Dana White, UFC

Summary

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Podcast Summary: David Senra x Dana White, UFC

Host: Alex (Scicomm Media)
Guest: Dana White
Date: May 10, 2026

Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Dana White, President of the UFC, focusing on his journey as a founder, UFC’s evolution from near-bankruptcy to a multibillion-dollar phenomenon, the mindset needed for entrepreneurship, adaptability to technology, and candid takes on the media, loyalty, risk, and the future of sports entertainment.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. Authentic Storytelling & Founder’s Role

• [00:02-00:32] Alex observes Dana as the ultimate "chief storyteller" and fan of his own product, holding up White’s UFC press conferences as models for founders’ communication.

  • Dana: “I'm a huge fan, still today, not only of the UFC but boxing too. Now I actually get to make the fights I want to see.” (00:32)

• Dana rejects the corporate, lawyer-sanitized style of leadership:

  • “I used to see CEOs reading canned statements … fake phony bullshit that I was never into.” (00:32)

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2. UFC’s Early Struggles & “Taking Pain” as a Path to Excellence

• [01:04-05:15]

  • The UFC started with 5 events a year; events were expensive, outputs chaotic, mistakes constant.
  • Dana, Lorenzo & Frank Fertitta operated at a massive loss for years, including personally funding tens of millions—a process described as “trial and error.”

• Notable quote:

  • “Excellence is the capacity to take pain.” – Alex (02:51)

• Ownership & Rights:

  • UFC’s original purchase didn’t include rights to its own content (merch, DVDs, video games); these were reacquired from Lionsgate for a relative pittance.
    • “...all we bought were those three letters, UFC, an old wooden octagon, and some contracts … Lionsgate … sold us all the rights back cheap, too.” – Dana (04:01-05:15)

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3. The Make-or-Break Gamble: Ultimate Fighter & TV Breakthrough

• [05:51-13:12]

  • UFC’s near-death moment: nearly selling, but deciding to risk everything on reality TV as a “Trojan horse.”
  • Ultimate Fighter’s launch on Spike TV was a last-ditch, self-funded $10M gamble.
    • “If the Ultimate Fighter didn’t work, it’s over.” – Dana (11:57)

• Authenticity as a differentiator:

  • “I have eyes, I’m not going to lie to you. Like, that fight sucks… Founders: yeah, we fucked that up, that was a bad experience.” – Alex (08:59)
  • Dana: “You let the fans judge whether the fight is good or bad… If it’s over and it sucks, then we’ll both probably agree that it sucks.” (09:10-10:00)

• The “Napkin Deal” & Runaway Success:

  • After the legendary Griffin-Bonner finale: “We were out in the alley, did a deal on a napkin.” – Dana (12:39)
  • Retaining all IP in exchange for funding risk was later the foundation of UFC’s wealth.

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4. Building the Brand: Tech Adoption & Storytelling

• [13:45-17:41]

  • Dana’s philosophy: always adopt technology early, ride each new platform—DVDs, streaming, podcasts, reality TV—as “giant tailwinds.”
    • “[Joe Rogan's podcast] ...It's like the radio, but we put it online... I was like, this is going to be huge.” (14:21)

• “If I could go back, I would’ve fucking murdered the DVD era. We did really well, but I would have murdered the DVD era.” – Dana (17:02)

• Power of story:

  • UFC reality shows built stars by telling backstories, generating loyalty and major PPV draws.

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5. Risk, Intensity, & Founder Mindset

• [24:06-26:06]

  • Parallels to other founders (e.g., Todd Graves of Raising Cane’s): risk tolerance as a key to outsized success.
  • “Entrepreneurs are not taking enough risk. They’re too scared of risk. They need to take more risk. … If you truly believe in it …” – Recapping Todd Graves, Alex (24:41)

• “Everybody that has an idea or dream … they're all afraid to take that dive. … I'm 19 years old … there's other people … that are like, yeah, fuck this shit. I can do more than this.” – Dana (26:06)

• Trusting intuition, relentless forward motion, and total ownership.

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6. Leadership, Control, & Team Building

• [30:22-33:58]

  • UFC is a “dictatorship” run by Dana’s taste; decisions are centralized.

    • “There is no committee here. … This is a dictatorship. 100% a dictatorship.” – Dana (30:30)

  • Building a team that is “wired like him,” clones his instincts, and rarely needs correction:

    • “Once you build this trust, confidence … you have to have a bunch of sick animals … I literally have a whole campus full of those kinds of people …” (33:05-33:58)

• Stories of firing whole production teams, personally overseeing every detail, and fostering loyalty.

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7. Entrepreneurship as a Calling & Growth Addiction

• [35:19-37:17]

  • Dana admits he now loves entrepreneurship as much as, or more than, fighting:

    • “Yeah, there’s no doubt about it.” (35:37)

  • Striving to build the “biggest combat sports company ever”—expanding into boxing, jiu-jitsu, slap fighting.

  • White mentors countless entrepreneurs, serves on the Meta board, and hosts a daily parade of pitches in his office:

    • “I love young people willing to take a shot and aren’t afraid to do it. … I hope they all win.” (37:17)

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8. Generational & Cultural Commentary: Grit, Reality, and Cynicism

• [39:20-44:11]

  • Dana decries misconceptions about entrepreneurship, especially “setting my own hours.”

    • “Every day when you get up and you’re an entrepreneur, you go to war. Literally every day.” (39:42)

  • Fighter personalities: unique, impossible to fully control.

  • Early, open embrace of influencers and content creators, as opposed to traditional media.

    • “Film what you want, create what you want … Let these young, talented people … do what they do.” (42:14-43:35)

  • Fierce contempt for armchair critics and the unaccomplished:

    • “Who are you and what the fuck have you ever done? … They’re zeros.” (44:11, 46:09)
    • “What have we done in 25 years that hasn’t worked?” (45:22)

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9. Technology, Streaming, and Future Vision

• [47:59-51:44]
  • Foresees global streaming deals, explosive growth.
  • “Sports, live sports is a destination. You have to watch it now. … So it always made sense for streaming platforms to go after the sports.” (48:14-49:01)
  • Early adopter of AI in promos: unbothered by criticism and focused on progress.
    • “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and watch the fights? … Whatever the new technology is, we’re on it.” (50:38-51:44)

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10. Values: Capitalism, Resilience, and Loyalty

• [52:10-56:36]

  • Dana rebuffs anti-capitalist sentiment, extolls the importance of billionaires/tax base, and urges listeners to seek inspiration, not envy.

    • “Billionaires are very important to the ecosystem of the US … If that guy can do it, I can do it. That’s how you should think.” (52:44-54:04)

  • His pandemic response: offering his own pay to save employees, insisting on continued fighting events.

    • “Yeah, fuck that shit. … My team was all ready to fucking storm the beach with me, man.” (55:39-56:36)

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11. Covid, Adversity & Independence

• [57:22-63:55]
  • UFC was uniquely aggressive during COVID, creating the only real “bubble,” working with global partners.
  • Refused to compromise core principles or bow to sponsors/boards—“I’m only going to be in business with people that I’m aligned with.” (61:18-63:55)

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12. The Daily Mindset: Identity, Focus & No Plan B

• [64:03-68:35]
  • Knowing yourself/your “why” is foundational.
    • “There’s no fucking plan B. I’m going to do this.” (64:03-64:46)
  • Dana rejects “negative thinking”; relentless, never considers failure.
    • “Even if you’re joking, never say negative things about yourself … your body doesn’t know the difference.” (65:22-65:54)
  • Uses positive affirmations, removes negative people from his life.
    • “I cut negative people out of my life so fucking fast. And it don’t matter who you are.” (67:23-67:28)

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13. Loyalty: Joe Rogan, Founder Relationships, and Legacy

• [68:50-72:40]

  • Dana’s recognition of Joe Rogan’s vital role in UFC’s rise.

