Dana White recounts his rise from a difficult childhood to building the UFC into a global powerhouse, detailing his 1989 pivot despite skepticism and his $2 million franchise purchase after being chased out of Boston. He addresses personal controversies, including his parents' recent deaths which he met with stoicism, his public apology regarding domestic violence prioritizing his children, and his staunch support for Donald Trump. White defends his refusal to lay off staff during the pandemic, critiques modern "softness," and names Jon Jones as the current baddest man on the planet while crediting a strict keto regimen for reversing his metabolic syndrome. Ultimately, his narrative underscores a philosophy where savage drive and personal accountability supersede public opinion or traditional comfort. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Dana White's Explosive Journey00:04:54
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored is one of the most powerful, explosive and controversial figures in world sport.
Dana White, one-on-one, no holes barred and definitely uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to a special edition of Piers Morgan Uncensored, a box office one-on-one interview with UFC President Dana White.
He's the man who turned a blood sport into a business worth billions of dollars.
UFC Supremo Dana White took mixed martial arts into the stratosphere, making superstars of fighters like Conor McGregor.
From trouble roots, he worked as a paver, a bouncer and a bellboy, before becoming one of the most powerful men in world sport.
With his famous friends like Donald Trump, he's sold out shows and distinctly uncensored press conferences.
Do you have a question about the fight who these guys are fighting or you just want to start sh ⁇ here?
Dana White is a magnet for headlines and controversy.
He's been slandered before just paying for his vice-like grip on the sport he transformed.
This fractures incident with his wife on the UZ sparked a global furore.
He's revered, feared, hated, adored, but absolutely never ignored.
And tonight, Dana White is uncensored.
Well, I'm joined now by Dana White.
Dana, I've got to say that when my three sons, who are all mad UFC fans, when they heard I was interviewing you, I don't think I've ever heard them either more excited about a guest or prouder of their father.
So for that alone, thank you.
Well, thank you and tell them thanks for the support.
I took them all to the big McGregor-Mayweather fight down in Vegas, which presumably lined your pockets in the process.
And it wasn't probably a perfect example of what you're about really.
It was an incredible theatre.
It involved two supreme champion fighters, albeit in different disciplines.
And I found it a riveting thing to watch, albeit it ended how I suspected it was always going to end.
But that to me, in a nutshell, was you all over.
Vegas, high drama, high theatre, specialist pugilists at their very best, and a kind of unique encounter.
Yeah, what we try to do is try to give the best experience that we can for fans, either live or on television.
It's the thing that I focus on the most.
When you come to a live UFC event or an event that we're putting on, most people don't walk out and say, yeah, I don't ever want to see one of these again.
The thing that is intriguing about you to me is where you came from to get to where you've got to.
When you look back at your journey, you know, you were born in 1969 to a 19-year-old high school dropout mum.
You had a 21-year-old alcoholic father who left the home, I think, when you were seven or eight years old.
You worked your way through some pretty tough early years, had no silver spoon, no great privilege.
And yet here you are now sitting here talking to me from this gym, and you've got a multi-billion dollar business that's made you both extremely rich, very successful.
But I'd imagine also for you yourself, that journey must be incredibly satisfying.
Yeah, it's been amazing, actually.
You know, as I look back on my life and where I started and where I am today, it's been amazing.
But I love it so much that, you know, I'm 54.
I just turned 54 years old in July.
And, you know, I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of what's left to do in this business and in this sport.
But it's definitely been an incredible journey.
You were a road paver, a bouncer, a hotel Bellman, and an apprentice boxing drone.
I mean, you've done a few things in your time.
When you were doing those things, did you have a big dream?
Yeah, well, I think when you're young, those are all the type of jobs you have to do.
Number one, to find out what hard work really is, and number two, to find out what it is you don't want to do in life.
So I was very lucky that I had all those experiences.
And by the age of 19, I figured out didn't want to do any of that.
And I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be in the fight business, which at the time, you know, was 1988 or 1989, sounded like the dumbest idea ever.
But when you love something and you're very passionate about it, you know, and you know exactly what it is you want to do, you just get up every day and start grinding until it happens.
You come from an Irish Catholic background, as I do, and you also were taught by nuns when you were younger, as I was.
I had spiritual guidance from nuns.
Growing Up Without Regrets00:08:52
How did that impact you?
I don't know.
You know, went to Catholic school and, you know, had to go to church and all that stuff growing up.
I was an altar boy when I was younger.
