a rags to riches story. He was a bellman and now he’s a CEO. No, there’s a huge gap between bellman and sitting here today. But as a 19 year old bellman, I looked around and I said, yeah, this isn’t where I want to be in 20 years. I’m leaving. Walked out the front door. My buddy’s like, what are you doing? I said, I’m quitting. What happened? Nothing happened.

Managing the Fighter Mindset

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the things that happens, though, is with people who do their own thing, A, they’re very cool to deal with most of the time. I love dealing with people where it’s their own business, whether it’s a restaurant or whatever. But I imagine in the fight game, Dana, managing 500 or however many hundreds of fighters you have on your roster who have that mindset, I can’t imagine that’s an easy job.

The Fight Business

DANA WHITE: Yeah, no, it’s not. The fight business is, you know, the thing about the fight business, it’s like a sexy business. Everybody, as soon as somebody gets the money, they’re like, oh, I want to be in the fight business. And it is one of the hardest businesses in the world to run, navigate, and there have been so many people who are a lot smarter than me, a lot more successful than me, and put tons of money into it and have failed in this business.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I remember I did an interview in a previous life when I was working at a radio station. I interviewed Dillian White, the heavyweight contender, brilliant fighter Dillian. And I said to him, Dillian, what’s the thing that worries you most when you’re up against another fighter? Is it a killer left hook? Is knowing somebody can absorb a lot of punishment? Is it the fact that they’ve got deadly combinations?

He looked at me, went, no, it’s sitting in that corner looking over at the other guy in his eyes and knowing that motherf*er’s crazy. And I think that kind of separates the fighters, isn’t it? It’s that element of crazy that some of them have.

The Fighter’s Mindset

DANA WHITE: No doubt about it, and you can look at it as crazy or absolutely brilliant, and what it is they do. The thing that I love about fighters is when I would go out and say, oh, this is Chuck Liddell. And, oh, I feel bad for him. He has to fight. The fighters feel bad for people like us.

These people sit in bumper to bumper traffic every day to go sit in cubicles and a job that they hate. And they’re noticeable. These fighters, even the lower level guys that make less money, they’ll fight and they’ll go do incredible things for the next three months and blow all their money and they’ll go back into camp and start training again.

I mean, these guys do live incredible lives. And some of these fighters that are parents get to spend so much time with their families, and then they have these big chunks of time when they’re gone because they’re out on fight camp. But yeah, a lot of those guys feel sorry for regular people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, I can imagine. And I think one of the difficult things must be if you run a promotion like the UFC, where you see a fighter and they were once great, but there must be a part of you that you see them going downhill and you just want to step in and go, you were brilliant. You had your moment. You need to step away.

Knowing When to Walk Away

DANA WHITE: Yeah, I’ve done it many times, many times. It’s one of the hardest things to do. And I think if you’re not just fighters, but professional athletes, period. Tonight you guys are going to sit in Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world. And when the co-main and main come out, 13,000 people are losing their minds.

When they walk out of the tunnels, right, and they get up into the octagon, one will win. The place will erupt. When they leave. I mean, it’s got to be so hard to walk away from that, right? Just the feeling of all that and the money.

So I tell all these guys, this isn’t a job, this isn’t a career. This is an opportunity for you to become as famous as you can possibly be. Many people around the world see the great things that you’ve accomplished and make as much money as you can possibly make. And then there’s a second part of your life that they have to go out and figure out who they are and what they want to do.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, because it must be so tough if you’ve been the baddest man on the planet. It’s very difficult to go from that to becoming an accountant.

DANA WHITE: 100%.

DANA WHITE: Well, I’ve seen interviews where Tyson talks about it, too, and he says that when he watches himself on TV, he’s like, I idolize that guy. Now I’m nobody. Which is absolutely wrong. Tyson is beloved and is still doing very well for himself. But there’s a whole different mindset that you have to get into once you retire and walk away from, and not just fighting, but professional sports in general.

The Psychology of Defeat

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because I remember reading Muhammad Ali’s, one of Muhammad Ali’s biographies, and they talked about the boxer, former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and they said about Floyd, which I found so surprising. This man was a genuinely great fighter, for those of you who don’t know.