    • “Rogan did the first 12 fights for us for free … He’s been a key instrumental part of this company … nothing’s happening to Joe Rogan. Loyalty, yes, which is the most important.” (68:50-72:40)

  • Deep loyalty to those who build alongside him; disregard for influence or pressure from outsiders.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I'm a huge fan — still today — not only of the UFC, but now … I get to make the fights that I want to see.” — Dana White (00:32)
• “Excellence is the capacity to take pain.” — Alex (02:51)
• “You let the fans judge whether the fight is good or bad … If it's over and it sucks, then we'll both probably agree that it sucks.” — Dana White (09:10)
• “If the Ultimate Fighter didn’t work, it’s over.” — Dana White (11:57)
• “Once you build this trust … you have a bunch of sick animals that are just wired the way you are and incredibly talented. And I literally have a whole campus full of those kind of people.” — Dana White (33:05-33:58)
• “There’s no doubt about it — I love entrepreneurship as much or maybe even more than I love fighting.” — Dana White (35:37)
• “Every day when you get up and you're an entrepreneur, you … go to war literally every day. Somebody's trying to fuck you …” — Dana White (39:42)
• “There is no committee here. This is a dictatorship. 100% a dictatorship.” — Dana White (30:30)
• “Who are you and what the fuck have you ever done? … They’re zeros.” — Dana White (44:11, 46:09)
• “Whatever the new technology is, we’re on it.” — Dana White (51:44)
• “I cut negative people out of my life so fucking fast. And it don’t matter who you are.” — Dana White (67:23)
• “Rogan did the first 12 fights for us for free … nothing’s happening to Joe Rogan. Loyalty, yes, which is the most important.” — Dana White (68:50-72:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02 – Storytelling as a founder’s job
• 01:04 – Early bankruptcy, risk, and learning by doing
• 05:51 – The decision to gamble everything on TV & reality
• 11:56 – The $10M “Ultimate Fighter” inflection point
• 15:25 – Building brand via story; contrast to boxing
• 17:01 – DVD era, revenue, and missed opportunities
• 24:06 – Risk in entrepreneurship, “no plan B”
• 30:22 – Top-down leadership style (“dictatorship”)
• 33:05 – Team-building and creating a “cloned” mindset
• 39:20 – True nature of founder’s life: “war every day”
• 42:14 – Giving influencers full creative freedom
• 44:11, 46:09 – Takedown of media and critics
• 48:14 – Streaming, live sports, and relentless adaptation
• 52:44 – Value of billionaires, capitalism, mindset
• 55:39 – UFC during COVID, leadership decisions
• 61:18 – Partnership principles & independence
• 64:03 – Core founder advice: know who you are, what you want
• 67:23 – Cutting out negative people
• 68:50 – Loyalty to Rogan and key partners

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The Tone

• Unfiltered, aggressive, relentlessly direct, and pro-capitalist — this is Dana White in classic form, matched by the host’s enthusiasm for entrepreneurship as combat.
• The episode is loaded with hard-earned wisdom for founders, especially around the necessity of risk, total personal investment, focus, rejection of negativity, and the value of controlling your own product’s story.

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Useful for Listeners Who…

• Want a masterclass in founder mentality and resilience
• Are curious about the real stories behind UFC’s rise, failures, and recoveries
• Appreciate straight talk about media, critics, and business culture
• Want actionable insights on technology adoption, team-building, and enduring leadership

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Alex]

I was telling you, dude, I watch your press conferences. I was telling I was having dinner with a founder of $150 billion company, like, a couple days ago, and they're like, hey, can you help us hire or find somebody to be, like, a chief storyteller? It's like, no, that's the founder's job. And they asked, like, do you have any good examples? I go watch Dana White's press conferences after the fights is a perfect example. It's like he's the biggest fan of his own product. Is that how you describe the way you approach the company you've built?

[Dana White]

100%. And I grew up, you know, in the 70s and 80s, where I used to see CEOs reading canned statements from lawyers and things like that and just fake phony bullshit that I was never into. So, yeah, I've been pretty. And I'm a huge fan. Huge fan still today, not only of, you know, the ufc, but now I've been a boxing fan my whole life, too, and now I actually get to make the fights that I want to see.

[Alex]

The UFC was close to bankruptcy. You bought it for, like, $2 million with your partners. I want to talk about, you know, the fact that you guys went. I was like, oh, a $2 million company into maybe a $20 billion company. It's like, hey, you missed the part where they went in the hole by tens of millions. I want to go talk about that. But you. You brought up something like, we bought it. We had never done live events. We didn't do production. We didn't do anything. And then I heard you say, like, but we were just fans. We were just trying to build the fights that we want to see in the way that we want to see them.

[Dana White]

Exactly right. We were huge fans. We bought the company. And I can't remember ballparkish. We had, like, two and a half, three weeks to put on an event, and, you know, never knew anything about production, but knew what I wanted to see. And the production people that were in place, I didn't get along well with. So I ended up wiping them all out and bringing in a whole new crew and, you know, just started building. And you learn as you go.

[Alex]

Talk about, like, the first few events, because how many events do you guys put on a year now?

[Dana White]

We do, like, 43, 44 events a year. When we bought the company, we were doing five, which seemed like, a lot.

[Alex]

The fact that you were doing less means that you were learning slower, too. Or you just. There was just no way you could do more. Than five.

[Dana White]

Oh, yeah, yeah. We needed those gaps in between, especially after our first event, to really start to dial it in. And, you know, we made a lot of. It's trial and error. We made a lot of mistakes, things that we, you know, we did some goofy WWE shit for a minute there, and, you know, fireworks and pyro and all that stuff. And then. Then we ended up finding that perfect sweet spot, which is where we are now. Now it's all about technology. When new technology comes out, we always try to be first or one of the first to use it. But the show is dialed now, so

[Alex]

one of my favorite maxims from the history of entrepreneurship is that excellence is the capacity to take pain. I want to talk about your. When you bought the. After you bought the ufc, but before, I think it takes you, what, five, six years before you guys get back in the black and you're actually making money.

[Dana White]

Right?

[Alex]

Take us through like that. That, like, trough.

[Dana White]

We bought the company for 2 million. We're doing five events a year. You know, in the beginning, the events are way more expensive. We don't have all the proper equipment. We don't know what the hell we're doing. So events are costing us upward of 2 million bucks a pop. Times five, you know, times five years. It gets expensive. And we started building the roster of fighters, signing more guys, paying them more money. It got to the point where one night I was driving home and Lorenzo says, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep putting this kind of money on me and my brother.

[Alex]

So they put up the 2 million? Yeah, I think you got like 10 or 20% of the company, and then your job is to run it. Right? Right now it sounds like they're investing a couple more million every year.

[Dana White]

Well, this is like four years in, I would say.

[Alex]

What's the revenue back then?

[Dana White]

Get out there and see what you can sell it for.

[Alex]

Was it making 10 million a year in revenue and you guys were spending another 10?

[Dana White]

Like, yeah, that's fair. Yeah, in that ballpark. And. But just, you know, the other thing was we didn't own the rights to the merchandise, the library, the video games, DVDs, which were big at that time. So all we bought when we bought the company was those three letters, ufc, an old wooden octagon, and some contracts that we had obligations to. And maybe it was eight or nine. That's it. Eight or nine contracts. We have almost 1,000 guys under contract now. All the ancillary stuff was sold off to Lionsgate because the old Owner was trying to stay alive. Alive. So to. To show you people can't wrap their head around this now, how much people didn't believe in the ufc, we went back to Lionsgate and we bought the rights back for, like, I don't remember what it was, but it was like two and a half, three million bucks. We bought all those rights back.

[Alex]

So anything you could put a UFC logo on, right?

[Dana White]

And, you know, we.

[Alex]

We.

[Dana White]

We talk about it now, me and Lorenzo, and we're thinking those guys were probably laughing at us when we left,

[Alex]

like, Lionsgate, like, these idiots just gave us a couple million dollars for nothing.

[Dana White]

You got these, you know, these finance guys that are like, this will look good on the books over the next, you know, two, three years, and we got all our rights back. And, you know, if you look at the. Imagine if Lionsgate still owned all those rights. It's crazy. I. I'm friends with Shannon Lee, right, Bruce Lee's daughter. You know, she's been trying to buy the rights back to the Bruce Lee films and all. They would never sell. You know, even though Bruce Lee, you know, died in the early 70s, his movies are still relevant, and people will watch them and people care, and they're great movies, but they sold us all the rights back cheap, too.

[Alex]

What do you think happened overnight from Lorenzo? Calls you. He's like, man, I'm burning. We're just dumping all this money. Try to see if you can find a buyer. Calls you back the next day.

[Dana White]

Well, I called him back and said, I think we could sell it. Six, seven, maybe 8 million in that ballpark. He says, all right, I'll call you tomorrow. I'm literally driving to work the next day, and he calls me, and I'm like, here we go. He's like, fuck it. That's exactly what he said. Fuck it. Let's keep going. And he always says, it's pretty amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you. You know what I mean? So they hung in there. Our goal is to get on tv. And again, for people that don't understand, because several generations have grown up with the ufc, and it's normal now, but at that time, it wasn't allowed on pay per view. You, as a grown adult, didn't have the right to purchase it on pay per view. Porn was on pay per view, okay? But the UFC was not allowed on pay per view. Think about that. And our goal was to get it on free television, which everybody thought was impossible, right around 2004, five reality shows started becoming Big. So we came up with the concept for a reality show where this was basically, you know, everybody in Hollywood are a bunch of pussies. Nobody has any original ideas. They're doing remakes and stuff. They always play it safe. And nobody wanted these fights live on tv. So this was sort of our Trojan horse. You're watching ufc, but it's in a reality format, and the fights are taped, so they felt like if anything was bad or I don't know what they were thinking was possible, but they were taped so we could take it out. We could, you know. But my big thing was right around the same time the Contender had come out, it was like the most expensive reality show ever.