I don't know how that, I don't know if that affected me in a positive way toward religion, but I'm not a very religious person these days.
I would say it's weird because there's some things that I don't believe in much, but I believe in karma for some reason.
I never really was guided by religion in any way, shape, or form as I got into my 20s.
What do you think happens to you when you die?
I think that it's it.
It's over.
There is, I think, that we think we're more important than we really are because some people have to believe that to get through life.
I'm not one of those people that has to believe that.
Listen, maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
I'd say the real answer for me is I don't know.
But I don't let that guide me and I don't let it, you know, just be a good person.
You can figure out being a good person without having to believe in anything, in my opinion.
Your relationship with your parents, obviously complicated, difficult.
I know you don't particularly like talking about that.
I don't want to pry into that.
Other than to just ask whether it's had a material effect on you as a person.
Do you think a lot of the drive that you have comes from those difficulties and those difficult relationships?
You're right, I don't like talking about it, but it's a great question.
And I would say yes, absolutely.
My relationship with my parents has definitely, you know, made me who I am today in many different ways, not just, you know, in life and in business, but as a father too.
So I wouldn't change my upbringing.
Not one thing about it.
I wouldn't change any of it.
So yeah, great question.
And I agree with you.
Has it made you a better father yourself, do you think?
A better parent?
100%.
100%.
My parents taught me a lot about what I didn't want to be as a parent.
And yeah.
And I don't really talk about it, I don't think I've ever talked about this, but my parents both died recently.
So, yeah, so that's that's yeah, I don't like talking about it.
But yeah, my parents died recently.
And how does that make you feel, given how difficult things have been?
Holy shit, this is where we're going with this interview, huh?
I don't, you know, I'm good with it.
I'm good with everything.
You know, I focus a lot on my kids and my relationship with them, and I've sort of put my relationship with my parents behind me.
Did you feel sad when you knew they died, or did you feel it was the end of a...
No, I...
Well, I didn't wish any ill will on either one of my parents, but, you know, no, I didn't, when they passed away, I had almost no feelings about it, to be honest with you.
You didn't go to their funeral funerals, either of them?
Yeah, listen, I took care of my father and moved him up to Maine and put him to rest with his family up there.
And then my mother, I had nothing to do with any of hers.
Her family handled her when she passed away.
I mean, it's obviously, it's an extraordinarily sad part of your life.
And obviously, I didn't know that your parents have both died recently.
And I thank you for sharing that very private information.
I appreciate it.
But I am curious as to, you acknowledge the drive that you have.
A lot of that may have come from this quite rough time you had.
But do you feel a great loss that you didn't have the love of your parents that many other people take for granted?
You sound like my wife.
I don't mean to.
Well, actually, maybe I do.
No, no, I do not feel that way.
But there's no doubt about it.
I cannot deny the fact that the way that I am built and the way the drive and all the things that I have definitely come from the relationship that I had with my parents.
There's no doubt about it.
But no, I have no remorse.
I don't feel bad about the way that I grew up.
I mean it when I say that I wouldn't change one thing about the way that I was brought up because I truly believe that had I not had them for parents, had I not had the upbringing that I did have, that I wouldn't be who I am today.
What are the things, Dana, what are the things that it taught you not to do as a parent?
And what are the things that it taught you to do as a parent?
Yeah, I think that the to-dos is I'm here for my kids.
You know, I've been married for almost 30 years.
You go through a lot of things in a marriage.
I mean, I just went through some stuff last New Year's Eve.
You know, these things happen.
What you don't do is you don't leave.
You don't quit.
You don't give up.
And you stay.
You don't stay together just for your children, but you stay.
I made a commitment.
22 years ago, I had my first son, and there's a commitment there to everybody that's involved.
And, you know, I've stayed in there.
I'm always there for my kids, anything that they ever need.
And, you know, my father taught me, you know, what it feels like to not have a father there at the house, what it's to not have that person around all the time when you need them and I would never do that to my kids.
You said a great quote.
You talked about my legacy to me is when I drop dead and my kids are at my funeral.
I want my three kids to get up and say he's an awesome dad.
Is that ultimately in the end the real litmus test of success for you?
I've seen other people say, you know actually if, in the end, your kids, when they get old enough to make that decision for themselves, if they still want to be around you and they still love you and they still care about you and they would speak at your funeral in positive way about you, then in the end, that's the ultimate litmus test of success, far more than any financial benefits or gains or fights or whatever.
