Dana White: UFC, Fighting, Khabib, Conor, Tyson, Ali, Rogan, Elon & Zuck

00:00:00.000 | Khabib beat Conor. Putin was on FaceTime before he even made it to the locker room. Trump,

00:00:06.800 | sitting president, ex-president, watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.

00:00:12.080 | Valentina Shevchenko, every time she goes home, she meets with the president of the country.

00:00:16.960 | The list goes on and on and on. The most powerful... Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. I mean,

00:00:22.560 | the list goes on and on and on. The most powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.

00:00:28.080 | The following is a conversation with Dana White, the president of the UFC,

00:00:35.760 | a mixed martial arts organization that revolutionized the art, the sport,

00:00:40.320 | and the business of fighting. And Dana is truly the mastermind behind the UFC.

00:00:46.080 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:00:52.720 | And now, dear friends, here's Dana White. Do you remember when you saw your first fight?

00:00:59.200 | I think so. I remember being at my grandmother's house, and I think it was an Ali fight. And all

00:01:06.720 | my uncles were going crazy during the fight. And there was just this buzz and this energy in the

00:01:10.560 | house that I liked at a very young age. And I'm pretty sure that was my first fight.

00:01:16.880 | Ali was something special.

00:01:18.320 | Yeah. Incredible. I mean, when you look around, not just here in the office, but at my house,

00:01:25.200 | Ali and Tyson are everywhere.

00:01:27.280 | Would you put Ali as the greatest of all time, Boxing?

00:01:30.160 | Well, I would put Ali as the greatest all-time human being. I mean, when you...

00:01:35.920 | It's easy as a fight fan to focus on him as a fighter. But when you focus on him as a human,

00:01:46.000 | and you think about what he meant at that time and place, the things he said, the poems he came

00:01:52.720 | up with, just the overall brilliance of Muhammad Ali, the guts. The guts to have the strength

00:02:03.520 | mentally, physically, and emotionally to go against the grain at the time that he did it.

00:02:08.480 | It was a very dangerous time for him to be who he was. Yet, because of how smart he was,

00:02:15.520 | and because of his personality, and how if you sat down with him, you could be the biggest racist

00:02:21.840 | on the planet. It's hard to get in a room with Ali and not like Ali.

00:02:26.000 | Yeah. He's all love, humor, all of it.

00:02:28.880 | A hundred percent.

00:02:29.920 | And had the guts in the ring, and the guts to take a stand.

00:02:33.920 | A hundred percent.

00:02:34.560 | When it was hard.

00:02:35.600 | He might be one of the all-time greatest humans. You know what I mean? Just an impactful, powerful

00:02:42.880 | human being who happened to be a great boxer.

00:02:46.960 | And sometimes the right moment meets the great human being. That's important.

00:02:51.920 | I agree with you. And he was the right guy in the right place at the right time.

00:02:56.560 | And he's also a guy who used his platform for all the right things.

00:03:02.800 | So that might've been your first fight, but when did you fall in love with fighting?

00:03:07.280 | The art of it, the science of it?

00:03:09.520 | Yeah. I would say I really fell in love with it. So I was a senior. It was 1987,

00:03:16.640 | and Hagler-Leonard happened.

00:03:19.200 | Yeah.

00:03:20.560 | And I watched that fight, and I taped it. And I watched that fight like a million times.

00:03:27.120 | I was a huge, huge Hagler fan. And I like Sugar Ray Leonard too, but I was a huge Hagler fan.

00:03:33.600 | And, you know, I just remember I watched that fight a million times

00:03:38.480 | because I was pissed off and I felt like Hagler got robbed in the fight. You know what I mean?

00:03:43.760 | But that was really what made me start to love the sport of boxing.

00:03:49.120 | The battle of it.

00:03:50.880 | I was 17. And then after that, USA's Tuesday Night Fights came out on television. It was

00:04:00.560 | on every Tuesday night. Religiously never missed Tuesday Night Fights. I was there,

00:04:05.200 | watched all those fights. And a lot of the things you see in the UFC, not necessarily

00:04:15.680 | just the production, but I would say the feel and the style and all those things are all things that

00:04:24.240 | I... Things that I loved about boxing and things that I hated about boxing, right down to the

00:04:30.320 | commentary.

00:04:31.360 | You loved and hated?

00:04:34.160 | Hated, yeah.

00:04:35.120 | Hated the commentary.

00:04:36.080 | Certain things that I loved about boxing, I incorporated into the UFC. Things that I hated

00:04:41.920 | about boxing, I made sure that the UFC stayed far away from. I think I can't stand Larry Merchant.

00:04:48.240 | Can't stand Larry Merchant. And I used to watch HBO Boxing and mute the commentary so that I

00:04:54.400 | didn't have to listen to them. Lampley, too. You know, you would spend this money for the

00:05:02.000 | pay-per-view to watch these people that you idolized, to hear these idiots rip them apart

00:05:07.440 | while the fight was happening, you know?

00:05:08.800 | Oh, they were criticizing.

00:05:09.760 | Yeah, 100%.

00:05:10.340 | Taking them apart.

00:05:10.900 | I've gotten used to the UFC, so I don't... I'm trying to remember looking back.

00:05:16.820 | It was bad.

00:05:17.460 | It was bad?

00:05:18.100 | It was really bad.

00:05:18.820 | But the sweet science, the art of boxing was beautiful still. Like, the stories they told.

00:05:25.140 | 100%. I want to do this with you right now. Hey, will you bring your cell phone over here and

00:05:30.180 | pull up YouTube? I want to do this for you so that you can understand this and understand where

00:05:34.980 | I was coming from.

00:05:36.180 | For the commentary.

00:05:37.140 | Yeah, at this point in time.

00:05:38.980 | I have all good memories. You're going to ruin it for me.

00:05:41.380 | Yeah, no, there are nothing but great memories about boxing. But the presentation and a lot of

00:05:47.540 | things. But it's how fucking weird is it that I even cared about this shit at that point in my

00:05:51.780 | life and that time in my life? Like, what impact could I possibly have on it? So think about Tyson

00:05:58.260 | and how much everybody loved Tyson at the time. And listen to this. Listen to this entrance.

00:06:04.260 | Of the former undisputed heavyweight champion. And here he comes. Mike Tyson,

00:06:09.380 | as he heads toward the same ring, he made his distraceful exit in June of '96.

00:06:14.020 | Wow.

00:06:14.520 | One of the baddest motherfucking walk-ins of all time, by the way, right?

00:06:18.820 | So what this guy should be doing. And this is one of the Albert brothers.

00:06:23.140 | Yeah.

00:06:23.940 | Shut the fuck up.

00:06:25.140 | Yeah.

00:06:25.780 | Stay out of the way.

00:06:26.660 | Yeah. Maybe build them up.

00:06:29.700 | Or that. Or don't say anything.

00:06:32.740 | Just let the fans. That's why we paid our money.

00:06:38.180 | You don't need to say anything.

00:06:39.140 | Scary, imposing music.

00:06:42.100 | Will he be able to intimidate his opponent tonight? Will it even matter?

00:06:51.380 | I really thought there'd be more of an explosion by the crowd here, but very mixed.

00:07:01.780 | Even with the win tonight, no matter how one sided, he will still have his detractors.

00:07:05.940 | Following the two fights with Holyfield, his stock plummeted. The pundits came down hard

00:07:13.540 | feeling they were duped and his knockouts were over second rate fighters.

00:07:17.860 | Now the crowd erupts more as he gets into the ring, but it's certainly nothing overwhelming.

00:07:27.140 | What a dick. You're right. I don't remember that. You're right.

00:07:31.700 | Imagine.

00:07:32.820 | You're right.

00:07:34.260 | You paid your money to watch Mike Tyson and you got to listen to these fucking jerk offs

00:07:40.420 | talk shit about him the whole way to the right. First of all, one of the coolest walk-ins ever.

00:07:46.020 | First time anybody had heard DMX, right?

00:07:48.900 | Yeah. That's right.

00:07:50.820 | He's walking into some scary, imposing music. Will it even matter?

00:07:55.780 | It's just all that kind of stuff. I literally used to analyze every ounce of the production

00:08:03.700 | that would happen on television. And at a time when I didn't even know why I was doing it, but...

00:08:09.860 | But it's in there somewhere. You were thinking about it.

00:08:12.180 | Right? So yeah, I hated HBO commentary. I thought at the time,

00:08:17.220 | HBO boxing was obviously the gold standard, but when you really think about boxing at that time,

00:08:24.740 | their production, the only thing that changed over 30 years was like HD. I mean, even the

00:08:29.540 | commentators were the same for 30 years. And then you had the time when Larry Merchant gets up and

00:08:35.780 | literally starts fighting with Floyd Mayweather during the interview and says, "If I was 30 years

00:08:41.300 | younger, I'd kick your ass right now." Oh yeah. I remember that. Yeah.

00:08:44.260 | I mean, these are the interviews that we have to listen to

00:08:46.580 | when we're trying to watch a boxing match.

00:08:49.140 | The level of boxing was good.

00:08:50.740 | Think about a fighter, right? Fighter has been gone for months, away from their families and

00:08:57.220 | away from everything, training, cutting weight, sparring. Then they go in and they have to fight

00:09:02.740 | that night. And then you have to... If you watch your fight back, you got to listen to this bullshit

00:09:07.700 | from these guys. And then you get interviewed and your interview is this. It's just...

00:09:13.380 | And it's not just about the pay-per-view money. It's about like,

00:09:16.180 | these are legends of humanity. We should celebrate the highest form of accomplishment.

00:09:21.380 | 100%.

00:09:21.940 | These aren't like Mike Tyson.

00:09:23.300 | So you know who goes in there and interviews fighters? Joe Rogan, right? Who has trained and

00:09:29.300 | done everything and has the utmost respect for the sport and the athletes. Or you got like Daniel

00:09:37.460 | Cormier, who was a former world champion himself and has actually been through it, done it, knows.

00:09:42.180 | And those are the type of people that we put in the booth, people that are actually experienced

00:09:45.460 | in it. Not these people who've never been in a fight in their fucking life, right?

00:09:51.540 | Yeah. But they're also both, DC and Rogan are like big kids. They love it.

00:09:56.740 | 100%.

00:09:57.220 | They really love it.

00:09:58.020 | Well, everybody does. I mean, if you look at... It's the difference between our commentary and

00:10:02.500 | what I feel their commentary was. We don't hire paid talking heads. We hire people that have

00:10:08.180 | actually been in it, done it, love it, and are super passionate about the sport. And I would

00:10:16.500 | say that none of them that ever covered the sport back then were... I don't know if that was Marv

00:10:21.860 | Albert or what Albert brother that was, but he sounded like he's a fan of the sport or... Anyway.

00:10:27.780 | You got me on this and once I get on it, I lose my mind.

00:10:34.420 | Maybe we wouldn't have a UFC if they didn't fuck it up so bad for the Tyson.

00:10:39.460 | It would be different. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. It would be different. There's no

00:10:42.580 | doubt about it. All those experiences growing up, being a boxing fan help create what the UFC is

00:10:47.940 | today.

00:10:48.260 | It's interesting because humans have been fighting for millennia and it seems like with the UFC,

00:10:54.820 | the rate of innovation is just insane. In these last three decades, it seems like we've discovered

00:11:02.260 | how to do unarmed combat faster and better than at any time in human history.