[Alex]

Mark Burnett's the guy that did Survivor, which was boxing.

[Dana White]

Yeah, he did Survivor. Mark Burnett's done everything. Yeah, he did Trump show the Apprentice. Yeah. Okay, so the Contender comes out, and it's the most expensive show ever. But what they did wrong and where they fucked up was they were editing the fights so they would. If they had a fight, and, you know, they got, you know, back in the edit, and they're like, this is boring, or whatever. But. But that's the difference between being a hardcore fan and not. I'm like, man, you don't ever edit a fight. You let the fight play out, and the fans determine whether the fight is good or bad. And you can't control that. I call it the bells and whistles. We do all the bells and whistles, then the fighters, we hand the torch off to them and they go in and they have to deliver.

[Alex]

Let me pause you there. This is why I tell founders of, like, tech companies to watch your. Your press conferences, though, because the authenticity. I think that's why you have this, like, cult, like, following, and people really try. Like, the people like you really try to root for you, right? And it's like, you'll say at the end, like, that fight sucked. We thought it was going to be X, and it turned out to be.

[Host/Announcer]

Why?

[Alex]

It's like, yeah, I have eyes. I'm not going to lie to you. Like, that fight sucks. Just like, if for founders, like, yeah, we fucked that up. Like, that was a bad experience. I wouldn't like that happening either. Like, don't try to lie or paper over it.

[Dana White]

I saw that, too. Growing up with. With promoters, that would tell you you just saw a great fight when, you know you didn't just see a great fight. But as a fan, if the fight is good, boring, you know, different people like different things. You could take half of the Fan base who thinks the fight is boring, and the other half will think it's great because they like grappling more than the striking or whatever it may be. But you don't judge that. You let the fans judge whether the fight is good or bad. Like, we'll build a card and people start talking online. This fight sucks. Shut the fuck up. You don't know if the fight sucks until it happens. Right? You might not like the two people that are fighting, but you can't judge a fight until the fight is over. If it's over and it sucks, then we'll both probably agree that it sucks.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Alex]

how many different networks did you have to pitch till you got one to say yes to the show? And how did you get them to say yes?

[Dana White]

Well, we were pitching everybody. And at the time, I mean, everything in life is about timing. I think it was the Nashville Network had switched over to Spike tv, which was labeling itself as the network for men. And we're like, man, if we don't fit here, where do we fit? Right? So we go in, we pitch these guys. They're not really interested. You know what it's going to cost them. So we said, well, we'll pay for the whole thing. We'll pay for it. You just put it on your air. They like that idea better.

[Alex]

So they said, no or not interested. And then you come back and say, we're going to pay for production.

[Dana White]

Yep.

[Alex]

So at that point, they're just distribution. What's. What's their.

[Dana White]

There's no downside.

[Alex]

You took the risk away from them.

[Dana White]

Yeah, they had spent a shitload of Money on a bunch of content that didn't work.

[Alex]

But that means you own the show, right?

[Dana White]

Okay, so at the time, it's the last $10 million investment we're going to make in the UFC.

[Alex]

Whoa.

[Dana White]

Yes.

[Alex]

So if it didn't work out, that's it.

[Dana White]

It's a wrap. If the Ultimate Fighter didn't work, it's over. So the last $10 million investment, which sucks at the time, we're investing another 10 million. But what doesn't suck is exactly what you just said. The thing is a runaway hit. The numbers just keep going like this. And then the finale, when we were at the finale, when Stefan Bonner and Forrest Griffin fought, when the fight was over and everybody in the place was stomping their feet, saying, one more round and we go up, we give them both contracts, I was like, I don't give a shit what happens. This is going to end up somewhere. And Spike TV execs took us out in the alley of the arena, and we did a deal on a napkin.

[Alex]

That's insane.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

So the fight ends. They go out in the alley and they're like, no, no, we want to renew with you guys.

[Dana White]

We want to get a deal done now. We want to shake hands on a. You know, we didn't fill out a contract. Here's some bullet points for the deal. We all agreed and shook hands, and there we were. But if they would have paid for it, we wouldn't have been in the position that we were in, where we own 100% of everything. So while it sucked at the time to put up the next 10 million, it ended up being the greatest thing to ever happen to us.

[Alex]

When you had this fight with Forrest Griffin, what venue were you in?

[Dana White]

So the Thomas and Mack is UNLV's stadium. We were at the small venue right next door to it. It was called the Cox Pavilion. A couple hundred people, 3,500, 4,000, something like that. Three to five thousand.

[Alex]

But still compare. Think about the growth in your company from that to now paying you, playing the best.

[Dana White]

Our first fight that we did when we bought the company was at the Trump Taj Mahal. We sold 3,500 tickets, and with comps, we had 5,000 people there.

[Alex]

That's incredible. Okay, so you do this deal with Spike TV. Now this is. We're in, like, early 2000s. There's, like, no. Barely any. There's almost no iPhones. Right. There's no social media. There's none of, like, you. You've done a really good job of. In my Opinion when I studied the history of UFC is like riding these technological waves. Like, you adopt them early, and then you use them as these giant tailwinds. You don't really resist. Like, you see something working.

[Dana White]

Technology has been great to us.

[Alex]

I remember you telling the story of, like, Joe Rogan asking you to be on his podcast, and then he described it as, like, it's kind of like the radio, but we put it online

[Dana White]

and you said, oh, my God, yeah, that sounds huge. That sounds like that's going to be real big. Good for you. And now.

[Alex]

But then you've embraced them.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

So the. Was the tv, The. The vast majority of the revenue of the business when you did this deal with Spike.

[Dana White]

Yeah. So. So. So television was huge, and the Ultimate Fighter literally did everything that we hoped it would do. It built a larger fan base, it introduced a lot of people, not only to the sport and the brand, but to the fighters. I mean, coming off that show, Forrest Griffin became a massive pay per view star for us. Chuck Liddell, who was one of the coaches, and it did what it was designed to do. When I launched businesses, I launched Power Slap. I did the same thing. I launched ufc. BJJ did the same thing. So Power Slaps reality show is at, like, 50 million views on YouTube, so it's still a home run. The format is incredible.

[Alex]

You guys start telling the stories really, really early. So it's like, before these people are competing on the reality show, you get to know who they are, what's important to them. They have more varied backgrounds than, like, boxing. Boxing tried to do that, but, like, there was. I love what you said. It's like, when have there ever been trillions of dollars made and nothing's there at the end? Like, in boxing?

[Dana White]

Trillions of dollars in revenue, and nothing exists at the end of the day,

[Alex]

you guys start telling the story on the show even before they're signed. And then you keep. Once they get to the ufc, then they're on the prelims. You keep telling the story over and over again over many, many years.

[Dana White]

Exactly. And then now we literally. I just started season 34 of the Ultimate Fighter. Tomorrow's the first fight on the show, and I don't know if there's ever been more viewership than now with this new deal that we have.

[Alex]

Is this with Paramount, too? Yeah, they get everything.

[Dana White]

They get everything.

[Alex]

Well, for like, 8 billion, everything.

[Dana White]

UFC is on Paramount. Yeah. And boxing, too.

[Alex]

I heard you say one time that there was almost, like, no revenue coming in, and you had stumbled onto, like, you had all these DVDs, you decided to put these fights on DVDs, and then you did these compilations, which I thought was a genius idea. It's like, okay, yeah, I could. I could buy a DVD of a fight or I could see the best knockouts from this year or the best submissions. When did you have that idea?

[Dana White]

Right? So when the DVD business blew up, we started doing ultimate knockouts, ultimate submissions. And, you know, those things sold like crazy back then. The DVD business at the time the DVDs exploded. That's really when we started making some real money.

[Alex]

This is before Spike, though.

[Dana White]

It was around the same time. Okay, yeah, it was around the same time. And I think we could have capitalized on the DVD business better than we did. But like I said, we were young and new to the. To the whole production world. If I could go back now with what I know now, I would have fucking murdered the dvd. We did really well, but I would have murdered the DVD era.

[Alex]

Say more about it.

[Dana White]

I would've killed it. I would have created more compilations. I would have taken that part of the business way more serious than I did. And I did take it pretty serious then, because when those checks started rolling in from DVDs, it was like, holy shit.