It may be.
Well said, I couldn't have said that better myself.
You're absolutely right.
You know everybody, everybody's always asking about legacy.
Your legacy, what you did for a living, isn't your legacy.
Your legacy is your children and and their children and and you know how they feel about you, how they feel about listen we, we all make mistakes and we all fail in life at many different things.
My opinion is, the one thing that you can't fail is being a parent.
It's it's.
It's the ultimate failure.
It's the it's, it's what showed that you, you really weren't focused on the right things in your life, if that's what you failed at.
When you referenced the the incident on new year's eve and obviously it went viral.
Everyone saw the video footage and so on you were very contrite after that, but what's the hardest thing of that?
Actually having to talk it over with your kids 100, I mean.
Everybody was acting like there needs to be some big apology to the world.
Um no, the apology was to my kids, for for me and my wife uh, nobody wants to see their dumb, drunk parents slapping each other on TMZ.
You know what I mean?
Our oldest son didn't talk to us for like four days and um, you know, and and and the other kids had to deal with some stuff too.
It's embarrassing, and uh, the only apology that needed to be made was to our children, and and the only uh relationships that needed to be handled immediately was between us and our kids and, and we did it, we handled it and, and we got through it as a family.
What was it like for you, having seen so many fighters get into scrapes and having to deal with the fallout of that?
What was it like for you to suddenly be on the receiving end yourself of that kind of attention?
Yeah yeah, it's definitely not fun uh, but it's.
Building a Global Brand00:15:28
It's something that you know as a man.
You have to stand up and you have to deal with it, and and and uh, handle your business, take your lumps and and deal with whatever.
Whatever comes with it and uh, but.
But, like I said, the the most important part of it is to handle it as a family first.
As long as you get your family straight I, I could give a shit what everybody else thinks.
Did you worry in during that whole episode that you may lose everything that you'd fought so hard to build?
Nah uh the, the people that are around me.
It's again when you're talking about something like this that happens and you're talking about the what everybody else, the whole world, is looking at you and saying, the people who know me, know me and and and the people that the circle that I keep i've had for, you know, 40 years.
So um, you know the people that that that I cared the most about.
I, I knew it was going to be.
Whatever everybody else I I, I could care less what everybody else thinks.
Welcome back to a special edition of the show Dana White uncensored.
The start of UFC.
Because you had a couple of investor friends.
They bought the franchise off you for $2 million.
You'd come to Vegas.
But how you got to Vegas is fascinating because you were basically chased out of town by the mafia, by Mr. Bulger, who was of course a very famous Mafia mobster.
Tell me about that.
Yeah, it wasn't him.
It was some of his guys that worked under him.
But yeah, I mean, I was in Boston in, you know, the early 90s, and that stuff was real back then.
I mean, if you watch any of the movies or any of the documentaries that came out about it, I lived in South Boston, Massachusetts, and that stuff was very real.
And at the time, you know, they had felt that I owed them some money that I felt I didn't owe.
And, you know, I was either going to pay it or I wasn't going to pay it.
But right when I left and came back to Vegas, it was like the summer of 95.
And then right after that is when all the stuff started to unravel for him.
And, you know, he basically went on the run after that.
And now, I mean, I was in, we had a fight in Boston a couple weeks ago.
I mean, it's not even the same city.
It's completely different.
And South Boston is not the same place it was in the 80s and early 90s.
So when I go back there now and look at it at that place and at that time, you know, you realize what a scary place that really was at that point in time.
But I didn't really feel that way when I was in my early 20s, you know.
Yeah, I don't know how that would have played out, but I can tell you this.
I got the call, I hung up the phone, picked it back up and called Delta and got a one-way ticket back to Vegas.
And what's funny is everything in life is about timing, you know?
It was the time for me to come back to Vegas for all of this stuff to align and to happen.
So earlier, you and I were just talking about religion and what you believe and what you don't.
It's just crazy the way that things work out and how things are kind of meant to be and what will put you on these different paths in life.
It's fascinating.
You've turned a business that you managed to find two guys, two investor friends, to spend $2 million buying the UFC franchise off you.
But it was a very basic franchise at the time.
One octagon and a few bits and pieces around it.
Today that business is worth $12 billion.
It's made you incredibly rich in the process, obviously.
But my simple question is, how?
How did you do this?
Yeah, so it's a great question.
Yeah, when we originally bought the company for $2 million, we had a few contracts, when I say a few, maybe 8 to 15 contracts, and an old wooden octagon, and those three letters UFC.