And every time he used to walk and defend his title, he carried a suitcase with him, which had a disguise because he knew at one point he was going to lose. And then he would wear that disguise and be able to slip out of the arena unseen. That, to me, was just, it was an insight into a man’s mind, but it was also heartbreaking at the same time. Even though you’re on top of the world, you still know you’re human and fragile.

DANA WHITE: I’ve seen, literally, in this business, I’ve seen guys walk in with the belt, entourage, the whole thing. Lose that night and walk out by themselves. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, wow.

DANA WHITE: It is brutal. That’s bad. Brutal.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That is bad.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because, again, we’re talking about fighters. One of my heroes was Ricky Hatton, God rest his soul. I love Ricky.

DANA WHITE: Yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Magnificent boxer. Even bigger heart, life and soul. A great guy. And I was reading an interview with him. I think he pretty much said himself he never got over losing to Floyd. He never got over losing to Floyd Mayweather. What are you talking about? You were one of the best of your generation, and you lost, arguably, pound for pound, one of the greatest, if not the greatest fighter of all time. There’s no disgrace in that.

DANA WHITE: Well said. Absolutely right. Well said. But it’s the mindset of a real fighter. Mindset of a real fighter is you want to be the best and you want to beat everybody. If that is not the way you think, you shouldn’t even be fighting. You’re crazy. That’s when you’re crazy. When you say, look across and that guy’s crazy. If that isn’t your mindset, you’re crazy. And you’re fighting for all the wrong reasons.

FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s so true, because it’s that balance, isn’t it? Because not only, look, if a soccer player goes on for too long, you go, I ain’t what it used to be. I remember a few seasons back, this guy was magnificent. But there’s also a danger element in combat sports. If you go on for too long, you’re really risking your health and your ability to function later on in life.

DANA WHITE: And possibly your life.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right?

DANA WHITE: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, we’ve made it a very British interview, and it’s getting depressing the longer we go.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That’s what I think.

Tonight’s Historic Card

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Let’s talk about the card. Because, Dana, one of the things you famously changed your mind about is women in the UFC. And tonight, I mean, I’m not an expert, but I’ve been a fan for a long time. This has got to be probably the most exciting female matchup between Valentina Shevchenko, Weili Zhang.

DANA WHITE: One of the greatest ever. Not UFC ever in female fighting. And when you talk about super fights, oh, this is a super fight. Weili Zhang never lost the belt. Still the world champion in her weight class, Valentina Shevchenko, who was heavier, still the champion.

Weili is coming up to try to take her belt, and it’s the number one pound for pound fighter in the world versus the number two pound for pound fighter in the world. This is a true super fight. And what makes this one even more exciting is Weili Zhang is a pit bull. She will go after Valentina, and it will be a good fight. I mean, I’d bet anything I own on this fight that this fight could be up for fight of the night.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: All right, we’re going to hold you to that. Well, I mean, it’s super exciting, not least because the fighting styles are so different, because Valentina is so technical, graceful. The way she moves, it’s just perfection. Like something out of Kung Fu movie.

DANA WHITE: Yep.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And then you’ve got Weili Zhang, who’s an absolute brawler. It’s super exciting.

DANA WHITE: True. So when I was coming over here, the president called me and we talked about that fight for 15 minutes. He’s totally pumped up.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Is he coming to the fight?

DANA WHITE: No. But he’s excited for that fight, and he told me to say hi to Valentina.

Friendship with Trump

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, you’ve brought him up, so I wasn’t going to bring it up. But one of the things you had to, I don’t know if it’s the right word to say, navigate. But you’re not a political guy, and I don’t think you take sides, particularly. But Trump is a friendship you’ve had for a long time, and you’ve had to, well, not had to. I mean, I think you’ve always backed him and been there for him in the way that he has for you. Have you had any issues with, like, sort of being aligned with President Trump?

DANA WHITE: No, not really. Nobody’s really ever come after me for that. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t like me because I’m friends with Trump. Who gives a s*? I could care less about that stuff.