[Alex]

These are millions. Dollar. Millions of dollars.

[Dana White]

Millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. And I would literally, up the street, on our old offices on Sahara, they used to have like a wow. Superstore. And they sold records and DVDs and all that shit. And right when you walked in, they had this huge display and it was the top 20 DVDs of the week. Literally, nobody knew me then. So I'd go there and grab our shit and put it on the front of the fucking store. I used to do that kind of shit. That's how, you know, talk about humble beginnings.

[Alex]

So wait a minute, though. So is it just. I want to hear more about, like, the idea. So let's go back to this idea, like, what you would have done differently. It's just straight more volume, taking more seriously, better talent, like what you were making. Our checks could have been 10x the size.

[Dana White]

Yeah, we could have made a lot more money, I think, on the DVD side, if I had focused more on that part of the business at the time. And when you're. When you're in the moment like that, I mean, you expect DVDs to be forever. Yeah, right? Who sees DVDs leaving and not so. So, you know, we're making. We're making great revenue on the DVDs and you don't expect that to go away. You expect that to keep coming. You know, if you look at our business in 2001 to today, 25 years, how fast technology has gone in just 25 years from streaming, DVD is gone. You know, all this stuff is streaming now. I remember being in my office and these guys set up a meeting with me and they brought in a computer and they're like, this is the future streaming. And again, like the Joe Rogan podcast thing, they played it for me. Buffering, buffering. Buffering plays 5, 10 seconds buffering, buffering, buffering. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is going to be real fun to do and watch. But if you look at from that meeting to where we are today, I always did have this dream where someday I believe that the world would continue to get smaller and everybody would be watching the fight at the same time on the same channel around the world. Because when I grew up, we had channel three, channel five, channel eight and channel 13. When I was in high school, they got cable. We had like 30 channels then. And I believed we'd go back to channel three, channel five and channel eight and 13, but globally. So who's it going to be? Paramount, YouTube, Amazon, you know, Netflix.

[Alex]

I'm shocked Netflix didn't win this bid.

[Dana White]

Yeah, well, they're in it.

[Host/Announcer]

Of course they are.

[Dana White]

We were talking to them the whole time and you know what an incredible business they've built. But the Ellisons are aggressive guys. You know, they're aggressive guys, obviously financially, you know, powerful and at literally the half yard line, they said, fuck it, we want everything. And they went after it.

[Alex]

Can you say any more about the negotiation? What was that like, dealing with them?

[Dana White]

It was great. It was great dealing with them. It was great dealing with Netflix. It was all a. A good experience. Better than the experiences we had in the past. So we're on Spike tv, right? And killing it. We're killing it. Other than because the WWE was on there for a certain amount of time while we were too. Other than the wwe, I mean, we were the biggest thing on the network. So I'm a fucking loyal guy as it is. So listen, we'd have been on Spike TV for 100 years if whatever. So we end up going to lunch, Lorenzo and I, with a guy who was a big executive at the time with, you know, the whole cbs, Viacom company. His name was Philippe Dumont, okay? So he calls himself Philippe Dumont. He's from fucking Jersey. His name's Phil Duman. But one of the biggest douchebags of all Fucking time. We go into this lunch and we gotta listen to how fucking rich he is for the first 15, 20 minutes of the lunch. And then he tells us that he built the UFC and if we don't like the offer he's making, he'll just build another one. That's literally what he said. And we left that meeting. I was like, that fucking. He built the ufc, huh? Okay, okay, Phil Dooman. We'll see. So we ended up leaving Spike TV and going to Fox and just everything happens for a reason. And yeah, that guy ended up being one of the biggest brand killers of all time. Old Phil Dooman, mtv. Fucking. You know, think about all the Viacom legendary networks they had that this guy had sucked the life out of and killed.

[Host/Announcer]

As you know, I'm obsessed with studying and speaking to the most focused and intense founders, living or dead. Dana White is a great example of that. And if you watch the episode I put out last week with Adam, the founder of Applovin, you'll see the same kind of intensity and dedication to excellence. Adam is one of the most focused and intense founders I've ever met. And Adam is driven to build a great product that serves his customers relentlessly, improve that product over time, and to win. And that is exactly what Adam and his team have done with their advertising platform, Axon. Axon connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention. And Axon ads are full screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. You can launch on Axon in minutes. You set the goal and Axon achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and Axon scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increased their revenue by millions.

[Alex]

So you want to get started quickly

[Host/Announcer]

before all your competitors are on Axon. And you can do that by going to Axon AI forward slash senra. That is Axon AI forward slash senra

[Alex]

dot That's a great story. I love that story. You're high risk tolerance though. Do you guys do any work with. I was asking the team before, do you know who Todd Graves is? The founder of Raising Canes?

[Dana White]

Yes.

[Alex]

First of all, she was sponsoring U

[Dana White]

of T. We've met.

[Alex]

Okay.

[Dana White]

Yeah, yeah, we've met.

[Alex]

He's just like you. Cause you get off on being told, dane, you can't do it. Right, right. He did this show a few months ago and he was just like they told me, a 23 year old kid, he starts raising canes. His original idea was like, I'm gonna sell fucking chicken fingers to drunk LSU students. And he couldn't.

[Dana White]

And high school kids. My kids.

[Alex]

Oh, no, no.

[Dana White]

Now that's all my kids ate when they were in high school. Yeah.

[Alex]

And so now, obviously it's different, but, like, back then, he was 23 years old, had no money. He literally risked his life on a fucking fishing boat in Alaska and then maxed out his credit cards. That's how he funded the first raising canes, which he built with his own hands. We went to the first one in Baton Rouge. It's crazy. He built this with his own hands. But there's so much similarities between you two, because he said on the show, he's like, entrepreneurs are not taking enough risk. They're too scared of risk. They need to take more risk. If you truly believe in it. And you know this because he believes that God put him on this earth to be good at chicken fingers. Literally. And now he owns over 90% of the company. It's like worth $20 billion selling fucking chicken fingers.

[Dana White]

Funny you say that, because Lorenzo Fertitta always used to say to me, you were put on this earth to do this.

[Alex]

There's nobody else in the world that loves it. We were just talking that we have a mutual friend. And Jared, you were just on the phone with him before. His brother Josh has a great quote where he's like, you know, if you want to pick somebody, if you're going to back somebody, and you can choose the most experienced, the best, the person has the most money or the person that wants it the most. So you always pick the person that wants it the most. It's very obvious that you even said, I think when you move back to Vegas, you're like, I could. I was a bellman, guess what? I'm going to take a risk because I could be a bellman at 35, I could be a bellman at 50, but I can only do this and take the risk when I'm young and, like, I have nothing to lose.

[Dana White]

Dead on. It's so true. Everybody that has an idea or dream or however you want to look at it, they're all afraid to take that dive off. And, you know, I'm 19 years old. And the problem is some people are cool with just being comfortable. Right. In 19, you make cash every day and you get a paycheck. You got a 501k, dental, medical, you know, check all the boxes there. And some people are just comfortable with that, you know, and there's other people, too, that just want. Listen, I just want to make a good living. I want Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays off, and I want every holiday off and all. And then there's guys that are like, yeah, fuck this shit. I can do more than this. And even now, I mean, I'm 56 years old, and I'm dumping more and more and more on my plate because I believe in it, and I know we can do it. And back in 1718, I'm on Instagram, and these guys are slapping the shit out of each other on social media, and it's coming out of Russia and Poland, and things with me are by gut now. I'm watching this stuff, and I'm like, this is crazy. But what I noticed was I would stay till the end to see who won, and I'm the most jaded dude in the world when it comes to fighting. So I was like, if I'm interested in this and I'm staying, and what if I did this the right way? And the same we said about the ufc. So I called the Fertitta brothers, and I said, hey, have you seen this slapping stuff? I'm into it. And done. And they said, how much money you want? I said, I need a million dollars from both of you.

[Alex]

A million? That's it?

[Dana White]

Yeah. We put up 3 million bucks, and it's killing it. Michael Rubin told me after. After we launched Power Slab and it started killing it. Michael Rubin said to me, whatever you do next, I'm in for 10 million. You know, you don't even have to

[Alex]

tell me what it is now you're launching. You have a ton more experience, resources, the knowledge you have of building these live events, like, probably better than better than anybody else in the world in fighting, right? How fast you turn that business profitable? Because we. We're not even done with the fucking story.

[Dana White]

First event.

[Alex]

It's been profitable since the first event.

[Dana White]

First event.

[Alex]

Okay, explain what you did differently.