00:11:09.380 | I agree with you 100%. The first UFC happened in 1993, right? Martial art versus martial art.

00:11:16.340 | Yeah.

00:11:16.820 | And now over the last 30 years, martial arts has evolved faster than... You know what I mean? And

00:11:23.060 | like you just said, combat sports, fighting, whatever you want to call it, martial arts,

00:11:29.780 | it has evolved so much in 30 years, more than the last 300 years.

00:11:35.780 | What did you think when you saw UFC 1 with Hoyce?

00:11:38.020 | I remember everybody talking that this fight was going to happen and there was going to be no rules

00:11:43.060 | and all this other stuff and we're like, "There's no way. That's bullshit." And then we ended up at

00:11:47.620 | some guy's house that night in Boston and watching it and it was happening and it was fun and it was

00:11:52.980 | exciting and everything else. And then I sort of fell off after that. The first one I watched,

00:11:58.980 | but I was too big of a boxing fan. Plus, once grappling started taking over and by grappling,

00:12:04.500 | meaning the wrestling and the jujitsu guys had just laid there, I completely lost interest.

00:12:10.580 | It's funny that I'm having this conversation with you right now because last night,

00:12:15.220 | I was out last night with my friends and we were talking about... Because one of my buddies,

00:12:20.820 | who's a host here in town, just did jujitsu for the first time yesterday.

00:12:26.180 | Nice. Yeah.

00:12:26.580 | And he was like...

00:12:27.380 | Did he get his ass kicked?

00:12:28.420 | Yeah, yeah. But when you first go in, our first jujitsu lesson, me, Lorenzo, and Frank was with

00:12:33.220 | John Lewis. And I remember thinking, "Holy shit. I can't believe that I'm 28 years old

00:12:45.300 | and this is the first time I'm experiencing this, that another human being could do this to me

00:12:50.340 | on the ground." It is such an eye-opening, mind-blowing experience when you do it for

00:12:56.180 | the first time and then you become completely addicted to it. And we were training three,

00:13:02.740 | four days a week, trying to kill each other, me and the Fertittas, and that's how we fell

00:13:09.620 | in love with the sport. I think that first time that you do jujitsu, it's like the red pill and

00:13:15.780 | the blue pill in the Matrix. Do you want to believe that this is the world that you live in,

00:13:20.420 | or do you want to see what the real world looks like?

00:13:22.580 | Jujitsu is a real red pill.

00:13:24.020 | It really is.

00:13:24.820 | You realize, "Holy shit. All that shit talking I've been doing about me being a badass,"

00:13:30.420 | you realize you're not. You get dominated by another human being and you realize, "No."

00:13:34.420 | And I mean dominate. I mean completely treat you like you're a little kid.

00:13:38.340 | And then we had the opportunity to roll with a lot of different guys at the time because of the,

00:13:46.340 | whatever. And we don't have a good relationship at all, but I'll tell you this. Frank Shamrock

00:13:51.060 | came in one day and Frank Shamrock had me in side control. The pressure that this guy put on my

00:14:00.980 | chest made me tap. Felt like there was a car on my chest and with zero effort from him. It was

00:14:08.820 | absolutely effortless. And when you train with somebody that's at such a level when you're not,

00:14:17.860 | it is the most humbling, mind-blowing experience you can have, especially as a man,

00:14:22.900 | but as a human being.

00:14:23.860 | Do you remember, just for fun, do you remember what your go-to submission was?

00:14:29.460 | Yeah. So when we first started out and started doing it, I had a pretty good guillotine in the

00:14:35.060 | beginning. So I'd catch a lot of people in guillotines and-

00:14:37.300 | So you're okay being on bottom?

00:14:39.060 | Yeah, I was okay with the bottom. Yeah. I was okay with being on bottom. I was comfortable there.

00:14:43.940 | But you know what I never liked? I never liked gi. We started fucking around with a gi in the

00:14:48.100 | beginning. That's how we started. And then once I took the gi off, I felt like I had no submissions

00:14:54.420 | because I couldn't grab onto anything. So after that, I went all no-gi and I never wanted to

00:15:00.580 | wear a gi.

00:15:01.300 | And it's fascinating because no-gi has become big now and there's a lot of interesting people. I got

00:15:04.900 | trained with Gordon Ryan and the level there is just fascinating. It's become like the science

00:15:11.700 | and it looks like fighting now. It looks more like fighting as opposed to with the gi, sometimes it

00:15:16.980 | doesn't quite look like fighting. And I feel like it's transferable to actual MMA fighting,

00:15:23.620 | no-gi stuff.

00:15:24.260 | Or street.

00:15:25.140 | Street, yeah.

00:15:25.940 | Right? I mean, if you start off in your first year, you're in a gi, man, you better hope

00:15:33.220 | guy's got winter jackets on or something if something happens in the street. Because

00:15:37.620 | in my opinion, I know all the jiu-jitsu fucking people are going to go crazy over this, but

00:15:41.380 | in my opinion, no-gi is way better than gi.

00:15:44.500 | That's why I also do judo. So in the street scenario, if you're comfortable on the feet

00:15:49.380 | and you can clench and you can throw, because most of us wear clothing, especially in Boston.

00:15:56.340 | Right, exactly.

00:15:57.460 | So if you're comfortable on the feet, you could still do well there. The problem with jiu-jitsu

00:16:02.580 | is most people are not comfortable on the feet, the sport jiu-jitsu. Most people kind of want to

00:16:06.420 | get to the ground as quickly as possible. So what'd you think of hoists at that time?

00:16:11.220 | Because it blew a lot of people's minds that there's more to this puzzle.

00:16:17.540 | 100%. And the fact that you had these guys like Ken Shamrock that were jacked, right? And you had

00:16:25.780 | all these wrestlers or the big, massive guys that they had in the different weight classes. And this

00:16:31.860 | skinny little dude-like hoist was out there beating everybody. I mean, if you look at the

00:16:36.900 | way the Gracies played that, you couldn't have a better advertisement for Gracie jiu-jitsu at the

00:16:42.100 | time.

00:16:42.580 | But also for MMA, because there's just a lot of surprising elements. A lot of people's

00:16:50.820 | prediction was wrong. They didn't think the skinny guy would win. And they're like, "Oh shit,

00:16:55.380 | there's more to this."

00:16:56.500 | Well, it's the real beautiful thing about jiu-jitsu. It's like when you talk about,

00:17:00.340 | if you wanted to get your daughter into a martial art, "Should I put my daughter into karate? Or

00:17:04.740 | should I put her into this?" You put your daughter into jiu-jitsu 100%, because it's not about size

00:17:10.980 | or strength, it's about technique. And you give your daughter a bunch of jiu-jitsu and a little

00:17:17.540 | bit of Muay Thai, you know?

00:17:19.700 | Yeah, she becomes dangerous.

00:17:20.820 | It's like the perfect combo.

00:17:22.180 | Yeah.

00:17:22.580 | Because you can put your son into anything. Your son can get into some, you know,

00:17:25.940 | boys are going to learn how to fight and they're going to do whatever, but girls are different.

00:17:29.700 | And the other thing, I mean, this is the biggest selling point for jiu-jitsu for women. I mean,

00:17:33.940 | when a woman, no matter how big, how small, can put a guy to sleep in three and a half seconds.

00:17:38.820 | What's the origin story of the UFC as it is today, as you have created it and

00:17:44.260 | you and Lorenzo and Fertitto brothers built it?

00:17:47.300 | It started with John Lewis, you know, and seeing him. Frank and I were out one night at the Hard

00:17:53.940 | Rock and John Lewis was there. And he's like, "Oh, that's that ultimate fighting guy." And I was

00:17:59.460 | like, "I know him." And Frank's like, "I've always wanted to learn, uh, ground fighting."

00:18:04.980 | And I said, "Yeah, I'm interested in it too." So we went over, we talked to John Lewis

00:18:10.020 | and we made an appointment to wrestle with him on Monday.

00:18:14.660 | Yeah.

00:18:15.060 | And we told Lorenzo and Lorenzo came with us. And, uh, that was the beginning of the end. I mean,

00:18:21.140 | we, we started doing jiu-jitsu and, and started to meet a lot of the fighters. And we were like,

00:18:26.980 | you know, at the time there was a stigma attached to the sport that these guys were, you know,

00:18:30.980 | despicable, disgusting human beings, but which was the furthest thing from the truth. These,

00:18:35.460 | these kids, uh, had all gone to college, had college degrees, most of them cause they wrestled

00:18:40.020 | in college. And we started to meet some, we loved the different stories. You had Chuck Liddell who,

00:18:46.260 | you know, had this Mohawk looks like an ax murderer and, uh, but graduated from Cal Poly,

00:18:51.460 | uh, you know, with honors and accounting, you know.

00:18:55.220 | Yeah.

00:18:55.780 | Then you had Matt Hughes, who was this farm boy, you know, literally lived on a farm. And

00:19:00.740 | so there were all these cool stories with all these good people that weren't what people

00:19:05.620 | thought they were. And Lorenzo and I always felt like there's something here that if this thing

00:19:11.380 | was done the right way, this could be big. And what was crazy was I, uh, I was in a contract

00:19:19.860 | negotiation with Bob Meyerowitz, the old owner of the UFC over Tito's contract. Um, and Chuck Liddell,

00:19:26.420 | they didn't even want Chuck Liddell in the UFC. I was trying to get Chuck in the UFC and they

00:19:30.340 | didn't even want them. And we got into this contract dispute over Tito's contract. And Bob

00:19:36.660 | Meyer would say, you know what? There is no more money. Okay. I don't even know if I'll even be

00:19:41.780 | able to put on one more event. And he like flipped out. We hung up the phone. I literally picked up

00:19:46.980 | the phone and called Lorenzo. And I said, Hey, I just got off the phone with Bob Meyerowitz, owner

00:19:51.620 | of the UFC. I think they're in trouble and I think we could buy it. And I think we should, you should

00:19:56.100 | reach out to him. So Lorenzo, uh, Lorenzo called Meyerowitz and I don't know how, I don't remember

00:20:02.580 | the timeline, but within the next two months, we ended up owning the UFC for 2 million bucks.

00:20:06.660 | And, uh, you've said that you fought a lot of battles during that time.

00:20:10.660 | Oh, I mean the early days of, of building this company and building the sport, it was the wild,

00:20:17.140 | wild west, man. It was, it was crazy back then. Um, yeah, I was literally at war every day with

00:20:24.500 | all different types of people. Plus traditionally there's bad people that are involved in, in

00:20:30.500 | fighting, man. There's lots of bad people. And we had to sift our way through that for the first

00:20:35.220 | seven, eight years.

00:20:36.340 | So in general, there's like corruption and then people kind of steal money. They're

00:20:40.340 | thinking just about themselves, not the bigger business.

00:20:42.340 | Let me tell you about this. I mean, I want to say it was the Netherlands. I don't remember

00:20:45.940 | exactly where it could have been Amsterdam. I mean, MMA promoters were like car bombing each

00:20:51.620 | other. And then the other guy shot up the other guy's house with machine guns. And that's the

00:20:57.380 | kind of shit that was going on. I'll tell you the story. So affliction, do you remember affliction?

00:21:03.940 | Yeah.

00:21:04.500 | So there was a guy, I want to say, I want to, I want to say the name was Tom,

00:21:09.300 | Todd Beard or something like that. This guy used to text me every day when they were,

00:21:15.540 | when they started their MMA thing telling me he was going to kill me.