He is the, I literally was on the phone with him for, I don’t know, what, 40 minutes. He had me laughing for 30 minutes of the call. He’s hilarious. He’s the best guy. I don’t know if you just saw the thing with the Osbornes. Have you seen that?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No.

DANA WHITE: So the Osborne family on their podcast. Don’t they have a podcast or if they just filmed this? But the son is like, I’m going to play this voicemail. And he plays the voicemail, and it’s Trump leaving a message for Sharon and saying, Ozzy was a great guy. He was talented. So sorry. So I’m just calling to give my condolences to you and the family and all this stuff.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Hi, Sharon, it’s Donald Trump. And I just wanted to wish you the best. And the family of great.

DANA WHITE: Ozzy was amazing.

FRANCIS FOSTER: He was an amazing guy.

DANA WHITE: I met him a few times, and I want to tell you, he was.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Unique in every way and talented. So I just wanted to wish you the best. And it’s a tough thing. I know how close you were and.

DANA WHITE: Whatever I can do.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Take care of yourself. Say hello to the family.

DANA WHITE: Thanks.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Bye.

The Sharon Osborne Defense

DANA WHITE: And then Sharon Osborne says, “This guy and his wife have never been anything but incredible to me and my husband.” And she said, “Let me make something very clear. I’m not American. I don’t vote. I don’t want to vote, and I’ll never vote. So this guy doesn’t need anything from me.” And she starts crying at the end of the whole thing. But I’ve been telling people for over 10 years that that’s exactly who that guy is.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s so interesting you say that, because this is something that people really forget. I remember, and look, people can have whatever opinion about President Trump. He’s a politician, people should criticize him, disagree with him, whatever. But I remember my wife and I were watching one of the Die Hard movies, for Christmas, and there’s a line in it where you’ve got, there’s some kind of problem. And the switchboard for a local area has to manage the phones for the entire city because of something that’s happened.

And the supervisor comes in and he tells the woman who manages it, you know, “You’re going to have to deal with this.” And she says, black woman, she says, “If you think I’m going to do that, you think I’m going to marry Donald Trump.”

DANA WHITE: They’re shutting down the police bay.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: All calls will be coming through this switchboard.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And I’m going to marry Donald Trump.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: He’s an aspirational figure. Fifteen years ago, right? And then when he ran for president, suddenly he became the worst person in the world. What do you think happened there?

DANA WHITE: I don’t know if this is true or not, but he was in Home Alone 2, and I heard they took him out of the movie. They took his scene out of the movie because the little kid, Macaulay Culkin, supposedly runs into him on the street and they have an exchange. And I heard they took that out of the movie. It’s literally mentally ill.

I mean, everybody used to love Trump. You know, then the whole thing about him being a racist, they’re like, “Oh, he’s a racist. He’s this and that.” You talk to any black people that have ever had any interaction with Donald Trump pre-running for president, I mean, he’s the best. Tyson defends him to the death, and I know Tyson was getting a lot of s* for it in the beginning, but he is one of the greatest people that you’ll ever meet.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And he’s turned it around. I mean, the comeback was, it’s like something out of the UFC.

DANA WHITE: In a way, right?

The Resilience Factor

DANA WHITE: Well, that’s the other thing, you know, when you talk about killer instinct, like we were talking earlier with certain athletes, there are other people in other walks of life, including business, that have it. He’s the most resilient human being I’ve ever met in my life. And I’ve been in the fight business forever.

FRANCIS FOSTER: You sure?

DANA WHITE: Fact. I mean, if you look at what he went through the last eight years and how, and I don’t care what side you’re on, there’s no way you believe that they weren’t coming after him. They were trying to put him in jail, they’re trying to break him financially, all that stuff. And that guy kept getting up every day and grinding. Yeah, it’s inspiring.

And he’s almost 80 years old and that guy doesn’t sleep. He is a workhorse. I mean, he’s non-stop. And I was talking to one of his people a couple days ago, the guy at the stock exchange. Yeah, my wife works for him and she was in the cabinet and he runs that team hard.

