Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
HUBI beat Connor Putin was on FaceTime before he even
made it to the locker room. Trump sitting president, ex president,
watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.
Valentina Schevshanko. Every time she goes home, she meets with
the president of the country. The list goes on and
on and on. The most powerful Elon Musk Zuckerberg. I mean,
(00:22):
the list goes on and on and on. The most
powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
The following is a conversation with Dana White, the president
of the UFC, a mixed martial arts organization that revolutionized
the art, the sport, and the business of fighting, and
Dana is truly the mastermind behind the UFC. This is
the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out
(00:50):
our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's
Dana White. Do you remember when you saw your first fight.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I think so. I remember being at my grandmother's house
and I think it was an Ali fight and all
my uncles were going crazy during the fight, and it
was just this buzz and this energy in the house
that I liked at a very young age. And I'm
pretty sure that was my first fight.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Ali was something special.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, incredible. I mean when you look around, not just
here in the office, but at my house, Ali and
Tyson are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Would you put Ali as the greatest of all time boxing?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Well, I would put Ali as the greatest all time
human being. I mean when you it's easy as a
fight fan to focus on him as a fighter, but
when you focus on him as a human and you
think about what he meant at that time and place
(01:50):
the things he said, the poems he came up with,
you know, just the overall brilliance of Muhammad Ali. The guts,
the guts to have the strength mentally, physically and emotionally
to go against the grain. At the time that he
did it, it was a very dangerous time for him
to be who he was. Yet because of how smart
(02:15):
he was, and because of his personality and how if
you sat down with him you could be the biggest
racist on the planet. It's hard to get in the
room with Ali and not like Ali.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, He's all love, humor, all of it, and had
the guts in the ring and the guts to take
a stand.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He might be one of the all time greatest humans.
You know what I mean, just an impactful, powerful human
being who happened to be a great boxer.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And sometimes the right moment meets the great human being.
That's important.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I agree with you. And he was the right guy
in the right place at the right time. And he's
also a guy who used his platform for all the
right things.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So that might have been your first fight. But when
did you fall in love with fighting, the art of it,
the science of it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, I would say I really fell in love with it.
So I was a senior. It was nineteen eighty seven
and Hagler Leonard happened. Yeah, and I watched that fight
and I taped it, and I watched that fight like
a million times. I was a huge, huge Hagler fan.
(03:30):
And I like Sugar Ray Leonard too, but I was
a huge Hagler fan. And you know, I just remember
I watched that fight a million times because I was
I was pissed off and I felt like Hagler got
robbed in the fight, you know what I mean. But
that was really what made me start to love the
sport of boxing, the battle of it. Like, yeah, I
(03:51):
was seventeen. And then after that, USA's Tuesday Night Fights
came out on television on every Tuesday night, religiously never
missed Tuesday Night fights. I was there, watched all those fights,
and uh, you know a lot of a lot of
the things you see in the UFC, not not necessarily
(04:15):
just the production, but I would say the the feel
and the style and all those things are are all
things that I things that I loved about boxing and
things that I hated about boxing, right down to the commentary.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You loved and hated hated the Yeah, hated the commentary.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Certain things that I loved about boxing, I incorporated into
the UFC things that I hated about boxing. I made
sure that the UFC stayed far away from I think
I can't stand Larry Merchant. Can't stand Larry Merchant, and
I used to watch HBO boxing and mute the commentary
so that I didn't have to listen to them. Lampley too,
(04:58):
Uh you know you would, you would spend this money
for the pay per view to watch these people that
you idolized to hear these idiots rip them apart while
the fight was happening. You know, they were criticizing one
hundred percent apart.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I've gotten used to the UFC side, don't I'm trying
to remember looking back.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
It was bad. It was bad, It was really bad,
but that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
The sweet science the art of boxing was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Still, Like, I want to do this with you right now, Hey,
we bring your cell phone over here and pull up YouTube.
I want to do this for you so that you
you can understand this and understand where I was coming
from for the commentary. At this point in time, I have.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
All good memories. You're going to ruin it for me.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, no, there are nothing but great memories about boxing,
but the presentation and and a lot of the things.
But it's how fucking weird is it that I even
cared about this ship at that point in my life
and that time my life, Like what impact could I
possibly have on it? So think about Tyson, how much
everybody loved he at the time, and when to listen
(06:01):
to this. Listen to this entrance of.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The former undisputed heavyweight champion, and here he comes, Mike
Tyson as he heads toward the same ring he made
his disgraceful exit and chewed up ninety six woe.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Of about his motherfucking walkings of all time, by the way, right,
So what this guy should be doing? And this is
one of the Albert brothers. Yeah, shut the fuck up. Yeah,
stay out of the way. Yeah, maybe build him up
or that, or don't say anything. Just let the fence.