[Dana White]

Well, I knew everything to do. First of all, the reason the UFC became as big as it did as fast as it did, two reasons. We traveled the thing all around the United States and the world, and we built a live event that when you come to the live event, very few people get really good live event experiences. I mean, even as big as the NFL is, and the NFL is just massive, right? And there's nothing better than football season, right? When football season starts, Every Sunday, you're on the couch and you watch. But I don't like the live experience. I'm not a big fan of NFL's live experience. Now, the NBA. Right. So I'm going to try to watch a full NBA game on tv. All you got to watch is the last five minutes. Go to an NBA game live. It's way better live than it is on tv. The UFC is an incredible television product, and it's even better live, so you get a great experience with both.

[Alex]

Everybody complains. I've heard this so much from people online. They're like, dana has the best seats in the house. Why is he looking at it on a little tiny screen? Can you explain why?

[Dana White]

100%. So to finish what I was just saying again, nobody walks out of a live UFC event and goes, yeah, I don't ever want to come to one of these again. So not only do you become a bigger fan when you see it live, then you bring in five, six, seven, eight, 10 people, you know, and you make them fans, too, meaning the people who left. And then people always do say that, you know, he's got the best. I'm not sitting there to watch the fucking fights. I'm making sure that I can't control what's happening in the octagon, but I can control what you're seeing on television. And I have a phone there that goes directly to the truck. So what I care about is the live in house experience tailored to what you want.

[Alex]

You as a single individual.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

You're not running this through committee. You're not like, oh, let's talk about. Should we change these graphics or anything? It's your taste.

[Dana White]

There is no committee here. There is no whatever. This is a dictatorship. 100% a dictatorship. And I'm listening to how loud the music is, if it's loud enough. If it's not, and things are happening in house and I'm watching what's happening on tv, all of that I can control. I can't control the fight and what's going on in there.

[Alex]

What happens when you see something you don't like?

[Dana White]

I pick up the phone. There's a phone that goes right to the truck, and I say, what the fuck was that? Let's never do that again. Let's do this. And I am so connected with my team. They know what I want, they know what I expect. But my guy Zach, who's the producer, he'll throw some shit around, try some new stuff, and I'll pick up the phone, say, that was Cool. That wasn't cool. Let's keep that. Let's never do that again.

[Alex]

You have this in common with all of history's greatest entrepreneurs, because they're always. You hear from a business school, they're like, oh, you should build up a team. Yeah, you're gonna have to have a good team. And then you just delegate. I heard this story of you kicking through a fucking door. What was that?

[Dana White]

The production team?

[Alex]

Yeah. Explain this.

[Dana White]

Those were the guys that I told you at the beginning of the interview that I fired them all.

[Alex]

Okay? So explain what happened.

[Dana White]

So we had just bought the company, and Phil Barone, who's a maniac, was fighting. Fuck. Who is he for anyway? And Phil Barone snapped in the middle of the interview, like, started freaking out on the fucking interviewer. And I told the guys, I said, I want this. I want this to be the interview when he fucking snaps him. And they're like, you can't do that. You know? And these guys were all traditional. These guys all worked for Showtime at the time. And I thought that Showtime was the most dogshit production ever in boxing. And I used to say it publicly all the time. Well, these guys were all Showtime guys who were working on the side on the ufc. So I told them, this is how I want this interview played out. So we're sitting in the arena, and Lorenzo, I said, watch this interview. And they didn't do it. They did what they wanted to do. I literally got up from my seat, went back there, and kicked the truck door open. I said, you. If you ever do that again, I'll fire every one of you. And, you know, this whole thing, which I ended up firing all.

[Alex]

So how long does it take you to get your. Because now you essentially have a team that thinks very similar to you, where you have to make very few changes. They understand and adapt it to your taste. How long does that process take to go from, you guys don't know what the hell you're doing to I almost have, like, a bunch of clones of myself. Mr. Beast calls it, like, cloning himself. And, like, his editors, his thumbnail designers, he used to do all this stuff, and then he works with them for so long, they kind of can read his mind.

[Dana White]

That's my whole production team right now. Literally my whole production team. So now we'll go into. We have a screening room over here, and they'll set up meetings with me. We got to go through screening stuff. Very rarely do I have to change one fucking thing. My guys are so talented and so good and so on point with everything that they do. It's just once you build. Once you build this trust, confidence, whatever you want to call it with your team, and you have to have a bunch of sick animals that are just wired the way you are and incredibly talented. And I literally have a whole campus full of those kind of people right now, from the art department to the production team to PR to, I mean, you name it. That's an animal over there. Seriously. Fucking animal. Animal.

[Alex]

Yeah. I've heard you shout her out on a few podcasts, too.

[Dana White]

Fucking animal. Yeah.

[Alex]

How many years did it take you to do that? How many people did you have to turn over? Like, what was that process?

[Dana White]

Like, I don't know the exact answer to that, but not a lot of turnover. On my production side, these guys have been with me forever, including the rock star head of production, Craig Borsari. But there's been, like, one guy that I absolutely love that was on our production team, and he left to go, you know what we talked about, go make it on his own. And he actually came to me about a year ago and said, listen, I have this whole concept. I think this could be big and everything else. And we helped him do it. We helped him build this thing, and he's. He's. He's doing it right now. So. I've always had great relationships with. With my team and. And there hasn't been much turnover. Not in the key positions anyway. The positions that work directly with me. Not a lot of turnover.

[Alex]

So when I listen to all your stuff, one thing I'm curious about, and I want to ask you, selfishly, it's like, without a doubt, you're one of the biggest fight fans in the world. You love fighting. But I almost feel I've watched over,

[Dana White]

like, 10,000 fights in the last 25 years, not including fights that I've watched that weren't mine.

[Alex]

That's incredible.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

I almost feel like you're starting to. Or maybe you have love. I almost feel like you love entrepreneurship as much and maybe even slightly more than you love fighting.

[Dana White]

Yeah. There's no doubt about it.

[Alex]

Really?

[Dana White]

Yeah. If you look at what I'm doing, right, first of all, what I've done has never been done, and lots of people have tried to do it. Really wealthy people, really smart entrepreneurs and other spaces have all tried to do this now, built this incredible business. Then we just went public with tko. Now I'm going to try to rebuild boxing, right? And we just launched a jiu jitsu league and launch Slap. So every way that you can kick somebody's ass. You know, I am in that business. We're going to build the biggest combat sports company to ever exist. And that will probably ever exist. That's my goal in the next 10 years.

[Alex]

It's not just that you're going to build the biggest combat organization you already have, but it's going to be much bigger. Right, but people don't understand that, like, entrepreneurs come and, like, seek out your advice. You're on the fucking board of Meta, for God's sake.

[Dana White]

So right here, normally you guys rip my fucking room apart here, tell them

[Alex]

what you see, because they. This is not a normal podcast.

[Dana White]

Yeah, I said, this looks like fucking CBS or Fox or something. So when you come in, my office is connected right here. This is my bar. So this is where I have most of my meetings. Usually there's four chairs here. Every day, multiple times a day, entrepreneurs come in here and pitch me something like fucking Shark Tank. And I give lots of people advice. I connect people with other people that I think they could do business with, or I. I get involved myself.

[Alex]

Why do you like talking to entrepreneurs so much?

[Dana White]

I love hearing different people's ideas. I love young people that are willing to take a shot and aren't afraid to do it. And literally, I mean, I should have my assistant figure out how many of these I do a year, but it's multiple times a day, every fucking day, and even on Saturdays and Sundays. So I sit in this room and listen to people's pitches all the time about the businesses that they want to build and their ideas. And usually you have these guys that will connect people to people and they want to be paid or appeased. I've connected more fucking people that have done things together and been successful. I'm not looking for anything other than I hope they all win.

[Host/Announcer]

Deal is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade, and one thing they all have in common is they understand that recruiting and hiring the very best talent is your most important priority. A players recognize other A players, which is why top Companies like RAMP, Shopify, 11Labs, Uber, and DoorDash all use deal. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deal after using their product, and what they discovered is that Deal is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deel will help your business hire, pay and manage any worker anywhere in the world. So you can retain the best talent anywhere and spend the rest of your time Focusing on what you do best, delivering value to your customers. The founder of eleven Labs has a great description of the value DEAL can give your company. He said, we built eleven Labs to break down language and communication barriers with Deal, enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere. We can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories and ideas to every corner of the world. Deal is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deal.comforward/senra. That is deal.com senra.