Like when the night of the election, I was with him and we were at Mar-a-Lago and then we went to the convention center where he was announcing that he had won and everything else. But all the kids, these are all young kids that worked for him in his campaign, they were wiped out. You know, for the last three weeks leading up to the election, this guy was flying to three or four different states and doing rallies and all the young kids who work for him, it’s a life changing moment for them.

But they were exhausted and they were all crying and, you know, they’re all celebrating, but it’s hard to keep up with that guy. He’s a beast.

Breaking Down the Card

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Coming back to the card, it was a bit of a detour. Leon Edwards is back. We’re British, so obviously that’s exciting.

DANA WHITE: Incredible fight, too. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about incredible fight. So the whole main card, people keep asking me, “What’s the best fight? What’s the sleeper fight?” I have no idea. The whole card is so good that any of these fights could be fight of the night. Could be. That’s another one, though. I mean, Edwards and Prates is an unbelievable fight.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And another one that is interesting. I mean, you’ve been accused of giving certain fighters what they call Dana White privilege. Right? Bo Nickal, is it fair to say that you were very excited about him and then he had a setback in a way that people didn’t expect?

DANA WHITE: Here’s the stupidity and Dana White privilege. When you bring guys in, there’s people that you think could possibly become world champions. Right. We’ve been talking through the whole interview. Everybody wants to become a world champion. Well, there’s people that you think have a much better chance than others do.

So you prop these people up and you put them in positions and see what they’re capable of doing. I mean, Conor McGregor is a guy that was accused of having Dana White privilege, arguably one of the biggest superstars in sports, let alone the UFC. Ronda Rousey, when I brought her in, Dana White privilege, huge superstar for us and literally launched female fighting for us.

Bo Nickal is a guy that came in with a lot of heat on him. So you put him in these fights and these positions to see if he can perform. That’s what you do. So that’s called fight promotion. You know, anybody that comes with Dana White privilege or all these other things that happen, you have a group of people, not just in UFC or in fighting, but in life, that if they don’t make it and they don’t get to where they thought they could, it’s never their fault. It’s somebody else’s fault.

“I didn’t have the Dana White privilege. I didn’t have this, and I didn’t have that,” and those type of people are always going to exist.

The Main Event

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And finally, on the card itself, the headline fight we haven’t talked about, some people are saying it’s a very lopsided matchup.

DANA WHITE: Which one? The main event?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, the main event. Yeah.

DANA WHITE: That’s crazy. What was the number I said to you, too? How many years with Islam and was it 21? If you add their records together, these guys haven’t lost in 21 years. Right.

Jack Della Maddalena came in on the Contender Series, right, and worked his way up and beat Belal Muhammad, who was a nightmare for everybody. He beat him. This kid is gritty, tough, well-rounded, and he’s in a position now. And he got there on his own. No Dana White privilege. He got there and now he’s going to fight one of the greatest of all time who’s coming up to try to take his belt. This is an incredible opportunity.

And when you go on, like, to prediction market stuff, you know, they got Islam at like 80-something percent chance to win. Polymarket.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s what I’m saying, right?

DANA WHITE: Yeah. Polymarket has him at like 80% to win the fight. So he’s looked at as this huge underdog. These are the greatest stories ever. And if Jack, this is the fight of Jack’s life. Jack wins this fight. There aren’t words to explain how different his life will be on Sunday.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I guess one of the opportunities for him is Islam’s coming up, right? Because that’s not an easy thing to do. How hard is that to go up?

DANA WHITE: Well, there’s two different ways to look at it. He’s coming up to a heavier weight class where, you know, supposedly the guys in that weight class should be bigger, stronger, blah, blah, blah, blah. But on the flip side, you could argue that because Islam doesn’t have to cut all that weight anymore, that he’ll actually be stronger, faster, you know, and you always have to make the assumption that the guy who’s coming up is going to be faster than the heavier guy.

So there’s so many different ways to look at it and break it down. And so people always ask me, “Who’s going to win?” I have no idea. Tomorrow. I guess that’s why it’s still fun for me, you know?

The UK Fighting Spirit

FRANCIS FOSTER: You know, on this show, we always criticize the UK. We’re always talking about how bad the UK is. I want to ask you a pro-UK question. Why is it this small, miserable little island, right, just in the northern point of Europe produces so many great fighters?