That's why. Yeah, yeah, that's why we paid our money.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You don't need to saying scary imposing music. Will he
be able to intimidate his opponent tonight?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Will it even matter?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I really thought that'd be more of an explosion by
the crowd here, but very mixed even with the winds tonight.
No matter how one shided, he will still have his detractors.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Following the two fights to with Holyfield, his stocked plummeted.
The pundits came down hard, feeling they were too that
his knockouts were over second rate fighters. Now the crowd
he roves the dorm as he gets into the rink.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
You know, but it's certainly nothing overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
What a dick.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're right, I don't remember that. You're right.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Imagine you're right. You you you paid your money. Watch
Mike Tyson and you got to listen to these fucking
jerk offs talk shit about him the whole way to
the right. First of all, one of the coolest walkings ever,
you know, first time anybody had heard DMX right, and uh,
you know he's walking into some scary, imposing music. Will
(07:54):
it even matter whether you know, it's just all that
kind of stuff. I you literally used to analyze every
ounce of the production that would happen on television, and
at a time when I didn't even know why I
was doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
But it's in there somewhere, but you were thinking about.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It, right, So yeah, I hated HBO commentary. I thought,
you know, at the time, HBO boxing was obviously the
gold standard, you know, but when you really think about
boxing at that time, their production, the only thing that
changed over thirty years was like HD. I mean, even
the commentators were the same for thirty years. And then
(08:33):
you had the time when Larry Merchant gets up and
literally starts fighting with Floyd Mayweather during the interview and says,
if I was thirty years younger, I'd kick your ass
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Oh yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, I mean, these are the interviews that we have
to listen to when we're trying to watch a boxing match.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
The level of boxing was good.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Think about a fighter, right, fighter has been gone for
months away from their families and away from everything training,
cutting weight sparring. Then they go in and they have
to fight that night, and then you have to you know,
if you watch your fight back, you got to listen
to this bullshit from these guys, and then and then
you get interviewed, and your interview is is this.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
It's just and it's not just about the pay per
view money. It's about like, these are legends of humanity.
We should celebrate the highest form of like accomplishment. These
are like Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So you know who goes in there and interviews fighters,
Joe Rogan right, who has trained and and and and
and done everything and has the utmost respect for the
sport and the athletes. Or you got like Daniel Cormier
who is a former world champion himself and has actually
been through it, done it, knows And those are the
type of people that we put in the booth, people
(09:44):
that are actually experienced in it, not not not not
these people who have never been in a fight in
their fucking life.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right Yeah, but they're also both DC and Rogan are
like big kids.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
They love it, well everybody does. I mean, if you
look at it's the difference between our commentary and what
I feel their commentary was We don't hire paid talking heads.
We hire people that have actually been in it, done it,
love it, and are super passionate about the sport. And
(10:16):
I would say that none of them that ever covered
the sport back then were I don't know if that
was Marv Albert, what all Albert brother that was, but
he sounds like he's a fan of the sport or anyway.
You got me on this, and I lose my mind.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Maybe wouldn't We wouldn't have a UFC if they didn't
fuck it up so bad and.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
For the t it would be different. You're not wrong.
You're not wrong. It would be different. There's no doubt
about it. All those experiences growing up being a boxing
fan helped create what the UFC is today.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know, it's interesting because humans have been fighting for millennia,
and it seems like with the UFC, the rate of
innovation is just insane. In these last three decades, it
seems like we've discovered how to do unarmed combat faster
and better than at any time in human history.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I agree with you one hundred percent. The first UFC
happened in nineteen ninety three, right martial arts versus martial arts,
and now over the last thirty years, martial arts has
evolved faster than you know what I mean. And like
you just said, combat sports, fighting, whatever you want to
call it, martial arts, it has evolved so much in
(11:32):
thirty years, more than the last three hundred years.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
What did you think when you saw UFC one with Hoys.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I remember everybody talking that this fight was going to
happen and there was gonna be no rules and all
this other stuff, and we're like, there's no way, that's bullshit.
And then we ended up in some guy's house that
night in Boston and watching it and it was happening
and it was fun and it was exciting and everything else.
And then and then I sort of fell off after that.