00:21:18.260 | Like legitimately death threats?

00:21:20.180 | Legitimately going to kill me.

00:21:21.380 | Yeah.

00:21:22.340 | You punk motherfucker, I'm going to fucking kill you. You don't understand who I am and

00:21:27.300 | what I've done and this and that. I think this guy would get drunk or do drugs every night or

00:21:31.540 | whatever his deal was. This guy would call me, text me and threaten my life every day. I used to go

00:21:36.580 | fuck you and this and that.

00:21:37.540 | You said fuck you.

00:21:38.420 | Oh yeah. Especially back then.

00:21:40.980 | Yeah.

00:21:41.940 | But yeah, but I mean, this is the type of shit that went on in the early days. This guy,

00:21:46.740 | this guy who was one of the owners of affliction was like one of the, you know, not a good human.

00:21:52.420 | Let's put it that way.

00:21:53.540 | What about the business side of it? It's tough to make money in this business.

00:21:57.620 | Yeah. We weren't making money. So, you know, trying to build this thing, corrupt,

00:22:03.540 | corrupt the guys that work for in demand pay-per-view at the time.

00:22:10.820 | We're not good dudes, you know, and that thing was a fucking total monopoly. God,

00:22:17.860 | I wish I could remember his name right now. He used to run in demand and he was a fucking bad guy.

00:22:22.580 | Then he, then he comes over and starts running direct TV who we always had a great relationship

00:22:27.860 | with. And he's the reason we left direct TV and said, fuck it. We'll just go streaming then.

00:22:33.700 | Yeah. I don't remember his name. I'd have to ask Lorenzo.

00:22:37.940 | So in general, just in this whole space, there's a lot of shady people.

00:22:41.860 | Everybody you deal with is dealing with a lot of, a lot of, a lot of different forces. And your,

00:22:47.540 | your hands are in a lot of different businesses, uh, you know, from the venue business to the

00:22:54.260 | merchandise business to the video game business, uh, the pay-per-view business, you know, the list

00:23:00.740 | goes on and on of all the different types of the production business of all these different,

00:23:05.860 | you know, when I first started this, I, uh, we had a production team that was the production team

00:23:13.860 | that was in it before we bought it. So there was this, there was this incident with Phil Barone,

00:23:19.620 | where Phil Barone, we did an interview with him and Barone flips out in the interview when they're

00:23:26.020 | interviewing them and goes crazy. And I thought it was awesome. So I'm like, we're going to leave

00:23:32.260 | this in. We're going to leave this interview in. And the production guys were arguing with me.

00:23:36.020 | They're like, we can't leave this in. This is totally unprofessional. And I said, I don't give

00:23:40.260 | a shit. This is, this is what we're doing. We're going to, we're going to do this and clip it like

00:23:44.660 | this and do it like that. We're sitting in the venue that night and I lean over to Lorenzo cause

00:23:50.100 | the fight's coming up. I go, wait, do you see this fucking interview with Barone? They didn't

00:23:54.580 | fucking do it. They didn't do it. These guys were guys that were freelance guys that work for show

00:24:00.900 | time at the time or one of the, something like that. I literally went, got up from my fucking

00:24:05.540 | seat, went back there, kicked the fucking door of the truck open. And I said, you motherfuckers,

00:24:10.340 | you ever do that again and I'll fire every fucking one of you. Let's just put it this way.

00:24:13.780 | I ended up firing every one of them anyway and going with a whole new crew. But these were the

00:24:18.260 | type of things that early on, you know, there's so much stuff. I mean, I could sit here for fucking

00:24:23.620 | three days and walk you through all the stuff that used to go on back in those days. But it was the

00:24:28.580 | Wild Wild West, man. But how'd you figure out, how'd you know how to deal with all this mess?

00:24:33.460 | First of all, to fire people, to fire people that aren't doing a good job, all of that,

00:24:36.980 | like how to be a leader, how to be-

00:24:38.740 | Well, that's the thing too. I mean-

00:24:39.940 | Business leader.

00:24:40.580 | Getting it in the early days, there was two employees, me and another girl that worked for

00:24:46.820 | me, for my company before I started doing this. And then we slowly started to bring people on and

00:24:52.020 | you start to build a team. Then before you know it, we had 10 people. I mean, we used to do our

00:24:56.180 | Christmas parties back then too. There'd be eight to 10 people at our Christmas party, you know?

00:25:02.180 | But a lot of it is you learn as you go, you know? You know what me and the Fertittas knew about

00:25:07.780 | production when we bought this UFC? We had like, I want to say we had two or three weeks to pull

00:25:12.100 | off an event. This is what we knew about production. Jack shit. So we had to dive in and we had to

00:25:18.020 | learn it. We had to figure it out and we knew what we wanted. We knew what we liked. We knew

00:25:22.660 | what we were looking for. It's just about building a good team. And I think that's one of the things,

00:25:30.260 | if you want to talk about what I've accomplished in the last 25 years of my life, I've been really

00:25:37.300 | good at building teams. Already have a vision of what you want the final thing to look like

00:25:41.700 | and then build a team that can bring that to life. 100%. Well, you have to have the vision.

00:25:47.140 | Without the vision, there's nothing. So that's sort of what I do. I am the vision part of this

00:25:56.020 | thing. We're going to open a PI in Mexico. We're going to do this. We're going to do that, you

00:26:02.420 | know? And then you build the team to come in and help execute. A lot of people that do fighting

00:26:11.300 | promotions fail. You succeeded against long odds. What's the secret to your success? If you were

00:26:18.500 | just looking back over the years. Well, the secret to success, I would say, first of all, is

00:26:25.300 | passion and consistency. You have to love what you do. You have to get up every day.

00:26:30.980 | I get here every day at 9.30 in the morning. When we sold in 2016, a lot of people in the

00:26:39.940 | company made a lot of money and they all took off and they retired, right? Other than the Fertittas,

00:26:46.660 | I made the most money. I'm still here. I get here at 9.30 every morning. Last night,

00:26:52.420 | I left here at 8.30. I don't know how late I'm going to be here tonight, but I love what I do.

00:26:58.260 | We get up every day and grind. I work just as hard now as I did back then. The difference between

00:27:04.500 | back then and now is I don't have to do a bunch of the shit that I don't really like to do,

00:27:08.820 | like budget meetings. I don't like budget meetings. I sat through enough fucking budget

00:27:14.260 | meetings. Horrible budget meetings. Horrible. We're losing millions of dollars a year and I'm

00:27:22.260 | in these budget meetings. I get to pick and choose what I do these days. Back in the early days,

00:27:28.580 | you don't get to pick and choose. You have to be involved in everything.

00:27:32.500 | Yeah. Cost. You're just looking at cost.

00:27:34.820 | 100%. You literally go through line by line every fucking number in the company and where did the

00:27:41.860 | money go and how can we save costs? How can we do this better? They are brutal and they're multiple

00:27:52.020 | times a week. Probably helps to deeply appreciate how much the shit costs though.

00:27:56.100 | 100%. Well, you have to know that. In the early days, when you start your business,

00:28:00.500 | you have these people who, when I hear them say, "You know what? I want to work for myself. I want

00:28:08.340 | to create my own schedule and I want to do all the..." If that's your thought process going into

00:28:15.300 | it, you're never going to be successful. You have to pay attention to every single detail of the

00:28:19.540 | business early on. You're involved in everything. There's no days off. There's no birthdays. There's

00:28:23.940 | no fucking Christmas. There's none of that shit. I literally moved the birth of my second son

00:28:28.180 | for a chocolate elf fight. We had a chocolate elf fight coming up and they're like, "Yeah,

00:28:33.300 | your son's going to be born on this date." I'm like, "Yeah, that's not going to work.

00:28:37.220 | We're going to have to take him earlier." They literally gave my wife a C-section and took my

00:28:43.060 | son early. You're all in.

00:28:44.900 | All in, yeah.

00:28:45.860 | The fascinating thing, like you said, you've said that you could care less about money.

00:28:51.620 | You're doing this for the love of it.

00:28:54.420 | I was doing this when I was broke and I'm doing this now when I'm not broke. I'm doing this

00:29:00.420 | because I love it. I feel like there's so much more to do. This is truly my passion in life.

00:29:08.260 | It's like the sphere. We're doing the sphere. Why? Why would I do the sphere? It's going to

00:29:13.060 | cost me a bunch of money. It's really challenging. Most people think it can't be pulled off.

00:29:19.620 | You're looking at weird angles, different things going on inside other than the fight

00:29:25.700 | and all this other stuff. I'm doing it because it's awesome and it's challenging and it's hard.

00:29:31.780 | I think that if anybody can do it right, it's us. Why not take that challenge?

00:29:37.780 | It's actually why I'm here. I'm going to the sphere for the first time because I'm

00:29:40.660 | hanging out with Darren Aronofsky who put together the thing that's in there now.

00:29:43.860 | I can't believe you're thinking of... I don't know how you're going to solve that puzzle.

00:29:48.740 | There's many puzzles to solve for this one. Many puzzles.

00:29:53.140 | Can you speak to that? What are interesting challenges that you're encountering?

00:29:59.140 | Yeah. There's a lot. You have the octagon and then behind it is the world's biggest screen

00:30:05.620 | ever. What is the theme? How do you program it? First of all, it's super expensive to shoot

00:30:15.300 | the format for the sphere angles we were talking about today. I just had a big meeting today

00:30:22.900 | about the sphere this afternoon and making sure that all my departments, all the details that I

00:30:31.140 | want all start to come together here in the next two weeks. I want the creative, the commercial.

00:30:38.340 | I have some goals. I will tell people as we get closer what I'm looking to achieve

00:30:44.100 | with this other than putting on one of the greatest, most unique sporting events of all time

00:30:48.900 | and probably the greatest combat sporting event of all time.

00:30:52.020 | But yeah, there's challenges. There's a laundry list of challenges for this thing and not to

00:30:59.300 | mention the fact that it's on a Mexican Independence Day and we're going to weave in

00:31:06.100 | the whole history of combat in Mexico into this event.

00:31:12.100 | But the production, this is hilarious because you were just talking about knowing nothing about

00:31:15.860 | production so many years ago. And now tackling the sphere.

00:31:18.900 | The hardest production effort-

00:31:20.500 | Ever.

00:31:20.740 | And that will be live?

00:31:23.060 | It'll be live. It'll be live on pay-per-view. It'll be live in the arena and it will also

00:31:29.540 | be in movie theaters.

00:31:30.980 | Nice. So there'll be a, it'll be shown, will be shown at the sphere later too? Like will you try

00:31:36.820 | to create an experience?

00:31:37.060 | ESPN is doing a doc on it.

00:31:38.740 | Nice.

00:31:39.300 | The making of the sphere. Yeah.

00:31:41.060 | Are you feeling good about it?

00:31:42.260 | Oh yeah. I feel incredible about it. I can't wait. It's going to be, it's going to be fun.

00:31:47.780 | I can't wait to see how you solve the puzzle.

00:31:49.860 | Thank you.

00:31:50.740 | Another guy that I feel like could care less about the money is Joe Rogan.

00:31:55.620 | How important is he to the UFC, to the rise of the UFC? And what in general do you love about Joe?

00:32:01.620 | It's a fact. He doesn't care about money. And he did the first 13 shows for free for us.

00:32:08.340 | Yeah.