DANA WHITE: Great fighters. I mean, are you going to push back on my question?

FRANCIS FOSTER: If you look at the UK, look at the musical talent that has come out of the UK, fighter talent. I mean, it’s a fascinating part of the world.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Don’t forget podcasting, Dana.

DANA WHITE: And when you think about at one point, that tiny, miserable island controlled most of the world. You know what I mean? The UK is a very fascinating place, and so many talented people have come out of there. It’s cool.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, it is, because I know you tried to be negative, but it’s hard to be. It’s, you know, it’s a fascinating question and fascinating place because if you look even at the Northwest, the Northwest has produced so many great fighters, like Tom Aspinall, Paddy the Baddy. You know, it’s just that tiny little part of the UK. Yeah, it seems to produce fighters, Ricky Hatton, other people as well. So it’s really exciting from a British point of view to see our boys come over and do really well.

DANA WHITE: And what’s interesting too, is that traditionally, you know, people who come from rough backgrounds, you know, you grew up rough, you grew up hard, usually become the best fighters. That’s why you see places like, you know, Mexico, tons of talent coming out of Mexico and South America. But yeah, the UK is a fascinating place.

I mean, if you weighed any other industry or whatever you want to call it, just on the music side, it’s mind-boggling the talent that has come out of the UK.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Is there any particular country that you’ve got an affinity with when it comes to fighters? You know how people say Brazilian soccer players or, you know, like Dominican baseball players? Is there a country where you go, “Oh, I love those fighters. They’ve got something special about them”?

Growth of MMA Talent Globally

DANA WHITE: Well, realistically, this sport started in Brazil and there’s still a ton of talent that comes out of Brazil. When we went over, I’ll give you two places, the UK and Australia. When I first went, the three no-brainers for me were the United States, Mexico and the UK, traditionally big boxing countries. So those are the first three that I focused on.

The UK happened a lot faster than Mexico did. And the sleeper was Australia. I mean, when we first went to Australia, there’s a guy named Elvis Sinosic. He was the only guy out of that country at the time that had the skills to even come to the UFC. Now multiple world champions, multiple top tens, and one of the greatest camps in the sport come out of Australia, which is fascinating.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And what do you think that is? Is it because it’s kind of still quite, you know, if you look at it, it’s quite a brutal country. Australia, the weather, the outback, all the rest, everything that…

DANA WHITE: Can kill you is in Australia. From snakes, the spiders, the sharks to jellyfish, I mean, you name it, it can all kill you over there.

Eye Pokes and Fighter Safety

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Coming back to the British conversation, I mean, Tom Aspinall, I was just asking the name before we started about his condition. He’s still recovering from his eye poke. It’s been a big conversation since the last big event. Do you have any plans to kind of try and change things up so that these things don’t happen as frequently? Is there a glove change? Is there a rule change? Is there anything that can be done to stop it? Because I was just saying to her like, my three-year-old poked me in the eye and I had to go to a doctor and sit in a dark room for three days. It is really bad if you get poked in the eye by Cyril Gane. You know what I mean?

DANA WHITE: Yeah, yeah. Getting poked in the eye by anybody isn’t good. But we’ve messed around with gloves. We’ve tried to do all these things to, you know, I think the big talk is if you can, if there’s harder penalties for doing it, guys would be a lot more conscious of it because you always have these guys when, if you’re throwing punches and I’m blocking your punches, you know, and then you got a guy that reaches out to catch something and the other guy’s coming forward. It’s going to happen.

It doesn’t happen as much as it as, as it, you know, as it seems. Can’t remember what the number was. You know, the number line of eye pokes that we’ve had, it’s like 100 and something eye pokes over thousands of fights, but…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I guess some are much more meaningful than others, right? Like when you’ve got a heavyweight title fight, right, and it ends early with no result because of an eye poke, right? That’s when people… I can see your face in the press conference afterwards. You’re not happy that that’s happened.

DANA WHITE: Yeah, but, but it’s, you know, you don’t ever want a fight to end like that. And then the problem is, and I think that, you know, I think Tom took it a little, little too hard. But, you know, you got all these people going, “Ah, he quit. He this, he that.” It’s easy to sit on the couch or sit on the chair and watch somebody get poked in the eye and go, “Oh, you got,” you know, or get punched and knocked out.