The first one I watched, but I I was too
(12:00):
big of a boxing fan. Plus, once grappling started taking over,
and you know, by grappling meaning the wrestling and the
jiu jitsu guys had just laid there, you know, I
completely lost interest. It's funny that I'm having this conversation
with you right now because last night I was out
last night with my friends and we were talking about
because one of my buddies, who's a host here in town,
(12:22):
just did jiu jitsu for the first time. Nice yesterday. Yeah,
and he was like, did he get his ass kick? Yeah? Yeah.
But when you first go in our first jiu jitsu
lesson me, Lorenzo Frank was with John Lewis, and I
remember thinking, holy shit, I can't believe that I'm, you know,
(12:44):
twenty eight years old, and this's the first time I'm
experiencing this, that another human being could do this to
me on the ground. It is such an eye opening,
mind blowing experience when you do it for the first time,
and then you become completely addicted to it. And you know,
we were training three four days a week trying to
(13:04):
kill each other and me and the fertiitas, and that's
how we fell in love with the sport. I think
that first time that you do jiu jitsu, it's like
the red pill and the blue pill and the matrix.
Do you want to believe that this is the world
that you live in or do you want to see
what the real world looks like?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Just as a real red pill it really is. You realize,
holy shit, all that shit talking I've been doing about
me being a badass, you realize you're not. You're getting
dominated by another human being, and.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I mean dominate, I mean completely treat you like you're
a little kid. And then we had the opportunity to
roll with a lot of different guys at the time
because of the whatever, and we don't have a good
relationship at all. But I'll tell you this, Frank Shamrock
came in one day and Frank Shamrock had me in
(13:56):
side control. The pressure that this guy put on my
chest made me tab felt like there was a car
on my chest. And with zero effort from him. It
was absolutely effortless. And when you when you train with
somebody that's at such a level when you're not, it
(14:17):
just it is the most humbling, mind blowing experience you
can have, especially as a man, but as a human being.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Do you remember, just for fun, do you remember, like
what your go to submission was?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, so you know when we first started out and
started doing it, I had a pretty good guillotine in
the beginning, so I'd catch a lot of people in
guillotines and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
The okay, being like on bottom, So like.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, the bottom. Yeah, I was okay with being on bottom.
I was comfortable there. But you know what, I never
liked I never liked g like we started fucking around
with a g in the beginning, we would you know,
That's how we started. And then once I took the
gee off, I felt like I had no submissions because
I couldn't grab onto anything. So I after that I
went all no g and I I never wanted to
(15:00):
wear a GI.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And it's fascinating because no gia has become big now
and there's a lot of interesting people. I got trained
on Gordon Ryan and like the level there is just fascinating.
It's become like the science, and it looks like fighting now.
It looks more like fighting as opposed to with the gee.
Sometimes it doesn't quite look like fighting, right, And I
feel like it's transferable to actual like MMA fighting, no
(15:23):
g stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Or street street yeah right. I mean, if if you
start off in your first year you're in a gee, man,
you better hope guys got like winter jackets on or
something if something happens in the street, because in my opinion,
and all the jiu jitsu fucking people are gonna go
crazy over this, but in my opinion, no gi is
way better than gig.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's what I also do judo, So in the street scenario,
if you're comfortable on the feet and you can clinch
and you can throw, you could because most of us
wear clothing, especially in Boston and the winter exactly, So
if you're comfortable on the feet, you can still do
well there. The problem with you is most people are
not comfortable on the sports jiu jitsu. Most people kind
(16:06):
of want to get to the ground as quickly as possible.
So what'd you think of Hoys at that time, like
in the early like what because it blew a lot
of people's minds that there's like more to this puzzle.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
One hundred percent. And the fact that you had like
these guys like Ken Shamrock that were jacked right, and
you had all these wrestlers or you know, the big,
massive guys that they had in the different weight classes,
and this skinny little dude like Hoys was out there
beating everybody. I mean, if you look at the way
the Gracies played that, you couldn't have had a better
(16:40):
advertisement for Gracie jiu jitsu at the time, but also like.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
For MMA, because there's just like a lot of surprising elements.
A lot of people's prediction was wrong, right. They didn't
think the skinny guy would win, and they're like, oh shit,
there's more to this.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
What's the real beautiful thing about jiu jitsu. It's like
when you talk about if you wanted to get your
daughter into a martial art, should I put my daughter
into karate? Should I put her into this? You put
your daughter into jiu jitsu one hundred percent because it's
not about size or strength. It's about technique. And you
give your daughter a bunch of jiu jitsu and a
(17:17):
little bit of movie tie, you.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Know, yeah, she becomes dangerous.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It's like the perfect combo. Yeah, because you can put
your son into anything. Your son can get into some
you know, boys are gonna learn how to fight and
they're gonna do whatever. But girls are girls are different.