[Alex]

I'm curious the difference in quality of entrepreneur and when you started, because I've heard you say, like, on a few other podcasts, like, some of these people are just so soft. Like, some of these younger entrepreneurs don't understand how hard and difficult. You literally had to, like, the UFC would have died if it wasn't for you. Can you say a little bit about the difference in, like, the mentality that

[Dana White]

you see the greatest line of all time is, you know, I want to start my own thing because I want to set my own hours and I want to, you know, take days off, and I want. Oh, Jesus Christ, you should just stay where you're at and keep working for somebody else, because that is not how it works. You know, I've been doing this shit forever. I could have retired, you know, 10 years ago. Every day when you get up and you're an entrepreneur, you. You go to war literally every day. Somebody's trying to fuck you. Somebody's trying to take what you have, you know, somebody's trying to tear down your business literally every day. Then you have the problems that pop up, you know, especially. And I know this sounds insensitive, but it's. But it is what it is. When your product is human beings and you have almost a thousand of them, not even including your employees, they have personal problems, they have injuries, they have things going on. There's always something wrong and always something that needs to be fixed every minute

[Alex]

of every day, especially your employee. The people you have, they're fighters. They choose to get into, essentially, their underwear in front of millions of people and fight, you know, beat the shit out of each other. You think you can control them?

[Dana White]

It's impossible. They are the most unique human beings on planet Earth. They are not like all of us. They are wired differently, which is what makes them special.

[Alex]

You have this unique combination of almost like. And I don't mean this in a derogatory way, like micromanager, but also, like, give a lot of freedom to the people. So, like, you don't even try to. There's two, there's two things that come to mind, right? Where it's like, you know, oh, Jon Jones is in the club in Vegas. What are you going to do? And you're like, he's a fighter. Like, there's nothing I can do about it. But also what, what I thought you were really smart on and ties to what we were talking about earlier. It's like you always adopt new technology early. You understood the power of like these TikTokers, these YouTubers, some podcasters, and you essentially just. I've heard from them. Dana just gives us access to the events and no, you know how to build an audience. You know how to make content. What the hell am I going to tell you? You just say, come to the events as much as you want and then make whatever you want.

[Dana White]

If you think about this, I have UFC power, Slap Boxing, Jiu Jitsu, the wwe, PBR Plus Me in the Fertitta Zone, Slap SLS Skate League and Nitro Circus.

[Alex]

I don't know what any of this are. I want to hear about that in a minute.

[Dana White]

There are nine brands right there that if you're an influencer now, if you're an influencer. When I started to notice this, I told Lenay, I don't know, five, six years ago, the media does not have the influence anymore. They're gone. Nobody trusts them. They're all full of shit. They're always lying and they don't have the trust of the people the way that they used to. These young kids are the influencers. They actually have the influence. And when you think about, they have to get up every day and create content. You're a content creator. It is not easy to do and you have to go viral and you're competing with shitloads of other young people that are doing the same thing. You show up to any of my events, I give you full access. Film what you want, create what you want. The other thing is, most people that deal with content creators, they try to tell them, you have to do this, this. What the fuck do you know about creating content, right? Let these young talented people who are unbelievably creative do what they do when they want to fucking do it. How hard is that?

[Alex]

No, it's like a simple genius. It reminds me of you mentioned the Ellisons earlier and just how aggressive they are and obviously well capitalized. And I saw this clip recently on X where Larry Ellison was talking. Larry Ellison mentored Elon Musk. So like Elon says, Like, you know, he's one of the smartest people. It's one of the few people that Elon goes to for advice. And Larry Ellison is in this conversation with this, like, reporter for, like, a newspaper. And the reporter is trying to tell Larry that Elon is dumb. And he's like, have you landed a rocket on a. Have you ever landed a rocket, much less rocket on a boat? Like, show me what you have done. And I just thought that was, like, beautiful. Like, that guy's stupid. He's landing rockets.

[Dana White]

I say that all the time. My biggest problem with the media, who the fuck are you and what the fuck have you ever done? Nothing. You're nobody, and you've never done anything ever. Nobody's ever depended on you for a paycheck. Who are you to criticize? Anybody? I was just saying at the press conference in Winnipeg on Saturday, you have all these people on the Internet talking about what we should be doing with our business. I said, holy shit, you guys are fucking brilliant. PFL, Bellator 1, FC, many, many other failing companies. Why don't they just fucking hire you guys? You guys have the answers for everything, right? It's just I can't even read this shit. Cause it's so dumb. And I realize these guys know nothing about this business, yet these are the people that are covering it. It's fascinating to me that anybody listens to any of these people.

[Alex]

I heard you say one time that you always laugh when people start talking about, like, the business of ufc, because they don't know anything about it. Can you say more about that?

[Dana White]

First of all, everything that we've done over the last 25 years has never been done before. And we continue to do things that have never been done before. There's a vision for this business, and literally none of them know it. They have no idea. They can look at, oh, this company and these guys did this, and somebody did this in the past. We're doing none of that shit. We're doing the exact opposite. So for you to criticize, I guess everybody can criticize and say, oh, this won't work. What have we done in the last 25 years that hasn't worked? Now. Lorenzo's done. He's out. He doesn't want to do this anymore, so he puts the business up for sale. We sell for 4.0.

[Alex]

This is 2016. Yeah, okay.

[Dana White]

We sell for 4.025 billion, right? No TV deal. We're coming up to the end of our Fox deal. We have no TV deal. Nothing. Every fucking deal. Body out there, they overpaid. The UFC has peaked. The ufc, is this the ufc? Is that all the same fucking guys that are talking shit right now? That's what they said. Okay, Spike, $35 million deal. Fox, hundred million dollar deal. ESPN, $3 billion deal. And now here we are, 7.7 for seven years. Everybody. They fucked Paramount. Paramount overpaid. Just all the same fucking shit from the same fucking losers. It's crazy. It's just like you have to block all this noise out. These people are fucking zeros. Everybody that talks about this business and has an opinion on it are zeros. They've never done anything in their fucking life except talk. And it's always the same shit, because these are all people that have no vision, no clue, no whatever. You know, they were all talking this shit in 2016, and look where we are 10 years later. Wait and see where we are in 10 more fucking years.

[Alex]

I was gonna say the numbers are only gonna keep going up. Look at the streaming. It's like streaming services. It's just going to all be sports. The subscriber count is scaled so high, the demand is going to be insatiable for things like essentially that you surprised

[Dana White]

that it took Netflix so long to get into sports. I was saying it way before they did. The thing is, is that streaming is great right now. I'm like, I don't watch a lot of tv.

[Alex]

Yeah, well, you seem to be a little busy.

[Dana White]

Almost none. Yeah, right. Something's really got to get me to. And I was saying this before the Paramount deal. Yeah, way before. So much so that people like Paramount did the deal with him just because of how much he talks about Landman and Mobland. Landman is one of the greatest television shows that I've ever watched, ever. And Mobland, you know, classic Guy Ritchie. Unbelievable. So when you think about those two shows, I can go watch the whole season tonight or I can watch it three years from now. It's always going to be there. Sports, live sports is a destination. You have to watch it now. Yep, exactly. So it always made sense for streaming platforms to go after the sports.

[Alex]

And as they continue to scale and they're global. Exactly what you said. The numbers are going to keep going up 100%.

[Dana White]

And I'm so glad that you and I are having this conversation that this all ended up happening. Remember everything that was said today on this podcast, and let's talk again in five years. I'm talking about all these literally losers that talk about this sport and absolutely know nothing about what they're talking about. And if you check the temperature right here today, Paramount overpaid. Same shit that they said 10 years ago about WME overpaying for the sport. It's peaked. It's this, it's that they don't have the talent, they don't have the stars, they don't have the this, they don't have the that. It's fascinating to me that any of these people that have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the business, because this isn't like some. Some other, like the hotel business where it's all the same shit. Everything we're doing has never been done before. And over the next five to 10 years, everything we do has never been done before either. And watch what we do in the next five to 10 years.

[Alex]

The reason this will never stop. This is true today. It was true 100 years ago. It'll be true 100 years from now, if it's working. The numbers always get bigger than the people involved could possibly imagine.

[Dana White]

Very true. I love it.

[Alex]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Dana White]

So I love that we're having this.

[Alex]

You just got shit the other day because I guess you guys use like some AI video in one of your promos.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

What was your response to the people that criticize you?

[Dana White]

Well, the response was I did a whole commercial in AI after that for the White House. But my response is, why don't you just shut the fuck up and watch the fights? Fuck do you care what we're doing? Technology wise, everybody. And what's the difference between. We were using green screens before that, too. Right. And people. We still have to hire people to do this stuff. Let me tell you what's not happening. I'm not downstairs doing the fucking AI shit. We have people that are doing it. But it's the future. It's coming. Is it going to be as big as everybody thinks? Is it going to last? I don't know.

[Alex]

You don't have to know.