00:32:08.660 | You know what I mean? That was at a time when we were hurting and he's like, "Wait a minute.

00:32:11.300 | You want me to do the commentary? You're saying that I get to sit in the best seat in the house

00:32:16.980 | and watch these fights for free? Yeah, I'm in."

00:32:21.860 | And then obviously when we turned things around, we made it up to Joe. But Joe is

00:32:28.340 | one of the things that I loved early on about... So I'll tell you the story. So we buy the UFC.

00:32:32.980 | They're based in New York. We're moving the corporate offices to Vegas. So I have to fly

00:32:41.060 | out to New York, go into the offices and start going through everything and figuring out what

00:32:48.180 | needs to come back to Vegas and what we can just throw away. So they literally had a VHS machine

00:32:53.380 | and a TV and there were a million tapes in this place, man. So I didn't know what tapes were...

00:33:00.020 | These definitely we have to keep or these we don't need. So I had to sit there and go through

00:33:04.020 | every single tape. And I popped in a tape and there was an interview on the Ivory Keenan Wayans show,

00:33:09.780 | right? The oldest Wayans brother and he had a talk show at the time. And he had Joe Rogan,

00:33:15.380 | the guy from Fear Factor on the show. And he was promoting Fear Factor, but all he

00:33:21.300 | would talk about was UFC. And he was talking about how people think that these guys in the

00:33:29.540 | martial arts movies are tough and could do it. And he was talking about what UFC fighters would do to

00:33:35.620 | these martial arts guys if they ever got their hands on them. And I was like, "This is exactly

00:33:41.620 | what I need. A guy who isn't afraid to speak his mind and knows the sport inside and out,

00:33:49.860 | but more importantly, is super passionate about it and loves it." So when you see Joe

00:33:54.420 | Rogan on camera, and I was talking about the paid dock talking heads that they had in HBO Boxing

00:33:59.620 | that were terrible. Joe Rogan does not come off as a paid talking head. He comes off as a guy who

00:34:05.860 | loves this. And so early on, no media would cover us. So I had to buy my way onto radio.

00:34:14.980 | So we'd do these radio tours, right? And they would drop us in. You'd have to get up at 3.30

00:34:21.300 | in the morning in Vegas on the West Coast. And they, 'cause they're at 6.30 in the morning in

00:34:27.540 | New York and Boston and Florida and all these other places. So they drop you into these markets

00:34:32.420 | to do radio, right? And the fighters were horrible at it. Fighters getting up at 3.30 in the morning,

00:34:39.140 | especially leading up to a fight, never good. They sound like they're tired, they act like

00:34:45.700 | they're tired, and they definitely act like they don't wanna be on there. And it's bad radio.

00:34:50.660 | What you can't have is bad radio. So the only two people that could pull off these radio tours

00:34:56.180 | were me and Joe Rogan. So me and Joe Rogan would alternate doing these radio tours all over the

00:35:03.460 | country.

00:35:04.020 | Just talking about fighting, talking about what this whole thing is,

00:35:06.580 | like getting people excited.

00:35:08.580 | Two guys that are really into it and passionate about it and love it and can... And it's one of

00:35:13.780 | the things about Rogan too. When early on, nobody understood the ground game. Joe Rogan would walk

00:35:20.900 | you through what was happening literally before it would happen. He would tell you the setup,

00:35:25.860 | what was gonna come next and everything. He'd just absolutely articulate it perfectly,

00:35:31.140 | brilliantly, and people at home started to understand. And the impact that Joe Rogan has had

00:35:37.620 | and continues to have on this sport is immeasurable. He's the biggest podcaster in the

00:35:44.740 | world. And he is on the UFC pay-per-views 14 times a year, and he's always talking about the sport.

00:35:54.420 | It's immeasurable what this guy has done for this company and the sport.

00:35:59.860 | Yeah, still to this day. I'll have dinner with him offline. He'll just talk fighting.

00:36:04.100 | Yeah.

00:36:04.340 | Just loves it.

00:36:05.140 | It's true.

00:36:06.020 | Loves every aspect of it.

00:36:07.460 | Yeah. Joe Rogan is one of those guys. I saw that early on when...

00:36:11.220 | Why would you go after the Fear Factor guy to be such a key component to not only the company,

00:36:21.300 | but to the sport? I saw it in the fucking interview on Ivory King and Wayans.

00:36:26.820 | I value loyalty a lot. And I remember there was a moment, not too long ago, maybe a year ago,

00:36:34.500 | when I was sitting with Joe and he had a phone call with you. Joe was getting canceled for

00:36:38.500 | something. And they didn't want him commentating the fights. And you on the phone offered your

00:36:48.260 | resignation over this. I got teary-eyed over that. That's such a... You're a good man.

00:36:57.220 | Thank you.

00:36:58.420 | That was powerful.

00:37:00.020 | Anybody who is with me, has been with me, knows. When you're with me, you're with me.

00:37:07.540 | It's a two-way street. It's not a one-way street. I'm not one of these guys that is

00:37:13.380 | going to roll over. It's like going through COVID. I wasn't laying any of these people...

00:37:19.700 | Some of these people have been with me for 20 years. We're going to lay them off?

00:37:23.460 | This motherfucker will burn. Burn before I would do that to my people. None of that type of stuff

00:37:35.140 | is ever going to happen while I'm here. I can't say what's going to happen when I leave, but when

00:37:41.140 | I'm here, the people who were with me and have been with me, they know exactly what's up. And

00:37:46.900 | Joe knows what's up. And again, it's a two-way street. Joe Rogan has been very loyal to me,

00:37:54.340 | and I am very loyal to Joe Rogan.

00:37:56.180 | Lorenzo, another guy you have close friendship with. You seem to have been extremely effective

00:38:03.060 | together as business partners. What's the magic behind that? How can you explain that?

00:38:07.380 | I love him. Lorenzo and I work really well together because we have two different personalities.

00:38:12.580 | I'm the guy that always... I'm going here. Lorenzo is always here. You could walk in a room and say,

00:38:20.100 | "Lorenzo, you just lost $10 million. Lorenzo, you just won $10 million." It never changes. And I'm

00:38:28.740 | a guy that goes like this. We almost balance each other out. There's a lot of things that he's

00:38:35.700 | really fucking good at, and there's a lot of things that I'm really fucking good at,

00:38:39.220 | and they're both on the opposite sides of the spectrum.

00:38:41.780 | So that level-headed thing was useful when the UFC was losing money, and

00:38:46.420 | it was unknown whether it's going to survive those low points.

00:38:50.580 | 100%. What's incredible, when you think of the story of the UFC,

00:38:54.740 | at the time, the casino business was cranking, right? And Station Casinos was killing it.

00:39:03.300 | And Stations, their money from Stations is what was funding the UFC.

00:39:08.180 | Then in the '08-'09 crash, the UFC was killing it in '08 and '09, and the casino businesses were

00:39:19.300 | hurting. So timing on everything, the way that it all worked out, couldn't have worked out better

00:39:25.460 | for them, and obviously for all of us. When you think about the UFC, and how big it is,

00:39:34.180 | and how far it reaches, and how many people it touches, the Fertitta brothers made a $2 million

00:39:39.940 | investment, then put in another $44 million, and look at how many lives that investment has changed

00:39:49.860 | over the last 25 years. It's fascinating. - And it's also crazy, just forget the

00:39:57.540 | business of it, just the effect it has on the history of humanity, in terms of this is what

00:40:03.460 | we do. We're descendants of apes that fight, and this is like the organizations that catalyze the

00:40:08.980 | innovation in how we fight. It's crazy. It created a whole new sport.

00:40:14.260 | - That people all over the world participate in now. Literally, there isn't a place on earth

00:40:20.740 | that we can't get a fighter from now. - You said in the UFC 299 post-fight

00:40:27.380 | press conference that sometimes fighters might complain that they get matched up on even odds,

00:40:34.660 | but that's actually when legends are made. I think you gave Dustin Poirier as an example.

00:40:40.420 | Can you elaborate on that a little bit? What makes a legend? What makes greatness in a fight?

00:40:45.140 | - So behind the scenes, fighters are a very paranoid bunch of people. They're very paranoid.

00:40:52.340 | And there's been this theme with fighters where they're trying to get me beat, right?

00:41:00.740 | We don't determine who wins and loses. If we did, we'd be the WWE, okay? You do.

00:41:10.340 | I'm the bells and whistles guy. I make sure that as many people that we can possibly let know that

00:41:15.460 | you're fighting on Saturday know that you're fighting on Saturday, who you are, who you're

00:41:20.020 | going against, and why people should give a shit. That's what I do, right? Then the night you show

00:41:25.700 | up, I put on the best live event that I possibly can, and I put on the best television show that

00:41:32.260 | I possibly can. Once that door shuts, it's all up to you. You determine whether you lose or not.

00:41:39.940 | And if you get into a position where you become so paranoid that you think that the powers that

00:41:48.660 | be here are against you, and you try to steer yourself away from certain fights, and that's one

00:42:03.380 | of the big things that happens in these other organizations. In these other organizations,

00:42:07.940 | the inmates run the asylum, right? So if they don't want to fight bad enough, these other

00:42:14.740 | companies don't push, and they don't do this, and they don't. We put on the best possible match-ups

00:42:20.660 | that we can make. And in this business, you might be an older fighter, but if you're still ranked

00:42:29.140 | in the top 10, there's young guys coming for you, killers. Young killers are coming out,

00:42:36.420 | and they want your position, right? So you being the veteran that you are, have to prepare yourself

00:42:44.420 | to go in. And everybody was saying when we made that fight with St. Denis that Poirier was in big

00:42:50.980 | trouble. That's awesome. That helps build the entire thing. And then Poirier goes out and does

00:43:00.340 | what he did that night. That's what makes fucking legends. - It's interesting, because sometimes

00:43:07.620 | being the underdog is a really good thing for the long-term story of who you are as a fighter.

00:43:12.500 | - Especially when you're a big name, and a name that people recognize, and a name that people

00:43:16.660 | know. And they're like, "Oh man, I remember Israel Adesanya and Sean Strickland. 100 out of 100

00:43:25.540 | people knew for a fact that Israel was gonna win that fight. And here comes Strickland." And we

00:43:33.060 | could go on for days with this, you know what I mean? That is what creates legendary moments,

00:43:38.420 | legendary fights, and it's what builds stars and legends. - I mean, arguably, Conor McGregor

00:43:44.100 | with Jose Aldo. - Yep. Conor McGregor with a bunch of people in the beginning. People said

00:43:48.180 | he couldn't wrestle. People said he wouldn't be able to defend a takedown, blah, blah, blah. Nate

00:43:52.820 | Diaz against Conor McGregor, you know what I mean? - And Conor McGregor against Khabib, underdog

00:44:00.660 | probably. But if you won, there's an opportunity to win. If you won, that's the legend for me. He's

00:44:08.420 | now in the conversation with the greatest of all time without argument. - And if you look at the

00:44:12.100 | way that Khabib ran through so many people, Conor hung in there, you know. - Yeah, it could've been.

00:44:18.740 | - And made a fight of it. - It could've been. What do you think about that matchup? It's one

00:44:22.340 | of the great matchups that you've made, Conor McGregor versus Khabib. - Yeah, I mean, at the

00:44:28.980 | time, I was incredibly criticized for putting together the spot that had the scene with the

00:44:38.020 | bus in it. - Yeah. - You know how the fucking media is, but they were saying that I was pandering to

00:44:43.300 | the, you know, to the violence that happened. I'm telling you a story. Telling you a story

00:44:49.460 | of how we got here and how big this fight is and how bad the blood is between these guys.