And the other thing, I mean, this is the biggest
selling point for jiu jitsu for women. I mean when
a woman, no matter how big, house small, can put
a guy to sleep in three and a half seconds.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
What's the origin story of the UFC as it is today,
as you have created it, and you and Lorenzo and
for Tito brothers built it.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It started with with John Lewis, you know, and seeing him.
Frank and I were out one night at the hard
Rock and John Lewis was there and he's like, oh,
that's that ultimate fighting guy. And I was like, I
know him. And Frank's like, I've always wanted to learned
ground fighting, and I said, yeah, I'm interested in it too.
(18:08):
So we went over, we talked to John Lewis and
we made an appointment to wrestle with him on Monday. Yeah,
and we told Lorenzo, and Lorenzo came with us, and
that was the beginning of the end. I mean, we
started doing jiu jitsu and and started to meet a
lot of the fighters and we were like, you know,
at the time, there was a stigma attached to the
(18:29):
sport that these guys were, you know, despicable, disgusting human beings.
But which was the first thing from the truth. These
these kids had all gone to college, had college degrees,
most of them because they wrestled in college. And we
started to meet something we love the different stories. You
had Chuck Lidell, who you know, had this mohawk, looks
like an axe murderer and uh but graduated from cal Poly,
(18:52):
you know, with honors and accounting. You know. Then you
had Matt Hughes, who was this farm boy, you know,
literally lived on a farm. And so there were all
these cool stories with all these good people that weren't
what people thought they were. And Lorenzo and I always
felt like there's something here. If this thing was done
the right way, this could be big. And what was
(19:15):
crazy was I was in a contract negotiation with Bob Myerwitz,
the old owner of the UFC, over Tito's contract and
Chuck Lidell. They didn't even want Chuck Ladell in the UFC.
I was trying to get Chuck in the UFC and
they didn't even want them. Wow. And we got into
this contract just beat over Tito's contract and Bob Myers said,
(19:37):
you know what, there is no more money. Okay, I
don't even know if I'll even be able to put
on one more event, and he like flipped out. When
we hung up the phone, I literally picked up the
phone and called the Lorenzo and I said, Hey, I
just got off the phone with Bob Myers own or
the UFC. I think they're in trouble, and I think
we could buy it, and I think we should. You
should reach out to them. So Lorenzo, Lorenzo called my
(20:00):
and I don't know how. I don't remember the timeline,
but within the next two months we ended up owning
the UFC for two million bucks.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And you've said that you fought a lot of battles
during that time.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I mean the early days of building this company and
building the sport. It was the wild, wild West, man,
it was crazy back then. Yeah. I was literally at
war every day with all different types of people. Plus
traditionally there's bad people that are involved in in fighting. Man,
there's lots of bad people, and we had to sift
(20:33):
our way through that for the first seven eight years.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So in general, there's like corruption that people kind of
steal money. They're thinking just about themselves, not the biggest business.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We tell you about this. I mean, I want to
say it was the Netherlands. I don't remember exactly where.
It could have been Amsterdam. I mean, MMA promoters were
like car bombing each other and then the other guys
shot up the other guy's house with machine guns, and
that's the kind of shit that was going on. I'll
tell you the story. So Affliction, Do you remember Affliction? Yeah?