You go home, you recover, you get back in the gym and we get back out and start fighting again. So are you thinking about rule change? Yeah, we will definitely figure something out. But it’s like bad decisions, bad referee calls. I mean, it’s never going to go away. It’s always going to be here, you know, it’s not like we’re going to create some invention that nobody can get eye poked again. It’s just, it’s not going to happen.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I guess the logic from some people is, is if you punish people more, right, they’re going to be more careful.

DANA WHITE: Makes sense. Makes sense.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Dana, we’re going to… we want to leave time to ask you questions from our supporters. So we’ll ask you our final question. Then we’ve over to Substack, which is…

FRANCIS FOSTER: What’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be. Before Dana answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack. The link is in the description where you’ll be able to see this.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Who wins in an octagon? Konstantin or Francis? Me or him?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Who are some of your favorite fighters to watch and why?

DANA WHITE: So… f*. I don’t know if I should tell this story.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You should.

DANA WHITE: I don’t know. This was a very well-rounded interview. We’ve covered it all. Yeah, I think it was great. You guys look very disappointed in that. Yeah, we are. We are, we are. You’re like…

Power Slap and the Future of Combat Sports

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’re like… when I think about you, I think of you as a guy who’s like the promotion, man. You haven’t mentioned Power Slap. You haven’t mentioned boxing. Like, that was your opportunity, man.

DANA WHITE: Yeah, those will all have their time and place. Listen, Power Slap is an absolute beast. This thing is so incredibly successful. Remember, I said this here today. This will be bigger than the UFC. You don’t have to train 10 years and be an incredible athlete to do it.

And like I said earlier, or you said earlier to me, I sell “holy sht” for a living. And you might have a whole night of fights and not have your “holy sht” moment. Power Slap is one, two, “holy sh*t.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: You know, as a man who has a Latin American mother, you should get some Latin American mothers involved in that.

DANA WHITE: Well, that’s a great point. A lot of people don’t understand what happens when you go to the ground and the ground game. Everybody understands a slap, including women, and everybody gets it. And one of the big criticisms early with Power Slap was that, yeah, it’s good, short, snackable content on social media, but, you know, people are going to want…

Every year we have 30 million followers in two and a half years, and we’re going to double this year what we did last year. So the thing just keeps going like this. It’s going to be great boxing.

Dana White on Eddie Hearn and Boxing

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, yeah, I was going to ask you about that, Eddie Hearn. There’s been a bit of a war of words between you guys.

DANA WHITE: Well, it’s been kind of one way.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’m trying to make it, to help me out. What’s going on there?

DANA WHITE: I like Eddie. I don’t dislike Eddie. And the thing is, with Eddie and all the other guys in the boxing world, they’re like, “Oh, we look forward to this. And he’s not doing it. He’s not doing that.” These guys remind me of career politicians that have, you know, just been there and done their thing, and then they’re running again telling you all the great things that they’re going to do that they haven’t done the last 25, 30 years.

If any of those guys were truly visionary and were that good and that talented, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation right now about boxing, because somebody would be the… you know, it reminds me of, like, if somebody wants to come in now into the MMA landscape and they’re saying that they want to challenge me, right? I don’t even look at any of those people as competition anymore.

My competition is baseball, basketball, football and soccer. When I look at our brand, I want our brand and our sport to be the biggest in all of sports. And again, you know, like 25 years ago, I sound like a crazy person to a lot of people, but maybe… I bet a lot more people don’t think I’m as crazy as people thought I was 25 years ago.

So the Eddie Hearns of the world… and I like Eddie, I like him personally, but he’s just… he’s a politician and he’s out there. He doesn’t like the fact that I’m getting into this, and I don’t blame him. And, you know, we’ll see in a couple years, we’ll see how this plays out.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: There we go. We’ve got a little clip. Dana White destroys Eddie Murphy with facts and logic. That’s all we did here at TRIGGERnometry. All right, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Dana’s going to answer your question.

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