00:44:59.380 | And I mean, I think that's what we do the best job at is telling the fucking stories of why.

00:45:06.100 | We go into Monday, it's fight week. We got a whole list of things that we do fight week, right? And

00:45:16.420 | then you get right down to the press conference on Thursday, the weigh-ins on Friday, and then

00:45:21.140 | the fights on Saturday. Now my people fly back home, they go to bed on Sunday night, and it's

00:45:27.460 | crown hog day. We wake up again on Monday and it starts all over again. Every weekend, every Saturday

00:45:33.620 | for a year. So there's lots of stories that need to be told. There's lots of, when you think about

00:45:40.740 | what I compete with, whatever takes your attention on a Saturday night is my competitor. - So you're

00:45:47.780 | always trying to build a foundation for great stories. And like, if the fighters step up,

00:45:52.580 | they step up and they can together create greatness. - That's it. That's exactly right. So

00:45:57.620 | when we are online, like when you get to the UFC, I mean, you just saw it with MVP,

00:46:01.460 | you're gonna see it with Kayla Harrison and so many others that have come from other organizations

00:46:08.500 | and they get here, they notice immediately the difference between fighting here and fighting

00:46:15.540 | wherever they were before. It's not even comparable to the impact it has on you when

00:46:20.900 | you leave whatever organization you're with and you come to the UFC. And I think that it

00:46:25.700 | gives them a sense of, holy shit, I can really, I mean, MVP, when he came, I mean, there were

00:46:33.460 | probably more people at the press conference than any fight he'd ever fought in Bellator,

00:46:39.300 | you know what I mean? And you feel that energy and you feel the difference of the impact of being

00:46:45.940 | here. And I think it takes a lot of these guys to another level. - Yeah, just the aura of it,

00:46:50.420 | like this is where you're supposed to step up. Yeah, it's the way people feel about TED Talks,

00:46:55.140 | giving lectures. This is your moment, you get 15 minutes and this, you better

00:46:59.540 | say some interesting shit. And Kayla Harrison, by the way, is a badass. I can't wait to see

00:47:04.980 | what happens there. - She was walking around like this sleeveless shirt the night of the fights and

00:47:08.340 | holy shit. She is jacked, man. It's crazy. - Two-time Olympic gold medalist. You don't

00:47:14.180 | fuck with those people. You win a medal, you're made of something special. - So true. Especially

00:47:19.460 | in Judo. - Yeah, especially in American Judo, where you don't have many training partners that

00:47:24.420 | are great. - That's what I'm saying. - So you better fucking work for it. Ridiculous question,

00:47:28.660 | but who is in the conversation for the greatest of all time? - Jon Jones. - So you've talked about

00:47:34.980 | Jon Jones, but what are the metrics involved here? - He's never been beat. He destroyed everybody at

00:47:40.820 | Light Heavyweight, which at the time was the toughest weight class in the company, in the

00:47:47.860 | sport. And then I moved up to Heavyweight, won easily at Heavyweight. And when you look at a guy

00:47:56.740 | and you look at what he was doing outside the Octagon at the same time, which shouldn't be

00:48:04.100 | part of it, shouldn't be part of the equation, but when you do, wow. Jon Jones, there's no debate.

00:48:11.780 | Nobody can debate who's the greatest of all time. It's absolutely positively Jon Jones.

00:48:17.300 | He's never lost. He's never been beaten in the Octagon, ever. - So that's one of the metrics,

00:48:22.660 | like pure, sheer dominance. But there's others, right? Losing sometimes is a catalyst for

00:48:32.420 | greatness. - I don't disagree. But when you've never lost, right? You've never lost. We've never

00:48:40.980 | found somebody. And the other thing is that you have to factor into is longevity. How long he's,

00:48:49.700 | 'cause sometimes with a lot of these guys, the sport passes them by. You get younger guys that

00:48:54.100 | are faster, this, that, and the sport evolves. Nobody's been able to beat Jon Jones. Oh, and

00:49:00.660 | the other thing that you measure is when you said dominance, it's true. If you're this guy that has

00:49:07.060 | unbelievable power, and you're just going in, you're just fucking knocking everybody out. And

00:49:11.380 | nobody's ever pulled you into the deep water before. That was when my opinion of Jon Jones

00:49:17.060 | started to change. Gustafson took him into the deep water. Gustafson hit him with some shit he'd

00:49:22.260 | never been hit with. Gustafson tested him and put Jon Jones in a place where, I bet if you sat down

00:49:29.060 | and interviewed Jon Jones, going into the deep rounds of that, Jon Jones thought he was gonna

00:49:34.340 | die. You know what I'm saying? And he's willing to go there.

00:49:37.620 | And he kept going. He was willing, willing to do whatever it took to win that fight.

00:49:43.940 | And it breaks my heart because he beat DC, and DC is one of the greatest of all time.

00:49:48.180 | That's the thing too. And I believe that DC doesn't get the credit he deserves because of

00:49:53.460 | the Jon Jones thing. When you look at DC and what he's accomplished, right? And Jon Jones beat him

00:49:58.820 | twice. It's undeniable. You can hate all you want. Jon Jones was the greatest of all time.

00:50:05.380 | - Do you think Habib was tested enough?

00:50:08.500 | - I think that Habib had the potential to be in the running for that. He just didn't stick

00:50:14.180 | around a lot. First of all, he had injuries that, you know, he should have been where he got a lot

00:50:20.580 | sooner had he not had the injuries that he had and the setbacks in his career. But there's no doubt,

00:50:26.180 | Habib is one of the all-time greats. - What's the good, the bad, and the ugly

00:50:30.820 | of your relationship with Conor? - There's literally no ugly. Conor

00:50:35.140 | McGregor has been an incredible partner to work with. Everybody thinks that Conor... If Conor

00:50:40.340 | showed up to things on time, there wouldn't be one fucking bad thing I could say about Conor.

00:50:44.260 | You know what I mean? - Only being late.

00:50:45.700 | - If you fucking said, you put a gun to my fucking head, right? And said, "Don't lie,

00:50:50.580 | motherfucker. Tell me all the bad things about Conor McGregor." I'd say the guy doesn't show

00:50:55.540 | up on time. That's it. - That's it.

00:50:57.460 | - If Conor McGregor showed up to shit on time, and sometimes he does, sometimes he does,

00:51:01.380 | he's been a great partner. If you look at what a huge superstar he became,

00:51:06.980 | the fights that he was involved in, let me tell you what Conor McGregor never did.

00:51:11.540 | We never walked in a room and said, "Conor, this guy just fell out. We want you to fight this guy."

00:51:16.740 | And he was like, "No way. I'm not taking this fucking risk. I'm at this point in my career

00:51:20.740 | where my money, my this, my that." He was like, "Fuck it. Let's do it." He'd always say, "Let's do

00:51:28.020 | it." The other thing that Conor McGregor never did, no matter how big he was or whatever it was,

00:51:32.820 | when we were heading into a fight, "Oh, Conor, this guy just fell out. Aldo fell out. We're

00:51:38.340 | looking for another. Yeah, I'll do it, but I'm going to need another fucking $200,000. I'm going

00:51:42.260 | to need another million dollars. I'm going to..." Conor McGregor never did that kind of chicken

00:51:46.740 | shit bullshit kind of stuff. He never did any of that. Conor was as solid a guy as you could

00:51:53.700 | possibly work with. Just fuck it, I'll do it. I'll do it. Literally, there's actually a scene,

00:52:00.100 | because we were filming something. I don't know if it was embedded or what we were filming at the

00:52:02.980 | time. Me and Lorenzo walk into his house that he rented here in Vegas, and I'm pretty sure it was

00:52:07.780 | when Aldo fell out. And we're telling him this, that, and we're looking at some options. He says,

00:52:12.660 | "I'm going to the gym. When I'm done working out, let me know." He just woke up out of bed. He's in

00:52:17.860 | his fucking underwear. And he gets hit with this. And he's like, "All right, I'm going to the gym.

00:52:22.260 | Let me know when I get out who I'm fighting." Doesn't care. Doesn't want to know. Doesn't

00:52:28.820 | want any more money. Nothing. Fucking shows up and he delivers. Yeah. So Conor has been incredibly

00:52:37.220 | successful. He's made a lot of money. And he's had his ups and downs outside and inside the octagon.

00:52:44.340 | But as for a guy who was on the dole and was a plumber, he's actually a really smart businessman.

00:52:51.140 | He's been one of the best partners that I've ever had in the history of the sport.

00:52:55.220 | And an important part of the history of the UFC.

00:52:57.460 | Big.

00:52:57.780 | He opened it up to all kinds of new eyes.

00:53:01.460 | He literally set Europe, Australia, Canada, and many other parts of the world on fire, man. He

00:53:10.260 | was our first legit megastar.

00:53:15.780 | And I personally think he doesn't get enough credit for just how good he was as a fighter.

00:53:20.900 | People love to talk shit about Conor. I suppose that's part of his magic.

00:53:24.180 | But it comes with success. When you're successful, there's always people out there that are going to

00:53:29.940 | talk shit. You always have a bunch of know nothing, do nothing fucking losers that love to talk shit.

00:53:37.700 | You think if you were to do it all over again, Habib is the right matchup?

00:53:41.460 | Yeah. Listen, the thing that you can't do is avoid matchups. You know what I mean? This

00:53:47.700 | is what we're talking about. When you talk about being a legend, Conor McGregor needed Habib.

00:53:54.420 | Habib needed Conor McGregor. You can hate each other as much as you want,

00:53:59.380 | but you have to fight these other legendary bad motherfuckers to yourself become a legend.

00:54:06.820 | I mean, it's like John Jones needed Cyril Gunn, right? And Cyril Gunn needed John Jones because

00:54:13.220 | if Cyril could have beat John, the first guy, if anybody can ever figure it out and beat John Jones,

00:54:19.940 | it's a big deal. And it's almost like your obligation as a fighter, right? And when you

00:54:26.500 | think about John Jones became who he is today, and the reason I'm sitting here telling you how great

00:54:31.620 | he is, because all these other guys gave him the opportunity to beat them, right? Or they beat John.

00:54:38.900 | It's all about giving these other guys the opportunity. Saint Denis, right? Poirier gave

00:54:46.020 | him the opportunity to come in and beat him. That's how this all works.

00:54:51.220 | - It's the two of them together, the two fighters together.

00:54:54.260 | - You have to have them both. Listen, I could line up a bunch of no-name bums

00:54:59.780 | that John Jones could run through. That's what they do in all the other organizations, right?

00:55:04.420 | We would have nothing to fucking talk about right now.

00:55:07.460 | - That's why, luckily, a perfect record in the UFC is not as important as who you fought,

00:55:12.820 | how you fought. - But when you have a perfect

00:55:17.220 | record in the UFC, holy shit, right? When you can have a perfect record in the UFC,

00:55:25.300 | you are absolutely one of the most special athletes on planet Earth.

00:55:30.980 | - You and Trump are friends. I just talked to Ivanka last night about her experience

00:55:36.820 | in the Miami event. She loves it. She's training too. You were talking about getting girls to

00:55:42.260 | train. She's training too. - And the kids are training, yeah. Her father's

00:55:45.540 | the biggest fucking fight fan on the planet. Calls me all the time to talk about the fights.