(21:04):
So that was a guy I want to say. I
want to I want to say his name was Tom
Todd Beard or something like that. This guy used to
text me every day when they were when they started
their MMA thing, telling me he was going to kill me,
like legitimately, legitimately going to kill me. You punk motherfucker,
I'm gonna fucking kill you. You don't understand who I
(21:27):
am and what I've done and this and that. I
think this guy would get drunk or do drugs every
night or whatever his deal was. This guy would call me,
text me and threaten my life every day. I used
to go, fuck you and this. Oh yeah, man, especially
back then. Yeah, but yeah, but I mean that this
is the type of ship that went on in the
early days that this guy, this guy who was one
(21:47):
of the owners of Affliction, was like one of the
you know, not not a good human, let's put it
that way.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What about the business side of it. It's tough to
make money in this business.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, we weren't making money, so you know, trying to
build this thing corrupt uh corrupt the guys that work
for in demand pay per view at the time. Uh,
we're not good dudes, you know. And that thing was
a fucking total monopoly. God, I wish I could remember
(22:18):
his name right now. He used to run in Demand
and he was a fucking bad guy. Then he then
he comes over and starts running DirecTV who we always
had a great relationship with, and he's the reason we
left direct TV and said fuck it, we'll just go streaming. Then. Yeah,
I don't remember his name. I'd have to ask Lorenzo.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So in general, just in this whole space, there's a
lot of.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, it's just everybody to deal with is dealing with
a lot of a lot of a lot of different
forces and and and your your hands are in a
lot of different businesses. Uh, you know, from the venue
business to the merchandise business, to the video game business, uh,
the pay per view business. You know, the list goes
(23:01):
on and on of all the different types of the
production business, of all these different you know, when I
first started this, I h we had a production team
that was the production team that was in it before
we bought it. So there was this There was this
incident with Phil Baroni where Phil Baroni, we did an
(23:21):
interview with him and Berni flips out in the interview
when they're interviewing him and goes crazy, and I thought
it was awesome. So I'm like, we're gonna leave this in.
We're gonna leave this interview in the and the production
guys were arguing with me, so like, we can't leave
this in. This is totally unprofessional, and I said, don't
give a shit. This is this is what we're doing.
(23:42):
We're gonna we're gonna do this and clip it like
this and do it like that. We're sitting in the
venue that night, and I lean over to Lorenzo because
the fight's coming up. I go, wait to see this
fucking interview with Baroni. They didn't fucking do it. They
didn't do it. These guys were guys that were freelan
ask guys that worked for Showtime at the time, or
one of something like that. I literally went got up
(24:05):
from my fucking seat, went back there, kicked the fucking
door of the truck open, and I said, you motherfuckers,
you ever do that again, and I'll fire every fucking
one of you. Let's just put it this way. I
ended up firing every one of them anyway, and going
with a whole new crew. But these were the type
of things that early on. You know, there's so much stuff.
I mean, I could sit here for fucking three days
and walk you through all the stuff that used to
(24:25):
go on back in those days. But it was the wild,
wild West.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Man, But how'd you figure out? How'd you know how
to deal with all this mess? First of all, to
fire people, to fire people that aren't doing a good
job all that, Like how to be a leader, how
to be.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, that's the thing too, I mean business leader, get
getting it. In the early days, there was two employees,
me and another girl that that worked for me for
my company before I started doing this. And then we
slowly started to bring people on and you start to
build a team. Then before you know it, we had
ten people. I mean we used to do our Christmas
parties back then too. There'd be eight to ten people
(24:59):
at our Christmas party. You know. But a lot of
it is, uh, you'll learn as you go, you know.
You know what me and the Fertidas knew about production
when we bought this UFC, we had, like I want
to say, we had two or three weeks to pull
off an event. This is what we knew about production,
really jack shit. So we had to dive in and
we had to learn it. We had to figure it out,
and we we knew what we wanted. We knew what
(25:21):
we liked. We knew what we were looking for. It's
just about building building a good team. And I think
that's one of the things. If you want to talk
about what I've accomplished in the last you know, twenty
five years of my life, I've been really good at
building teams already.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have a vision of what you want the final thing
to look like, and then build a team that can
bring that to a lot one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Well, you have to have the vision. Without the vision,
there's nothing. So that's sort of what I do. I
am the vision part of this thing. We're going to
open a PI in Mexico. We're going to do this.
We're going to do that, you know. And then and
(26:05):
then you build the team to come in and help execute.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
A lot of people that do fighting promotions fail. You
succeeded against the long odds. What's the secret to your success?
If you would just look him back over the.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Years, Well, the secret to success, I would say, first
of all is passion and consistency. You have to love
what you do. You have to get up every day
and I get here every day at nine thirty in
the morning. When we sold in twenty sixteen, a lot
of people in the company made a lot of money,
(26:41):
and I all took off and they retired right. Other
than the fertitas, I made the most money. I'm still here.
I get here at nine thirty every morning. Last night
I left here at eight thirty, you know, And I
don't know how late I'm going to be here tonight.