That was it.
The former owner had basically stripped all the rights and sold everything off to try to keep the thing alive.
But what we did was we came in, we started to acquire some of these rights back from other companies that had bought them.
We started to build the trademark back and the brand.
And we had a vision for this thing.
We were big fight fans and we believed that if this was done the right way, this could be the biggest sport in the world.
I always had this philosophy about fighting that it doesn't matter what color you are, what country you come from, or what language you speak.
We're all human beings.
Fighting's in our DNA.
We get it and we like it.
It doesn't have to be explained to anybody.
And when you have the right fight in the right place at the right time, like you were just talking about earlier with Conor McGregor and Floyd Bayweather, everybody wants to watch it everywhere, all over the world.
Now we're getting to a place with streaming where that's actually starting to become possible, where we could put on a fight out here in America and the whole world can watch it at the same time on the same network.
So the ceiling on this thing is what?
Eight billion people are in the world.
As you continue to grow the sport, this thing can actually become the biggest sport in the world.
And we saw that from day one.
The question was, is the timing right?
And thank God it was.
Well, there were two politicians who had interesting takes on what you were doing.
In 1996, Senator John McCain, who was a huge boxing fan, but he railed against the UFC on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
He called it human cockfighting.
And he sent letters to the governor of every state asking them to ban it.
And then Donald Trump came along right when the whole business may have been up for grabs.
It may not have flown.
It may just have sunk.
And Donald Trump turned up and stayed late at one of your events.
And he carried on supporting you.
And you've stayed friends ever since.
How important?
Well, first of all, tell me about John McCain.
How did you feel when he called it basically cockfighting?
Yeah, that happened before we bought the company.
So that was one of the uphill battles that we had.
Obviously, Senator John McCain did everything for the right reasons.
He wanted this thing to be regulated by the Athletic Commission, rules in place, and referees and judges, and proper medical testing and all that stuff.
We agreed with Senator John McCain when we bought the company, and we ran toward regulation, and we wanted to get this thing regulated by all the athletic commissions, not only in the country, but throughout the world.
And then, yeah, Donald Trump, when we bought the company, you know, venues didn't want this.
There were no venues that wanted this thing.
Now, we break every venue record all over the world, and venues everywhere want us to come.
But in the beginning, nobody did.
But Donald Trump saw this thing early, saw that he thought it could be successful.
When you think about it, the Trump brand was here.
The UFC brand was here.
And he brought us in, cut us a great deal, showed up to the first fight, stayed to the last fight for both of the events that we put on in his casino.
And everything that ever happened to me throughout the rest of my career, Donald Trump was the first guy to either pick up the phone and call and say congratulations or write a note and send something.
You know, he was always that guy.
Then Donald Trump and his son got in and actually started to compete with the UFC.
So with another company.
And you would always have these, you know, these media people trying to put me against Trump and say, oh, and my whole thing was I will never say anything bad about this guy.
He was extremely good to me, not only in the early days, but throughout the rest of my career.
And, you know, all that stuff is what started the incredible relationship that I have with Donald Trump.
I mean, you know, I've seen the good side of Trump and I've seen the, we've all seen some of the bad side of him.
You've remained, for reasons you've explained, extremely loyal to him.
How hard is that sometimes to do that publicly?
It's not hard at all because, you know, how I judge people is how my relationship is with them.
You know, I can have a friend that 15 other people don't like for whatever reason.
I judge them off their relationship with me.
And I can tell you from personal experience, Donald Trump has never been anything but loyal and incredible and an amazing friend to me.
Do you think he can become president again?
I do.
I mean, people thought he couldn't become president the first time and he did.
I absolutely think he could do it again.
Listen, the forces are fighting against him.
They're trying to do everything they can to make sure that this guy does not even have a chance to be elected again.
Yes, I mean a majority of the country wants this guy to be the next president of the United States.
How often do you talk to him?
I talk to him several times a month.
I just talked to him last week.
He and I are very close.
We're very good friends.
I consider him a very good friend of mine, and we talk a lot.
What do you talk about?
Fights.
He's a fight fan.
He's a fight freak.
He loves fights.
You know, mostly what we talk about is fights.
He's a fight fan.
And, you know, we talk about other things, family and stuff like that too.
But mostly we talk about fights.