00:55:51.060 | Don Jr. said that I'm like the only guy on Earth that he bros out with. It's funny when you talk

00:55:59.460 | about how powerful fighting is, right? This last Miami event, the president of Ecuador and the

00:56:06.820 | president of Spain both posted about the fights, right? Khabib beat Conor. Putin was on FaceTime

00:56:17.220 | before he even made it to the locker room. Trump, sitting president, ex-president, watching all the

00:56:23.940 | fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights. Valentina Shevchenko, every time she goes home,

00:56:29.140 | she meets with the president of the country. The list goes on and on and on. The most powerful,

00:56:33.860 | Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. The most powerful people in the

00:56:39.060 | world are all obsessed with fighting. - When did you first discover that

00:56:43.300 | Trump loves fighting? - So I first discovered that Trump was a big fight fan. Obviously,

00:56:49.060 | you saw him part of all the big... You're talking about how big boxing fans we were.

00:56:52.980 | He was a part of all the big fights back then. But when we first bought the UFC,

00:56:58.820 | this thing was so bad, venues didn't even want us. And we ended up doing our first event in Atlantic

00:57:05.140 | City at the Trump Taj Mahal. Now, think about this. At that time, Trump brand here, UFC brand,

00:57:10.580 | I mean, I can't go low enough. And he had us at his venue two times back to back,

00:57:18.500 | showed up for the first fight of the night, and stayed till the last fight of the night.

00:57:23.620 | Then after that, any good thing that would ever happen to me in my career, Trump would reach out,

00:57:29.540 | whether it was we were on the front page of the New York Times at one time, and he said,

00:57:33.780 | "Congratulations, Dana. I always knew you guys were gonna do it." Little things like that,

00:57:38.260 | but that are big things and mean a lot, especially coming from a guy like him.

00:57:43.220 | - So he saw something in you, like this is gonna be...

00:57:46.340 | - 100%. He definitely saw it. And then comes '15, '16, whenever it was, I don't remember.

00:57:55.140 | But he called me and he said, "Listen, if you don't wanna do this, I completely understand.

00:58:03.780 | But I would be honored if you would speak at the National Republican Convention for me."

00:58:07.860 | And I'm not a very political guy, you know what I mean? And everybody told me not to do it. Do not

00:58:14.980 | do this. But I was like, "Why would I not do this? This guy's been great to me, and I did it."

00:58:23.140 | And our relationship is just like, you know what I mean? I consider Donald Trump to be one of my

00:58:29.620 | very, very good friends. - Any favorite stories?

00:58:32.260 | - I mean, there's so many stories. I mean, once he won the election, I'd be at work,

00:58:40.820 | and I'd be down the hall, was in the matchmaking room or whatever, and my secretary would tell,

00:58:46.420 | "The President's on the phone." Fucking come running down the hallway and grab the phone,

00:58:50.340 | and he'd wanna talk about the fight that was coming up or the fight that happened.

00:58:54.420 | Or I'd be in my car, and I'd answer the phone, and it's like, "Hi, this is the White House. We

00:59:00.260 | have the President of the United States on the phone." That's a trip when that first starts

00:59:05.780 | happening. And then just to sum him up, this is the kind of guy that, you wanna talk about a

00:59:17.780 | fighter? This is the most resilient human being I've ever met. If you see the shit that this guy's

00:59:23.460 | going through publicly every day, and I'll call him on the phone as a friend and be like, "Hey,

00:59:32.740 | you good? How you doing?" Unfazed, unfazed, like nothing's going on. And he'll start talking to me

00:59:42.100 | about this and that and all this other shit. One time, there's only been one time, I've never

00:59:47.060 | talked about this publicly, but one time I called him and he was not good. He was a mess, and I've

00:59:56.500 | never heard him like that, and I've never seen him like that when Ivana died. The only time I've

01:00:03.700 | ever seen him, fucked up. Obviously, as soon as I heard it, I reached out, and I have never.

01:00:11.140 | Look at all the stuff that's gone on with Trump, all the bad stuff that they say,

01:00:14.820 | they're trying to attack him, they're trying to ruin him, unfazed. I called him that day,

01:00:19.620 | and it's the first time I've ever seen that guy busted up and not good.

01:00:24.820 | But that says something that that's the only time that guy is walking through the fire.

01:00:29.780 | He does not get rattled. He will walk through fire. He's an absolute savage.

01:00:33.700 | You think he wins the presidential election?

01:00:36.740 | I don't know, man. It's going to depend on how this whole... Politics is the most dirtiest,

01:00:42.180 | scummiest thing on planet Earth, man, and who knows how this is all going to play out. It's

01:00:47.300 | all dirty, it's all ugly, and obviously, I'm rooting for him, and I'm behind him, and I hope

01:00:53.700 | he does, but we'll see.

01:00:56.020 | What's dirtier, the fighting game in the early days or politics?

01:01:00.820 | There's nothing dirtier than politics. Nothing. There's literally nothing dirtier.

01:01:05.220 | All right.

01:01:05.940 | It is the dirtiest thing on planet Earth.

01:01:07.860 | I just wanted to get that on record. Another guy who doesn't seem to be phased by the fire,

01:01:12.340 | I've gotten to know him, is Elon. I have to ask you, it's a bit of fun. You were a part of

01:01:19.380 | thinking about putting together Zuck versus Elon. I trained with both. I did a phone call

01:01:24.020 | with Elon and you when we were training on the mat. You really think that could have

01:01:31.060 | been a good fight?

01:01:32.020 | It would have been the biggest fight ever done.

01:01:33.940 | The spectacle of it.

01:01:34.900 | Two of the most powerful, wealthiest men in the world. Lots of guys talk shit, and go back and

01:01:43.940 | forth, and sue each other, and do all this. These two guys were literally talking about facing each

01:01:48.580 | other in the octagon and fighting. They're in a business that's looked at as geeky. You know what

01:01:55.300 | I mean? They're tech nerds. They're this, they're that. These are two dudes that were willing to

01:01:59.700 | throw down and fight. You know as well as I do. There's a lot of public speculation about this.

01:02:06.020 | I was taking serious real time and working on this thing. I had projections. I had numbers.

01:02:12.420 | I was looking at venues. I was on the phone with the fucking Colosseum in Italy.

01:02:16.260 | You name it, I was in it. These guys were serious. This was something that was really

01:02:20.020 | going to happen. I'll tell you right now, in the short amount of time that it was going down,

01:02:28.020 | it was fun. I was having a blast with it.

01:02:30.100 | What do you think about Tyson fighting Jake Paul?

01:02:34.420 | I love Mike Tyson. I'm not a fan of anybody fighting at our age, but he's a grown man

01:02:43.540 | obviously. He's going to do what he's going to do. At least I know. I talked to his wife a couple

01:02:52.980 | days ago. He's taking this serious and he's training for it. We'll see how it plays out.

01:02:59.380 | Why do you think he fights though? What is that about? Is there a broader lesson there about

01:03:04.900 | fighters? About great fighters?

01:03:06.980 | I think that Mike Tyson is actually one of those unique guys who

01:03:11.060 | has crossed over. Any of these other boxers from his era, they have no way of making money other

01:03:17.140 | than fighting. Mike Tyson has made a lot of money outside of fighting. Tyson still has that aura.

01:03:23.780 | You could be at a restaurant and he walks in and you're like, "Holy fuck, Mike Tyson's here." He

01:03:29.460 | still has that type of aura and energy in a room. He makes lots of money outside of the ring.

01:03:40.180 | I think that he ends up getting these offers that he can't refuse.

01:03:43.460 | You think it's financial? That's a good question to ask. You work with a lot of fighters. For how

01:03:51.780 | many of them is it about money and for how many is it about the fact, the pure love of fighting?

01:03:57.940 | Well, the guys that get into it for the right reason are the guys who get into it for greatness

01:04:04.500 | because you want to be the fucking best. When you're in it for that reason,

01:04:10.820 | you love it and you want to be looked at as the best ever and you have the talent,

01:04:16.980 | the money happens. Then you have other guys who get in. I believe I've dealt with fighters who

01:04:22.420 | just wanted to be famous and just wanted to make money. It is what it is. It's your life and you

01:04:33.540 | live it the way that you want and do your thing. The ones that are beloved are the guys who really

01:04:38.340 | want to be fucking great. They're the ones that are remembered. When you look at Tyson in his

01:04:43.460 | early years when he came up under Kosti Amato, he was a student of the game. He loved everything.

01:04:49.140 | He became completely infatuated with the fight game. Then he became such a massive superstar,

01:04:56.820 | it's almost like the whole thing starts to turn on you. All the things that come at you at a young

01:05:01.940 | age and that kind of money. It's tough. It's tough to navigate and get through. You say something

01:05:08.020 | like that and people are like, "Oh, poor him. He had fucking $100 million and couldn't." At that

01:05:13.700 | age and with all the shit that people talk and all the things that you got to put up with and

01:05:17.780 | the fame, a lot of people deal with fame. Some people handle it really well and some people

01:05:23.540 | don't. The perfect example of that was Forrest Griffin and Stephen Bonner. They fought that

01:05:32.420 | unbelievable fight on The Ultimate Fighter. Everything blew up after that. Forrest dealt

01:05:37.940 | with fame really well and Stephen did not. That was a special fight.

01:05:43.220 | Really was. What do you think attracted people to that fight? That was a big leap for the UFC.

01:05:50.420 | It was everything.

01:05:51.380 | It was everything.

01:05:52.020 | It was everything.

01:05:52.660 | Why do you think people loved that fight? What attracted people to that fight?

01:05:56.180 | Why did they change everything?

01:05:58.180 | Well, what happened that night is that the rest of the show was a disaster.

01:06:01.860 | We had the co-main event and the main event. Diego Sanchez ran through Kenny Florian in seconds.

01:06:08.660 | Oh my God, that was terrible. The fights that led up to that weren't anything to talk about either.

01:06:16.100 | Then Stephen and Forrest got in there and just went toe-to-toe in this unbelievable

01:06:21.940 | slugfest live on free television when cable still mattered. What I heard was at the time,

01:06:30.100 | you had people picking up the phone going, "Are you watching this show?" The numbers just started

01:06:35.300 | climbing. Then you got a razor-thin decision, who's going to win? You got the crowd stomping

01:06:42.260 | their feet. It sounded like a train was going through the place and everybody's chanting,

01:06:46.180 | "One more round." Me and the Fertitta brothers get together and we talk,

01:06:50.660 | we're going to give them both contracts. We give them both contracts and the place erupts.

01:06:54.500 | It couldn't have been a more perfect fight at the most perfect time. It all came together.

01:07:03.460 | It's almost like this was meant to be. You know what I mean? We had so many problems

01:07:10.340 | with Spike TV at the time because halfway through the season, the president of the company got fired.

01:07:16.580 | All the things that we thought we were going to get that year, we had this runaway hit show.

01:07:23.700 | Normally at that time when you would see runaway hit shows, there'd be commercials,

01:07:29.300 | it'd be on billboards, it'd be on the side of buses in LA and New York. We got none of that.

01:07:36.900 | We didn't even know if we were going to get a second season coming out of that.

01:07:41.780 | When that fight was over, I swear to God, I was like, "I don't even give a fuck.