[Dana White]

But right here, right now, we're in.

[Alex]

But do you see how rare that is? You've been running the UFC for 26 years.

[Dana White]

Something like that. Yeah.

[Alex]

It's like you stay on top of it over and over again. If you just analyze what you do, you're just like, what's the most valuable medium to use for the product that I have to make the product that I have spread to more people, that answer is going to change. You thought DVDs are going to be not just you, but every DVDs going to be around forever. Cable TV is going to be around forever. You couldn't have fucking predicted streaming in 2,500%.

[Dana White]

And we did a commercial, I don't know, over 10 years ago for the Conor McGregor, Jose Aldo fight. It was incredible. It was on the strip, you know, and they end up meeting out in front of MGM and all these Brazilians and all. Do they think that we really had all those fucking people out there and that, that we really did that? No, that isn't the way it worked. And that was way before AI. Whatever the new technology is, we're on it.

[Alex]

I want to go back to the fact that you love entrepreneurship as much as fighting or maybe even more. One thing, the reason that we started the show, people are a little confused. What we're doing is just like, this is a love letter to capitalism. I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant. My dad was literally born in Cuba. His, his, my grandfather fled Castro. That one decision changed the trajectory of my entire life. Just him deciding not to stay in this fucked up place and come to America and then me be born, you know, 30 years later or whatever the case was. I've heard you a few times and I think you call them dummies about these young kids that seem to be attracted to, you know, hating billionaires or being anti capitalistic. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Dana White]

Yeah. It's funny because if you look at the situation that California is in right now, right, and all these billionaires are trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there. Billionaires are very important to the ecosystem of the United States. You know what I mean? The amount of money these guys pay in taxes, how do you think everything stays afloat? How do you think the state comes up with the money to fix the roads and build the highways and, you know, infrastructure in every city in America comes from billionaires, millionaires, the middle class, and people who work their asses off and pay their taxes. That's where all the money comes from. I was just doing an interview, I want to say, but two days ago, and they were walking around looking at my office and looking at the gym, and the woman was like, you know, there's hard times right now. Some people are going through it. And don't you think if they're going to see this and be like, well, if they're going to see this and be like, you know, oh, this is terrible that this guy. You're. You're not it and you're never going to be it. You got the victim mentality and you're never going to be that person. What you should look at, what I have is say that guy barely graduated high school, right? And believed in something, did all the right things. If that guy can do it, I can do it. That's how you should think. And I know that there are many different types of people out there. Like I said, there's the 9 to 5 guy that he wants, and there's nothing wrong with it. You want to work nine to five, you want Saturday, Sunday off and every holiday, because that's the life you want to live. Good for you. And then you have the guy who's going to come in and grind in the business and run a department and do very well for himself and is a part of building something like this. And then you got the guy that's like, yeah, I'm not working for anybody. I'm going to go out and I'm going to make it happen for myself. And if you look at somebody, I've looked at many people and never ever have I looked at somebody who's had incredible wealth, built unbelievable businesses, and said, yeah, fuck that guy. I've always said, wow, you know, and you can learn lots of different things from lots of different people in different industries and what they built and how they built it. And, you know, and you can look at other guys and say, I don't ever want to make that mistake. I don't think that's right.

[Alex]

Give me some examples of people that you thought of as cautionary tales that

[Dana White]

don't value their employees. People that don't value their employees. I've seen a lot of.

[Alex]

I don't think people understand what you were willing to do during COVID how wrong you thought it was. Everybody was laying everybody off. You offered to give up all of your compensation.

[Dana White]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Why?

[Dana White]

Yeah, so my thing was this, you know, I was in a situation where I wasn't going to lose any of my money during COVID yet these people who come in here every fucking day and grind with me, and there were a lot of people that were going to get laid off and a lot of people whose salaries were going to be cut, bonuses and all these other things. And I said, yeah, fuck that shit. We're going through Covid. I'm not a brick and mortar business, right? All I got to do is find a place where I can go put on a fight and beam it to espn. That's all I had to do. And my team was all ready to fucking storm the beach with me, man. Nobody was saying, no, we're not Going to work during COVID Too dangerous. And worse. We're scared. I'm not saying people weren't scared. Everybody was willing to go. Men, women, everybody.

[Alex]

Brian Halligan founded HubSpot 20 years ago,

[Host/Announcer]

and he has this line about AI

[Alex]

that I keep thinking about. He said most companies are using AI

[Host/Announcer]

to make their teams more productive, but

[Alex]

the companies that will thrive make the

[Host/Announcer]

company itself the intelligence. And that is exactly what HubSpot does. HubSpot gives you AI that works, AI

[Alex]

that actually knows your customers and your business. Your AI needs to know what you know, your actual customer conversations, your sales

[Host/Announcer]

history, what worked last quarter and what didn't. HubSpot connects AI to your real customer data. So when it writes an email, it

[Alex]

knows this customer asked about pricing three weeks ago.

[Host/Announcer]

It knows what campaign brought them in, and it knows that they already contacted support twice this month. And that's when you start seeing actual results. Visit HubSpot.com to learn more. That's HubSpot.com.

[Alex]

i remember when the NBA canceled their season. That was probably an oh, shit moment for you. How long from that moment until you get. You did the thing with Abu Dhabi. How long did it take you to find a place in the world to go?

[Dana White]

A couple weeks. So I'm fucking going. We're going no matter what. Now I have the Habib versus Tony Ferguson fight.

[Alex]

Which time, though?

[Dana White]

It's crazy. You know that. That's crazy. You know that. The last time, it's at Brooklyn, the Brooklyn arena. And I'm telling these guys, don't pull this on me. Don't pull this fight. We're gonna go. I don't care if there's no fans, whatever. Brooklyn calls and says, yeah, we're not gonna do it. I said, I'll never, ever fucking come to your arena again. Just so you know that. You know, because we were doing MSG in Brooklyn, I said, I will never hold another fucking fight in your arena ever again. Cool. Cool. They fucking pull it. So I got my fucking lawyer calling every place in America, because once it all started to shut down, it was all going quick. So quick that I would be here in the office, we'd get something done. I live 20 minutes from here. By the time I got home, my lawyer would call me and go, they just fucking bailed. I'm like, what? Anyway, so this is my. My thought process during this time. I don't know how fucking long this Covid shit's gonna go on and how long the country's gonna be shut down, but here's What I do know at espn, which is a sports network, the bean counters are eventually going to sit down and they're going to go, okay, let's see what we got here. We got the NFL, we got Major League Baseball, we got the NBA, we got the NHL, we got the ufc, and we got the guys who throw the fucking beanbags into the fucking holes. Okay, who are we cutting first? UFC is going to be the first money that's going to get cut. So I'm going to figure out how to go through Covid. All my employees are going to stay intact, and all this. Iger says, I'll pay you every dime no matter how much Covid lasts, whether you do no events or you put on all 44.

[Alex]

Oh, wow.

[Dana White]

That we were getting paid no matter what. So I could have just said it. Let's all stay home and see how long Covid lasts. But no, we. We went out and we pulled killer numbers for ESPN because we were your

[Alex]

only game in town.

[Dana White]

And our business grew. It just blew up and went through the roof.

[Alex]

How fast do you do a deal with Abu Dhabi? Because people don't understand. Sheikh Taknun is also like, these guys are obsessed with Jiu Jitsu. He's a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, right?

[Dana White]

And they've been incredible partners to us since the day we met them. So, yeah, we end up talking to them. We go to Yaz island, and we built the only real bubble that existed during COVID Like, the people who moved into Yaz island from UAE lived there for months and never went home and saw their family. So they were all clean. We made sure that all of our athletes and everybody that went over to work, they were tested multiple times. We chartered our own planes. We flew over there. It was the only true bubble that existed in sports at that time. All the other ones were bullshit.

[Alex]

And I'm dealing with them. They can call the shots. I heard you on a podcast, and you were saying, like, you were trying to do some deals with these people, and they're like, you had a meeting, and then they called you, like, a day later, and they mentioned, like, hey, we spoke to our board, and you're like, nope, we're not doing a deal. Like, I'm not. It doesn't matter if you have to go and ask permission to somebody else. Like, we are fundamentally incompatible.