What I really like about you, Dana, and your story is that it's a story of resilience, of determination, of getting yourself back on your feet when you've been knocked down, all the kind of Rocky Balboa things that he says in that infamous speech or famous speech to his son, who's being a spoiled brat and he finally has it out with him in the street.
I've seen you say that you think America, and probably the wider world actually, has gone soft.
And I agree.
I think it has gone soft.
I think we've become a world where virtue signaling is more important than reality, where facts no longer matter.
You can all pretend to be whatever you want and everyone has to go along with it.
Where everyone's offended by absolutely everything.
How have we got to this place?
And what's the way out of this kind of woke hell that we're having to endure?
America has become so soft, it's actually, you know, it's a problem.
And I tell kids all the time, if you even have this much savage in you, everything out there right now is for the taking.
There was a point in time in the United States where you would look at different businesses and say, God, it's almost impossible to break into this business because it's been so established.
And even the companies, all these companies that are so soft right now, everything out there is for the taking.
If you have even this much savage in you, if you are willing to go out there and grind and work hard, you know, you got these people that don't want to go to work.
They want to stay home and work from home.
And believe me, I've seen this when I've spoken before.
I see it pop up in the comments.
All these people saying, you're wrong.
No, things can be done from home.
No, it can't.
You have to be in the building with like-minded people.
You know how much stuff that I have on my agenda every day that needs to be done, but other things that pop up in the office and you get a bunch of smart, hard-working people in the room together and you go on a completely different, you know, you have to have people in the office working every day.
And these people that don't want to, stay home, man.
Stay home and do your thing.
Good luck to you.
I wish you all the luck in the world.
There's going to be a small group of hungry savages out there that are going to run every one of you over.
And you can sit home and you can cry and complain about how you didn't get yours.
And it's because this person had this opportunity that you didn't have.
It's all bullshit, crybaby stuff that's going on.
And the whole world, like you said, but more so in the United States, like I've never seen before.
I read a great profile of you by the Financial Times.
And the writer had clearly gone in with a kind of idea that maybe you were going to be some kind of egotistical monster, whatever.
But he found the complete opposite.
And he told some really interesting stories, one of which was as you were coming out of the pandemic, or in the middle of the pandemic, how you got all your team together, 300 people, I think, and you said, there's absolutely no way I'm going to start cutting you off, you know, firing a lot of people to save money.
We're going to get through this together.
And apparently the reaction from your staff was extraordinary.
How important was that moment for you to prove yourself as a boss in the tough times as well as the good?
Yeah, It's so true.
It's like, you know, the UFC has been this rocket ship of success since 2005, right?
And nobody does anything by themselves.
You build a great team around yourself, you know, smart, talented, hardworking people who sacrifice every day.
They didn't see their kids' football game or they didn't go to this play because they're out working hard to build the sport and build the company, right?
Now, you're going to tell me COVID comes.
COVID never really made sense to me from the beginning.
The first day when everything started to shut down and it was getting weird, I got all my employees together and I said, listen, I don't know what's going on.
I can't explain.
I don't have the answers for you.
But if any of you are scared or feel like your life is in danger or somebody at home might be in danger, you guys can go home and do whatever you have to do.
My team is a bunch of solid, you know, they couldn't be any more solid.
And I tell these people how much I love them all the time.
So what you're going to tell me is the first time that we ever face adversity, right?
We're facing real adversity here.
I'm going to start laying these people off in the scariest time in the history of the world.
Good luck to you.
You know, we got to save the bottom line over here.
I will never pick money over people.
So I was willing to give up my salary, my bonus, whatever it was going to take to make sure that everybody was comfortable, that we could take care of the employees.
And then I started trying to find a way to go through COVID.
This is America.
We've been doing this since the day this country started is solving problems.
You have to figure out, here's the problem, how's there a solution?
Now, in Abu Dhabi, these guys were way ahead of the curve.
They were testing.
They were doing all this stuff.
Well, if they can test, we can test.
We can figure this out.
So that was always my thought process going through it.
There was no way I was going to let go of my employees during the scariest time of our lifetime.
You talked about Abu Dhabi there in the Middle East, and you're a big fan of a lot of what goes on in the Middle East, particularly in sport and other things.
They're obviously getting more and more dominant now in sports like golf with the Saudi Live League.
Navigating Social Media Chaos00:12:09
You now have the Saudi Football League led by Cristiano Ronaldo, but loads of top stars going out there.
I'm a good friend of Cristiano, and I've been following this journey with him with great fascination.