01:07:49.300 | We're going to end up somewhere now after this fight." We didn't even make it out of the building

01:07:54.340 | that night. The Spike guys did the contract with us in the alley on a fucking napkin after the fight.

01:08:00.100 | You already saw the magic of the fight itself. It counts.

01:08:04.340 | Once that happened and all the shit. At that time, I didn't know what the ratings. It's not like we

01:08:09.060 | were streaming and we could see what we had. We had no idea, but I knew.

01:08:12.420 | You just knew this was going to happen.

01:08:13.220 | I knew.

01:08:14.020 | What is it? It's just two people being willing to stand toe to toe and just go to war.

01:08:21.140 | When you think about what was at stake, there was a car. Remember the Kia?

01:08:24.580 | Yeah.

01:08:25.080 | The winner got a Kia, right?

01:08:28.100 | I don't even remember that.

01:08:28.980 | That's what was the fucking, right?

01:08:30.580 | Steffen and Forrest, the will to win. They both wanted to win that fight so bad.

01:08:38.100 | It was bigger than the Kia, probably.

01:08:39.700 | Forrest drove that Kia to 200,000 miles. The biggest mistake Kia ever made was not doing

01:08:47.380 | a fucking commercial with Forrest Griffin about that car. Forrest Griffin loved that car so much,

01:08:51.940 | he drove it. I think he still has it. It's got 200,000 miles on it that car. You couldn't have

01:08:57.940 | a better fucking commercial than that. We reached out to him too. I said, "Kia should know about

01:09:02.420 | this." They fucking blew it. You know how those guys are in the business world. They don't fucking

01:09:08.260 | get anything.

01:09:09.300 | Maybe it was about the Kia then.

01:09:10.740 | It was about winning. They both wanted to win the Ultimate Fighter so bad. It's the Kia. It's the

01:09:17.540 | win. It's the contract you get, the whole thing.

01:09:22.180 | But I think at that point, you even forget all of that when you're in there. You probably just,

01:09:27.220 | there's a primal thing where I'm not backing down.

01:09:30.820 | They're both bad dudes. They were both real fighters at the end of the day. That's why

01:09:34.740 | the fight was so great. You know what I mean?

01:09:36.740 | Just throw all the caution to the wind and just fight. Those are some of the greatest

01:09:42.180 | moments in the FC2 when the technique is not, falls apart and you're just like, "Fuck it."

01:09:49.380 | It's because you're in those deep rounds. You've been through a war. Now it's all about heart and

01:09:54.820 | dog, who can dig deeper and who's got it and who wants it.

01:09:59.060 | I mean, we all know when that moment happens in a fight, when you see that both of these

01:10:04.180 | guys are fucking exhausted. And for people that are watching this, people that don't

01:10:08.740 | know a lot of, everybody thinks they know a lot about fighting. 99.9% of the people out

01:10:13.220 | there don't know fucking jack shit about fighting or what it takes to do what these people do.

01:10:18.100 | But when you get into those later rounds and fatigue sets in, and then fatigue makes you

01:10:24.420 | start to fucking doubt yourself. And then you start to wonder, "Can I even make it through

01:10:29.220 | the rest of this round?" And then you start to think, "Am I going to fucking die right now?"

01:10:32.900 | And these kids dig fucking deep. And they just, like you said, all the other shit flies out the

01:10:39.780 | window and now they're just on fucking autopilot to fight and win. Those are definitely the best

01:10:45.060 | fights you'll ever see in any combat sport. I mean, that saying is true. The exhaustion

01:10:49.460 | makes cowards of us all. I mean, there's something about, because I've competed a lot in jiu-jitsu,

01:10:55.940 | so there's the violence of being hit too. But even just exhaustion, it makes you question

01:11:02.820 | everything. So true. It just takes you to some weird place where your brain starts to think

01:11:09.620 | you're going to die for sure. Your brain starts to think, "Why am I doing this? All these excuses,

01:11:15.860 | all this stuff." And then the truly heroic action is to say, "Fuck it," in that moment,

01:11:22.740 | and just to get in there. When you think about these fights that you see in the UFC every fucking

01:11:27.300 | Saturday, when these men and women get to this point where they've been in a dogfight,

01:11:32.820 | yet they keep fucking going and you keep trying to win. You can't imagine what's going on inside

01:11:39.220 | their heads. Self-doubt and all these other things that come into play when exhaustion sets in and

01:11:47.860 | they fucking power through it. Yeah. Those moments, sometimes they don't have a glorious knockout at

01:11:52.820 | the end, but your decision in the third round or the fifth round to still keep pushing forward,

01:12:00.980 | not running. A hundred percent. That doesn't matter what happened. That is a person winning

01:12:08.340 | a battle over themselves. So true. It's so true, and it happens every fucking weekend.

01:12:13.540 | It's so impressive. I say it all the time. The people that are involved in this sport

01:12:18.820 | are this much of the population. The people that make it to the top five are incredibly

01:12:25.460 | unique, special human beings, man. It's fucking awesome. You love gambling. I do.

01:12:35.220 | What's the biggest win of your gambling career? Maybe psychologically, if not financially.

01:12:42.820 | Well, two things. I won a million-dollar hand one night. It's happened one time.

01:12:49.300 | A million-dollar hand one night at Nanlei Bay. Then one summer, I beat Caesars for 12 million

01:13:01.460 | throughout the summer. Throughout the summer. Yeah. Then I'm on a pretty good run right now,

01:13:07.060 | too. This is Blackjack. What's the biggest loss? Biggest loss was...

01:13:14.180 | I would call this the biggest loss for many different reasons. You live and you learn in

01:13:25.700 | life, and you figure things out as you go along. One night, I'm over at the Rio.

01:13:32.500 | They got big suites over there. I go over there with some buddies, and we got one of the suites,

01:13:41.300 | and we have some dinner, and we start drinking. We're having some drinks at dinner, and blah,

01:13:45.540 | blah, blah. Starts to ramp up, having a good time. I make my way down to the Thai limit room. We

01:13:53.780 | start gambling. I continue to drink, having a blast. I end up leaving and going home that night,

01:14:04.500 | and I lost 80 grand. I wake up the next morning. I'm like, "Fuck. Those motherfuckers got me for

01:14:11.620 | 80,000 last night." I'm at work the next day. The host over there calls me, and he says, "Hey, Dana,

01:14:22.260 | are you coming back? Do you still need the room that you guys had where you ate and all the shit

01:14:26.580 | you used to?" I said, "No, I don't need the room, but don't get too comfortable with my fucking 80

01:14:33.060 | grand. I'm coming back for it." Dead fucking silence on the other end of the phone. He's like,

01:14:39.780 | "Dana, you lost $3 million last night." I was like, "What the fuck are you talking about?

01:14:47.460 | I only have a million and a half dollar credit line." He goes, "Yeah. You made us call the GM

01:14:54.820 | of the hotel, and you started calling him a fucking pussy, and dah, dah, dah, dah." I went,

01:15:00.820 | "Yeah. No, that sounds like something I would do. Yeah."

01:15:06.180 | So that's the real number.

01:15:07.380 | That was the real number. Then there's been a lot of cases where people are in Vegas, and they're

01:15:15.300 | like, "Oh, I lost all this money, and they were giving me free drinks, and I drank too much,

01:15:22.900 | and I was taken advantage of." No, you stupid motherfucker. Man up. You got fucking drunk.

01:15:29.700 | Alcohol is free, but you don't have to fucking drink it. You know what I mean? This was a huge

01:15:39.780 | learning lesson for me. So I never drank again when I was playing cards after that night.

01:15:46.420 | Oh, damn.

01:15:47.860 | But yeah, when you ask me, that's the one that stands out in my head the most as far as having

01:15:53.780 | a bad loss. Then, of course, I said, "Call the GM," and I started calling him a pussy at 3 o'clock

01:15:59.380 | in the morning. So that is something I would absolutely do.

01:16:02.740 | How do you deal with those psychologically? When you gamble, maybe this applies to fighting too,

01:16:09.380 | do you love winning or hate losing more?

01:16:12.340 | They go hand in hand. So the way that I play is, I live in Vegas, so 2024 is a war for me.

01:16:24.260 | I go to war in '24. All these nights that I play are little battles inside the war that I will

01:16:32.100 | fight in '24. Now, at the end of the year, we will tally up all these little battles and see where I

01:16:40.340 | stand on wins and losses. There's lots of talk out there about my gambling, places that I've been

01:16:50.900 | kicked out of and things like that. I do pretty well. I do pretty well, but it's what I like to

01:17:00.980 | do. I don't gamble in a way that I would ever hurt myself or hurt my family. I'm sure you've heard

01:17:09.700 | the Norm MacDonald stories. Norm MacDonald lost his entire personal wealth four times or something

01:17:15.220 | like that. Yeah, that's not going to happen to me. So you manage it, but just psychologically,

01:17:22.740 | you're able to be even-keeled. Yeah. So when I win, it's awesome. It's always great to win.

01:17:29.060 | Winning is a great feeling in business, in sports, in life, and definitely in gambling.

01:17:35.940 | Losing is never fun, but it's part of the game. You know what I mean? If you want to be in the

01:17:43.460 | game and it's sports, it's business or whatever, there's going to be wins and there's going to be

01:17:48.980 | losses. And you have to take them both in stride and you have to be able to, you know, there's a

01:17:54.820 | lot of people... When you gamble, right, and you lose and you go into a deep, dark depression,

01:18:02.740 | I've seen this with guys that get depressed and gambling isn't for you. If you are the type of

01:18:09.140 | person that's on social media and people say horrible things to you and you get depressed,

01:18:14.100 | you shouldn't be on social media. You know what I mean? These are all part of being in the game.

01:18:20.340 | When you're in the fucking game, great things happen and really bad things happen. And you got

01:18:24.980 | to take it all in stride and you got to pick yourself up the next day, strap your fucking

01:18:29.460 | shoes back on and get out there and go to fucking war again. That's how it works.

01:18:33.380 | That's some gogging shit right there. All right. I love that motivational speech.

01:18:37.300 | It's the truth though. It's the truth though. Listen, every day when you get out of bed,

01:18:43.540 | life's standing right there to kick you in the fucking face, man. Could be anything. Could be

01:18:48.580 | you get up and you walk downstairs, you got a fucking flat tire and you're late for work and

01:18:52.020 | you got this and that. Life is going to throw all kinds of crazy shit at you, right? And you have

01:18:57.540 | to be ready for it and you got to fucking deal with it. You can't curl up into a ball. You can't

01:19:01.540 | run away from it. You can't hide. You have to take all this shit head on. You have to get up.

01:19:06.660 | Every day when I get up out of bed, I strap up and I'm getting ready for fucking war because I know

01:19:11.620 | I'm coming in here. I know a bunch of bad shit's going to happen that I'm going to fucking deal

01:19:15.460 | with. And if that's not bad enough, when I finally get out of here, I'm probably going to go to the

01:19:20.740 | casino and I'm going to get into another fucking war. You know what I mean? I thrive in chaos.

01:19:26.500 | I actually love chaos. Everybody talks about retiring. Fuck that shit. What am I going to

01:19:32.820 | do when I retire? What would I do? What would I, I liked, I like to go to war. I like to battle.