[Dana White]

Very true. So sponsors during this time, you know, we had great relationships with all of our sponsors, but like any relationship in life, you don't know who's who until the hits. The fan Friends, girlfriends, husbands, work, all these people. You know, when things are good, everything's good. But who's around and who's really real in there and, you know, a real partner. You don't know that until gets really bad. And we had this partner that was a good partner all through good times. And then as soon as any, the whole. Not only Covid, but that whole crazy woke era that happened when people were getting canceled and all that other shit, we had a company that literally was calling here every fucking five minutes, man. And it started with, I posted a video supporting Trump on my social media. And they called and they said, you need to take that down. And I said, are you out of your fucking mind? Who the fuck are you to call me and tell me who to vote for? It's not coming down. And don't ever fucking call me and tell me who to vote for again. Then they called again. Then they called again, then they called again. And then basically when our deal was up, one of the guys who worked there, who is sort of my. My day to day, that I would talk to, and I like him still today, now our deal's up, and we're shopping, and he calls me and says, hey, I'm in town. Can I come by and see you? Yeah. So he comes in my office and he says, hey, man, I got to let you know my board of directors is losing their patience with you. And I go, you guys got some fucking balls, man. I'll give you that. Have a seat. We fucking sit down in my office. And I went through the whole thing, and he says, dana, this is, you know, says the number of the deal. And I said, no, I understand. And here's what you can do. Jump back on your plane, take that number, roll it up into a tiny little ball, and shove it up your board's ass. And then coming out of COVID and that whole woke era, I was like, I'm only going to be in business with people that I'm aligned with. So I didn't end up doing another deal with them.

[Alex]

One of the keys to, I think, your longevity. And there's some of the best advice I've heard you give other entrepreneurs is the fact, like, the first thing you have to do before anything else, like, you have to know yourself, right?

[Dana White]

Yep.

[Alex]

Figure out who the hell you are. You clearly know who you are. The second thing is, then you got to know what you actually want to do. And if you know who you are and what you want to do, then you just wake up and you just get after that goal every single day. The perfect example illustration of this is where I think, I don't doubt anything you said when I heard somebody ask you, hey, let's say Lorenzo doesn't call you back after that because you are done. You have to sell the company for 7 or 8 million. And your response was like, I'd get up the next day and figure it out, but I was going to be in this business. I'm not. There's no fucking plan B. I'm going to do this. And I think that knowing who you are, what you want to do, and you just do it every day, like, that's the key to being like. To having the longevity that. That you've had.

[Dana White]

Yeah. I've never thought about if something doesn't work out, like, oh, no, I'm gonna. I don't even think. Like, that never even crosses my mind that something's not gonna work. I just keep going until it does work.

[Alex]

This is how all, all entrepreneurs think. There was this viral moment between another podcaster and Jensen Wong of. Of Nvidia, and he was asked, like, a question. He's like, that's a loser premise. Like, I don't think like that. Assuming, like, I'm gonna lose this market or not or not be able to beat his competitors.

[Host/Announcer]

Like, of course he thinks like that.

[Alex]

He's running a four. He founded a $4 trillion company he's been running for 33 years. You think he wakes up thinking he's going to lose?

[Dana White]

No, it's true. There's this Bruce Lee quote where he talks about, never say negative things about yourself or what you're working on or what you're doing, even if you're joking, because your body doesn't know the difference. It's like this whole thing about. And I saw Rogan talking about this thing when he was talking to somebody psychologist about if you just sit around and talk about your problems all the time, you know, I saw that clip. Never.

[Alex]

You know, it actually makes it worse.

[Dana White]

Yeah. Which makes sense.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Dana White]

It's like I never take in any negativity. I literally block a call it noise and I block all that noise out. Like, like, we're talking about, like, these guys who report on what we're doing that have no clue what we're doing. Why would I want to hear any of the. Anything they would have to say? They're zeros. They've literally never done anything in their life, especially in this business. Why would I listen to anything that they have to say?

[Alex]

But you said something earlier it's really important. This is all intuition. This is your gut, this is your instinct. This is like you're the born entrepreneur. I just did this episode on my other podcast where I read arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote two autobiographies, wrote one when he's 76. That's interesting. The more interesting one is the one he published in 1977 when he was 30 years old. Okay. It's called Arnold the Education of a Bodybuilder. But what recently popped in my mind, he literally talked about that there was 30 bodybuilders in the entire country when he started bodybuilding Austria. His parents think he's a weirdo. His friends think he's weirdo. He says once you said something negative, he'd cut you out. He would cut his parents out of his life. That was the negative. He's like, I don't hear any fucking negativity. Then what he would do, he literally would write letters, right? Say, arnold, like, you're going to be the best bodybuilder in the world. You're like, he. Positive affirmations. And he'd hang them up everywhere and he'd brainwash himself into this positive thinking that you were just talking about.

[Dana White]

I cut negative, negative people out of my life so fucking fast. And it don't matter who you are.

[Alex]

Listen, after this, you got to get connected to Todd Graves and just spend. First of all, he's responsor the ufc. He's got plenty of money to spend, so it could be a big partner for you. And he's spending money everywhere. But he started that company. He's 23. He used to live in a shitty apartment right behind the raising canes. He'd work all day, then go home, try to rest for a little bit, look out the window. When the drive thru got backed up, he'd run back out. This is some shit you would do. But then he, when he's rich now, he buys the fucking apartment building and then he redoes his apartment just exactly where it was when he was 23 years old. But the entire fucking wall he had printed out positive affirmations. And he says stuff like, a man of passion rides a mad horse. That's fucking. Sounds like you. Nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically. He was literally brainwashing himself as an early 20s that this will work. This has to work. There is no plan B.

[Dana White]

So I'll walk. I'll sort of walk you through what you're saying. I mean, Lenae, right? I mean, my office, the gym, it's all the same shit that you just said as we go this way in the building. It's exactly what I do, too. I literally have all this shit on the walls every day that speaks to me.

[Alex]

And, dude, thank you very much for doing this. If you don't mind, I might harass you every, like, six to 12 months. If you want to run this back and really just talk about entrepreneurship, talk about building the business. You have so much genius. I've been following you for a decade. 2016 is when I found the UFC because of Rogan's podcast. He wouldn't shut up about it.

[Dana White]

Let me just tell you a quick Rogan story, and I've told some of this before, but think about this. So we buy the company. The company's based in New York. I got a fly to New York. Go in the offices and go through me alone, go through every document, videotape, and everything in there to figure out what's coming to Vegas and what I'm going to throw away. So they literally. The whole walls are fucking covered with tapes. I have a vhs, and I'm literally popping tape after tape after tape after tape. And then Ivory. Keenan Wayans had had a talk show, and he's got Joe Rogan on. And Joe Rogan starts talking about UFC and fighting, and at the time, he's doing Fear Factor, which is a massive show on television. And it just fucking clicked with me. I go, this is the fucking guy I need right here. I need him to do commentary. He's educated on martial arts. He's not afraid to talk about controversial shit. This is my guy. So I reach out to Rogan, and we hit it off immediately. And, you know, in Rogan's rise, you know, he's gone through some shit personally, too. You know, where I've had people call and say, hey, you know, whether it's sponsors or whoever, you know, you got to do this to Rogan. And I'm like. Like, the. Don't ever fucking call me. Who the fuck are you to call me and tell me who I'm gonna fire or do whatever to? First of all, Joe Rogan did the first 12 fights for us for free, right? Then when you talk about technology at the time, I flew all over the country, and I met with every sports editor at every newspaper, because when we bought this company, newspaper was the king. And these guys were all 60, 65 years old. Ball and stick sports. And every once in a while, boxing will get a space in the paper. There wasn't enough room. And these guys didn't get it and never got it. And I'm like, well, in the next five or six years, these guys will all be gone, and there'll be younger guys that come in who will get it more. But what we had to do is radio was still very relevant. So you drop into these markets from the east coast all the way through the Midwest into the west coast during drive time, and then do the same thing going home. So what we learned really early is that fighters are bad radio. They don't show up on time. They sound like they're still fucking sleeping. The list goes on and on. The only two that were really good at doing radio were me and Joe Rogan. Right. The problem with me is nobody knew who the fuck I was. So what we would do is we would switch. I do UFC 30, Rogan would do UFC 31. I do UFC 32, Rogan would do 33. And you'd have to get up at 3 o' clock in the morning. We both lived on the West Coast. We'd have to get up three o'clock in the morning. They drop us into the markets on the east coast from six to whatever, and we would literally go all around the country doing the same interviews over and over and over. And Rogan and I did this for years to actually explain to people how much Rogan has dedicated. I mean, you said you heard about it on his podcast, has been a key instrumental part of this company. And for anybody, I don't give a fuck how much money you have sponsored or whatever. Yeah, no, nothing's happening to Joe Rogan. Loyalty, yes. Which is the most important.

[Alex]

Dana, thanks for doing this thing in

[Dana White]

the world to me.

[Alex]

That was awesome, man. Appreciate that.

[Dana White]

Pleasure. Thank you.

[Alex]

I hope you enjoyed this episode.

[Host/Announcer]

Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review and make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.