It's taken a lot of blowback from people who say we shouldn't be allowing the Saudis or other Middle Eastern countries who have bad human rights records to be doing this to sport.
What's your view?
Yeah, my relationship has been with Abu Dhabi and the UAE for years now.
And if you look at what that royal family has done with that country over the last 50 years, it's incredible.
And they were the first ones really to do it.
They started getting involved in sports and saw the whole sports thing coming.
I mean, the UFC has been in business with them for like 15 years.
And to be honest with you, when the shit hit the fan during COVID, these guys were way ahead of the curve, way ahead of what was going on and how to test and how to create a true bubble.
Do you have any moral qualms about the human rights records of some of these countries?
Or do you think it should be just kept out of sport?
That actually, I mean, I have a view that almost every country, if you put a real forensic gaze on them about reasons not to let them have sport on moral grounds, you'd end up having to play everything in Iceland or Switzerland.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
That's a tough one.
I mean, That's a whole different subject and a whole different conversation.
You know, we do business with UAE.
These guys have always been great stand-up guys.
I'm sure you could find some issues with whatever.
You can find some issues with lots of different companies that do business in the United States and anywhere in the world when it comes to human rights and what you think is right and what you think is wrong.
I am very comfortable sitting here today telling you that my relationship with the royal family of UAE has been amazing.
They've never been anything but great to us and our people.
You know, I respect them and I consider them friends too.
Welcome back to Uncensored.
Dana White, one-on-one.
There's been a lot of speculation about a massive potential fight in the octagon between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
You've been quite excited about this.
Do you think it's going to happen?
Do you think you will be the guy to put it on and how much money could it generate?
Well, we were talking about that earlier on.
I think that has fallen apart.
I think that, you know, had it happened and had we moved forward and done it, it would have done a billion dollars in revenue.
Who would have won?
And that I don't know.
I mean, if I knew the answer to that, I'd be Vince McMahon.
But, you know, who wins and who loses, I don't determine.
They do.
But I tell you this.
It would have been huge.
It would have been the biggest fight in the history of the world.
And no fight would have, you'd have had to have Trump versus Putin to beat that record.
Are we going to see Conor McGregor back in a high-profile fight?
He is back in the gym.
He's training.
And yeah, I expect to see Connor fighting next year.
Does it matter that he's lost a few big fights recently?
Does that impact on his ability to put bums on seats, sell tickets?
Well, here's what happens, Pierce.
And you know this.
I'm sure you've seen this with colleagues and friends and people that you know.
Once a certain level of money is attained, you know, to be the person that you were coming up, to be that hungry and work that hard and be that dedicated to the sport, or whatever craft it is you do, money changes everything.
And Conor McGregor has made that kind of money.
And it's not a knock, it's just a fact.
I mean, when we sold the company in 2016, this was sort of like a Microsoft of fighting.
You know, there were a lot of people that made a lot of money and a lot of people left and they went and retired or moved on to, you know, you have to have a certain type of drive to make that kind of money.
And you've seen guys in this sport, when they make that kind of money, you know, they'll fight a lot less like Connor has, or they go on losing streaks because it's just, you are not that same person once you get that kind of money.
You lose the edge, the hunger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The hunger and the drive is not the same.
You know, everything, Conor McGregor is a perfect example.
Everything that Conor McGregor ever dreamed of and stuff he couldn't possibly dream of in his life, he has right now, you know.
And it's tough to be on a yacht all summer and then say, I got to get back in the gym and start grinding again.
And again, it's not a knock.
just it's it's the way it's the way life is especially in the fight business especially in the fight business social media has been a massive thing for you and you actually gave one person some great advice because Dwayne Johnson the rock did not want to go onto social media and you persuaded him single-handedly he said you're mad you should be on social media he's now the most followed American man on Instagram so I think the words he's looking for are thank you Dana Yeah,
The Rock didn't want to be on social media.
And I said, you're crazy.
I said, do you know how big you'll be on social media?
And I kind of explained it to him from a business perspective on why he should do it.
And I actually set him up with my social media team.
And they got him started and got him going.
And I mean, the guy is an absolute juggernaut now on social media.
So, yeah.
Is social media?
I mean, you've got kids.
I've got kids.
Social media has a lot of good stuff about it.
There's no question.
Has some bad stuff.
It can be pretty toxic.
A lot of kids suffer from anxiety from the stuff that exists on social media.
What do you think on the balance sheet?