01:19:37.860 | I like to win. Sometimes I lose, but then I have to come back from the loss and I love to build

01:19:43.460 | brands. I love to set short-term and long-term goals and then knock them all down. This is just

01:19:51.300 | the stuff that excites me. And whether it's business or gambling, I like being a fan of

01:20:00.740 | things too. I like live music. So when I find a band that I like, I get excited to go watch the

01:20:07.780 | band live or Celtics game. I love the fucking Boston Celtics and I love going to the games and

01:20:12.980 | watching them. This is the year. Hopefully we're going to fucking win it this year.

01:20:15.540 | These are all things that make me happy and excite me in my life. And it's funny because

01:20:22.260 | there's this post that I post maybe three, four nights a week. I also love the city. I can't tell

01:20:29.220 | if the city of Las Vegas was built for me or I was built for this fucking city, but I love it.

01:20:34.740 | And there's this turn on Summerlin Parkway, right? Every night and it's dark. And from there,

01:20:40.420 | you can see the entire fucking city and it's all fucking lights and it's badass. And I'm

01:20:45.380 | usually driving home after a fucking incredible day, right? This amazing day and this unbelievable

01:20:52.340 | fucking life that I have. And I have this just moment of gratitude. Every time I take that turn

01:20:57.780 | and I'm like, "God damn, I love this fucking city." And just every night when I go home,

01:21:03.300 | I'm just so happy and grateful for this life that I have.

01:21:06.100 | So you're grateful, you're celebrating, even if the day is full of shit, full of problems,

01:21:10.420 | you have to solve all of this, you're still able to put that behind you?

01:21:13.780 | I love that too. I love problem solving. I love taking things that seem impossible.

01:21:21.140 | What's been shit on more than this fucking company right here? Power Slap, right?

01:21:30.260 | Yeah.

01:21:31.140 | This thing's a fucking beast. It's an absolute beast. In 13 months, that's the most successful

01:21:38.100 | thing I've ever been a part of. And I love every fucking minute of it, especially the negativity.

01:21:43.780 | I love negativity.

01:21:45.140 | So you almost feed on it. That's great. You're a build for it.

01:21:48.020 | I eat that shit for fucking breakfast, man. I love it.

01:21:51.060 | What's your favorite movie about Vegas? Casino?

01:21:54.820 | Yeah, it would have to be Casino. No doubt about it.

01:21:58.580 | Do you ever see a movie that changed your life, that actually impacted your life in some way,

01:22:04.740 | shape or form?

01:22:05.620 | Probably.

01:22:06.420 | Which one?

01:22:06.980 | That's a good question. I have to think. Well, I have a lot, a lot. Casino could be one of them,

01:22:13.620 | probably taught me about women. Forrest Gump, for me, it's a simple movie, but it was a really

01:22:21.220 | good movie to show. Because I've been really fortunate in my life, over and over and over,

01:22:27.940 | and I don't think I deserve any of it. So I just always felt like Forrest Gump. So when I finally

01:22:32.740 | saw it, it really connected with me. It was like, okay, this universe works in weird ways and stuff

01:22:39.060 | just materializes. And you just kind of be good to people, put that good karma out there and it

01:22:43.860 | happens for you. So that was a movie like that.

01:22:46.100 | I'm actually very superstitious about that. I believe that what you put out, you get back.

01:22:53.620 | And I believe that when you have, you should take care of other people and you should always try to

01:22:58.900 | bring people up with you and all that kind of stuff. But the movie that changed the whole

01:23:05.460 | trajectory of my life was Vision Quest.

01:23:08.420 | Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a good one too. Yeah.

01:23:10.580 | Vision Quest, man. I fucking love that movie. It's basically, it's telling the story of a kid

01:23:16.420 | who really wasn't anybody in high school and nobody kind of knew who he was. He wasn't popular

01:23:20.580 | or any of that kind of shit. And he decided that that was the year that he was going to make his

01:23:26.180 | mark. And he was a good wrestler at 178 pounds, but he was going to move down to 160 something

01:23:31.460 | to take on the shoot, the scariest guy and the whatever. But there's all these little

01:23:35.700 | things in the movie that really lay out what life is all about.

01:23:41.540 | One of the parts is he's in a class and he's talking about, the teacher's talking about some

01:23:48.100 | poem. And he says, what does this poem mean to you? Well, this little girl's walking through

01:23:51.940 | the park and all the leaves are falling off the trees. And she realizes that she's going to die

01:23:57.700 | someday. And that a lot of people think they have all this time, so they fucking waste it.

01:24:04.660 | And they never go out and do what they really set out to do or accomplish or

01:24:08.580 | do anything great in their life. That's one meaning. Then he's got the guy that he works

01:24:12.900 | with at work. He's cutting weight and his nose is bleeding and all this shit. And this guy keeps

01:24:17.300 | going, why the fuck are you doing this? Pick that thing up and eat it like a fucking man.

01:24:21.300 | This is ridiculous. I don't know why you're doing this to yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:24:24.580 | So then when he meets the girl and he gets to the point where he feels like he wants to quit,

01:24:29.300 | right? Where does he go? He goes to that guy's fucking apartment because he knows when he shows

01:24:34.900 | up at this guy's apartment, he's going to go, yeah, fuck this shit. No, he went to work. He

01:24:39.380 | went to work to talk to him and he wasn't at work. He took the night off. So he shows up at the

01:24:44.500 | fucking house at the shitty little fucking apartment that the guy lives in. And the guy's

01:24:48.580 | putting his suit and tie on and shit. He's like, they said you called in sick. What's going on?

01:24:52.260 | He's like, well, yeah. Aren't you wrestling this guy tonight? And he's like, yeah, but why would

01:24:56.580 | you, you're going to get docked a night's pay and all this other shit. He says, you know what, man?

01:25:00.500 | Then it all gets laid out. I get the goosebumps even telling you this fucking part of the play

01:25:04.260 | speech. Yeah. What are you saying about, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fucking cooking

01:25:10.100 | in an overnight hotel fucking thing. And I live in this shitty apartment. A human being can lift

01:25:15.700 | himself upside down and backwards and kick a ball into a fucking net. And the whole stadium goes

01:25:20.260 | crazy. And this guy runs around and I'm sitting here in my fucking apartment alone. And I start

01:25:24.980 | crying. Yeah. I start crying. So the guy who's been shitting on him the whole fucking time

01:25:29.220 | actually really respects him for what he's done and sees what this kid is capable of doing and

01:25:34.260 | all this shit. There's just this fucking movie spoke to me on so many different levels. And I

01:25:39.380 | think it's probably the most underrated movie of all time. When you really break down the meaning

01:25:44.980 | of what this movie is about. And, and, and, and it fucking really spoke to me. That's probably

01:25:49.700 | the greatest movie on combat one-on-one combat. I would agree ever made. I would agree. Yeah. And

01:25:56.580 | especially if you can really hear the messages that it's, that it's, that it's given you in

01:26:02.100 | this movie, it's, it's, it's excellent. You know, it's funny. They just did like the, and I saw this

01:26:07.620 | after the fact, which completely fucking pissed me off. They did like the 25 year or the 30 year

01:26:14.180 | thing. It was filmed in Spokane, Washington. They showed the movie at a movie theater there

01:26:18.420 | and the cast members came out and spoke about it. I would have fucking flown there for that.

01:26:22.500 | Are you shitting me? I'd have been there in fucking 30 seconds to go up there and,

01:26:26.340 | and, and be a part of that. That, that movie literally changed my life.

01:26:29.700 | Yeah. I suppose me too. It made me, uh, it made me want to wrestle. I mean,

01:26:34.820 | probably the reason I was, maybe it made me love fall in love with wrestling.

01:26:39.460 | Well, you know, it's funny. I wasn't even into wrestling at all

01:26:41.940 | and I didn't have to be for that movie to. Yeah. It's the basic human story.

01:26:46.420 | It's such a great movie. I mean, that's what fighting does.

01:26:48.500 | It brings out the basic, like the, the, the humanity of a person really like if the,

01:26:53.140 | for the people that choose to step up and step in the ring and then chase greatness and actually do

01:26:59.140 | it from like against the long odds, that's why it's a beautiful game.

01:27:03.380 | And it's so true. I mean, when you think about like, I'm 54 years old right now,

01:27:07.300 | like that, I mean, it just fucking flew by and, uh, you think when you're young,

01:27:14.660 | that you have all this time, you have no time. There's, there, there's no time. I mean,

01:27:19.620 | one of the, one of the quotes on the wall in the gym and there's, um, you know, there is no tomorrow

01:27:26.180 | from, from Rocky three, you know, there is no tomorrow. Fuck that shit.

01:27:31.620 | Let's, let's get all this shit done today. Do you think about your death?

01:27:34.980 | I'm not, I'm not afraid of death, not even a little bit. I'm not afraid of it. Um,

01:27:41.060 | I don't know if that'll be the case when I'm facing it, you know, when I'm looking down the

01:27:45.620 | barrel of it, laying in a hospital bed somewhere. But for now, just squeezing as much as you can.

01:27:51.540 | I literally, I don't even like to sleep. My life is so fucking awesome.

01:27:56.420 | I don't even want to go to bed at night. I don't even want to go to sleep. I want to stay up.

01:28:00.420 | I wish I could fucking do 24 hours and never have to sleep. That's how much I love my life.

01:28:05.220 | What has watching thousands of fights over the years taught you about human nature, about us

01:28:10.980 | humans? I don't care what color you are, what country you come from or what language you speak.

01:28:15.700 | We're all human beings. Fighting's in our DNA. We get it and we like it.

01:28:19.540 | And it's true. Fighting is in our DNA. It's a part of who we are. And, uh, you know,

01:28:26.740 | no matter where you are, fight breaks out. It creates this fucking energy, this buzz,

01:28:31.780 | this sense of fear. I mean, a lot of different emotions happen in people when fights break out.

01:28:37.940 | But one thing that, that, that is always the case. Everybody's watching, man. Everybody's

01:28:43.060 | fucking, all of their eyes are on the fight. I mean, we were just in Mexico. Fucking fight broke

01:28:49.220 | out like in the good seats, like right here with the seats that are super expensive. Insecurity

01:28:55.540 | never fucking came. Yeah. They just let these guys fight until they gassed out. Yeah. And then

01:29:00.500 | everybody put their chairs back together and sat back down and fucking, I literally got up from

01:29:04.980 | my table, walked over and was watching this fight at the fights. At the fights. Yeah. I mean,

01:29:10.820 | humans fight and humans love watching fighting. Absolutely. And that was my thought process going

01:29:16.900 | into buying the UFC. And I believe that this would work everywhere. And thank God we were right.

01:29:23.060 | Well, Dana, thank you for bringing this very human thing of fighting the art of it,

01:29:28.900 | the science of it, the, the heroic stories, the vision quest stories of it all.

01:29:34.260 | Boom.

01:29:34.660 | Um, really appreciate you talking to me, brother.

01:29:36.740 | Thank you. Pleasure, buddy. Thank you for the kind words.

01:29:38.980 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dana White. To support this podcast,

01:29:43.780 | please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from

01:29:48.740 | Muhammad Ali. Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in

01:29:56.340 | a world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not

01:30:01.940 | a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Thank you for listening

01:30:09.620 | and hope to see you next time.

01:30:14.740 | [inaudible].

01:30:15.780 | [inaudible]

01:30:15.860 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Dana White: UFC, Fighting, Khabib, Conor, Tyson, Ali, Rogan, Elon & Zuck | Lex Fridman Podcast #421

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