Is it a force for good or not?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of negative things in this world that if you focus on that type of stuff and if you're not tough enough and if you're not hard enough for it, let me tell you what.
If your feelings get hurt easily, you should stay as far away from social media as possible.
I totally agree.
But social media is one of the greatest marketing tools of all time, right?
And what you have to understand is you have to embrace the negativity too.
The negative, you can't just have, you're never going to be in a scenario anywhere in life where everything is positive.
Oh, everybody loves me and everybody's saying great things about all the things that I do.
It's just, it's impossible.
So if that is even your mindset, you're way too soft for probably a lot of things.
But to say that social media is bad, it's the same thing that they said about us when we were younger, that television was horrible for you.
Oh my God, if you watch television, this and that and everything.
Listen, there's a lot of bad things out there in the world.
If you are soft and if you are a total wimp, you know, forget about it.
Everything's going to bother you.
Everything's going to hurt your feelings and everything's going to give you anxiety.
Where do you sit on this?
You're going to put yourself up in a closet somewhere and hide from the whole world.
Do you know what, Dana?
It's so refreshing to hear this because so few public figures will actually say this stuff anymore because they get terrified the woke brigade is going to cancel them for saying things which are so obviously true.
And I just, it's refreshing.
Whenever I hear you speak, I think, this guy just says what he thinks.
And by the way, I agree with most of what you say.
Yes, social media is the greatest marketing tool in the world.
If you own a business or you're aspiring to do something, you know, and get your image, your product, your whatever it is out there, you're insane not to be on social media.
But don't go on social media and thinking that it's going to, here's the other thing that you have to understand too, about the negativity on social media.
If you're out there looking to promote something, you have to embrace the negativity because the negative people are so loony, they're so bad shit nuts that these people will stay on there all day fighting with everybody to make it.
And it kicks you up into the algorithm and actually makes your post act more popular.
You know, this is what a lot of these big corporations don't understand.
Like these big corporations want to, we want to get into social media and everything else.
Well, you better get ready for some negativity.
But most of them can't handle negativity, so they try to stay away from it.
We live in a hard world.
People are mean and people say mean things and people do mean things.
That's been that way since the beginning of time and it's never going to change.
So either toughen up or go hide somewhere.
Just get out of the way.
We're in a very strange place at the moment in sport where biological males are beginning to dominate biological females in women's sport because they identify as women.
What do you think of that?
I think you know exactly what I think of that.
I think that, you know, let me put it to you this way.
I have a daughter, okay?
And, you know, I don't ever want to see a day where somebody... who is a biological male is competing against my daughter.
So, yeah.
No, I think it's another nutty, you know, insane thing that's happening in the world today, you know, that we're all trying to deal with.
And yeah, I'm just glad there's no, my daughter's a cheerleader.
So she's not playing any competitive sports, but it hasn't happened in the cheer world yet.
If your daughter wanted to be a fighter, what would you feel about that?
Because you put on some very, very big fights involving women.
I got to be honest, I never feel that comfortable watching women smacking seven bells out of each other.
I know it's hugely popular.
I know they love doing it.
I know that some of them become superstars and make tons of money.
But as the father of an 11-year-old girl myself, I would never want to see her do it.
How do you feel about if your daughter wanted to?
I famously got hammered like 10 years ago saying women would never fight in the UFC.
And then I met Ronda Rousey.
But you have to understand the context.
At the time, I was trying to get people to accept men fighting in a cage.
Women fighting in a cage, I was like, oh my God, this will be next to impossible.
But if you look at what we did, almost everything was impossible in building this business to what we built it to today.
But what I did learn is that I never expected these women to be as technical and as badass as they have been.
And the answer to that question is, yes.
If my daughter wanted to fight, I would absolutely let her fight.
I wouldn't stop my daughter from doing anything or competing in anything that she wanted to do.
I would actually be very supportive and help in any way that I possibly could.
Who is the greatest fighter of any kind that you've ever seen?
Of any time, in any sport?
Anytime, any sport.
It's so hard to put your thumb on it because I think it's a good idea.
Well, let me make it an easy question.
I'll make it an easy question.
If you could choose one person in history, say modern history, last hundred years, to fight literally for your life, who would it be?
Life-Saving Health Scare Talk00:04:53
Oh, God.
You know, I'm a big Ali fan.
He was so iconic and he changed so many things in the world and culture and, you know, as far as racism and so many different things go.
Ali was such a massive figure in life, you know, not just boxing.
Was he the greatest ever, one of the greatest humans ever?
That's a fact.
But that's not the question.
He did lose three times.
I know.
You got me on this one.
I mean, John Jones, who's in the UFC still, has never been beat.
This guy has beat everybody.
And when you talk about real fighting, you know, when you talk about who the baddest man on the planet is, when you talk about that, the real definition of what that means, you throw two guys in a room and who comes out?
Yeah.
Okay?
That's the baddest man on the planet.
And it is hard to not say that John Jones is that guy right now.
I want to come back and just finally talk to you about your health because you've had some pretty big health scares and a guy called Gary Brecker who's going to join you has pretty much, I think you would say, helped save your life.
And we're going to talk about how that's happened and why it had to happen.
Welcome back.
Here's the final part of my interview with USC President Dana White and a special guest.
So we've been joined now by Gary Brecker.
I think the easiest thing, Dana, explain to the audience who Gary is and why he's so important to you.
Yeah, so Gary Brecca is a human biologist, and I met him through a longtime friend of mine.
So I ended up finding out that he was a mortality expert.
So he could tell you when you were going to die, and he would be right within a month or so.
I became obsessed with this.
So that was all I cared about.
So he finally talks me into coming out and he starts going through my blood work and he starts telling me everything that's wrong with me with no medical history whatsoever on me.
So this is kind of blowing me away.
Then he told me what was wrong with my parents and he was right.
So basically he ended up getting me and he says to me, give me 10 weeks.
I promise I'll change your life.
So I said, all right, I'll commit 10 weeks to this thing.
And to say that this guy has changed my life is the understatement of the century.
I mean, as I got to the 10-week point, I started to feel like I was in my 30s again.
And now I've been with him a year and a half.
And I'm not kidding you.
I feel like I'm in my 20s.
My level of productivity at work, my cognitive, my physical, I mean, just everything.
This guy is a genius.
Well, before I come to Gary, just quickly, how long did he say you had to live if he hadn't changed things?
Yeah, he gave me 10.4 years.
And what's crazy about that is he gave me 10 points.
He said, if you stay on this trajectory that you're on, you're going to live another 10.4 years.
And me and my wife both disagree with him.
I actually think I wouldn't have made it 10.4 years if I hadn't met him.
Let me bring in Gary.
So Gary, I mean, that's one of the great marketing pitches I've heard.
In a very short...
It absolutely is.
In a short nutshell, what have you done to Dana to make him so enthusiastic and to, in his eyes, prolong his life?
I mean, so Dana had a common precursor for cardiovascular disease called metabolic syndrome.
It's actually the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide.
And it's a combination of five things, abdominal obesity, low healthy cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, elevated insulin and blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, and hypertension.
And to have any two of those five is considered to have meta, you know, you're considered to have metabolic syndrome.
It's something you should get addressed.
It's why I think everybody should get data on their bodies.
He started exercising again.
He went on a keto reset diet.
The majority of what Dana did was really what Dana did himself.
And what were the key things?
Just quickly, Gary, what were the key things that Dana changed in terms of diet, which made a big difference?
So we did three big things with Dana.
We did hormone balance, we did nutrient deficiencies, and we did glycemic control, a control of his blood sugar.
So he went on a strict keto reset diet, which is a very strict, I call it a prescription keto diet, meaning you have to eat exactly what is on this plan, morning, noon, and night for 10 weeks, or this situation could get a whole lot worse.
So he went on a strict heated diet.
He had a strict exercise and workout routine.
It's fascinating.
The Strict Keto Reset00:00:59
I've got to unfortunately wrap it up, but it is fascinating.
I don't know whether to see you or not, Gary, because what I don't want to hear is you look at me and go, Piers, unfortunately, you're leaving us next Tuesday.
I can fix that.
And we'll push it out a couple of thousand Tuesdays.
Dana, it's been brilliant.
Honestly, I've had such a fascinating time going over your life, your extraordinary career, your amazing achievement with UFC.
My sons, I started with this, I've got to end it.
They're all massive UFC fans.
They're all very excited about this interview.
The first question they're going to ask is, Dad, how did you do?
Did Dana think you were any good?
That's all they'll care about.
So, what's the verdict?
Incredible.
Great interview.
It was a pleasure.
And tell your boys, thank you.
I really appreciate the support.
Dana White, what a pleasure.
Thank you very much indeed.
Likewise, thank you.
Well, that's it from me and from Dana White.
What a fascinating guy and a fascinating interview.