But I love what I do. We get up every
day and grind and I work just as hard now
(27:01):
as I did back then. The difference between back then
and now is I don't have to do a bunch
of the shit that I don't really like to do,
like budget meetings. I don't like budget meetings. I sat
through enough fucking budget meetings. Horrible budget meetings.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Horrible.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
You know, we're losing, you know, millions of dollars a year,
and I'm in these in these budget meetings, you know,
So I get to pick and choose what I do
these days. Back in the early days, you don't get
to pick and choose. You have to be involved in everything.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So costs, you're just looking at costs.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
You literally go through line by line every fucking number
in the company, and where did the money go? And
how can we save costs? How can we do this better?
How can we You know? They are they they are brutal,
and they're multiple times a week and.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Probably helps to deeply appreciate how much the shit costs.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Though, Well, you have to know that in the early
days when you start your busines, you have these people who,
when I hear them say, you know what, I uh,
I want to work for myself. I want to create
my own schedule and I want to do all the Yeah,
it's just it's if that's your thought process going into it,
you're never going to be successful. You have to pay
(28:18):
attention to every single detail of the business. Early on.
You're involved in everything. There's no days off, there's no birthdays,
there's no fucking Christmas, there's none of that shit. I
literally moved the birth of my second son for a
chuclate El fight. We had a Chuck LATEL fight coming
up and I and They're like, yeah, your son's going
to be born in this date. And I'm like, Yeah,
that's not going to work. We're gonna have to take
them earlier. Yea. So they literally gave my wife a
(28:41):
c section and took my son early.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You're all in, all in, yeah, and the fascinating thing,
Like you said, You've said that you could care less
about money. You're doing this for for the love of it.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah. I was doing this when I was broke, and
I'm doing this now and I'm not broke. I'm doing
this because I love it and I feel like there's
so much more to do, and this is truly my
passion in life. It's like the sphere. We're doing the sphere.
Why why would I do this sphere? It's gonna cost
me a bunch of money, it's really challenging. Most people
(29:18):
think it can't be pulled off, and you're looking at
weird angles, different things going on inside other than the
fight and all this other stuff. But yeah, I'm doing
it because it's awesome and it's challenging and it's hard,
and I think that if anybody can do it right,
it's us, So why not take that challenge.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's actually why I'm here. I'm going to this sphere
for the first time because I'm hanging out with Darren Aronowski,
who put together the thing that's in there now. And
I can't believe you're thinking of I don't know how
you're going to solve that puzzle.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
There's many puzzles to solve for this one. Look, many puzzles, So.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
How can you speak to that, Like, what are interesting
challenges that you're encountering.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, so there's a lot. So you have the octagon, right,
and then behind it is the world's biggest screen ever. Right,
So what is the theme? How do you program it?
First of all, it's super expensive to shoot and you
know the format for the sphere angles we were talking
(30:19):
about today. I just had a big meeting today about
the sphere this afternoon and making sure that all my departments,
all the details that I want all start to come
together here in the next two weeks. I want the creative,
the commercial. I have some goals. I will tell people
(30:41):
as we get closer what I'm looking to achieve with
this other than putting on one of the greatest, most
unique sporting events of all time and probably the greatest
combat sporting event of all time. But yeah, there's I mean,
there's challenges. There's a laundry list of challenges for this thing.
And not to mention the fact that it's on independent
(31:01):
actually an independence Day, and we're gonna weave in the
whole history of combat in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, and this is. But the production. I mean, this
is hilarious because we were just talking about knowing nothing
about production something.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Now is the hardest production effort ever.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And that will be live.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
It'll be live, It'll be live on pay per view,
It'll be live in the arena, and it will also
be in movie theaters.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Nice, so there'll be a it will be shown. We'll
be shown at the Sphere later too, Like will you
try to.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Ms doing a dock on it?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Nice?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The making of the sphere? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
What are you feeling good about it?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh? Yeah, I feel incredible about it. I can't wait.
It's gonna be It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I can't wait to see how you solve the puzzle.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Another guy that I feel like could care less about
the money is Joe Rogan. How important is he to
the UFC, to the rise of the UFC, and would
in general? Do you love a bud Joe?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
It's a fact he doesn't care about money. And he
did the first thirteen shows for free for us. Yeah
you know what I mean. That was at a time
when we were hurting, and he's like, wait a minute,
you want me to do the commentary? You're saying that
I get to sit in the best seat in the
house and watch these fights for free. Yeah yeah, I'm
in yeah. So and then obviously when we turn things around,
(32:24):
we made it up to Joe. But Joe is one
of the things that I loved early on about So
I'll tell you the story. So we buy the UFC.
They're based in New York. We're moving the corporate offices
to Vegas. So I have to fly out to New York,
go into the offices and start going through everything and
(32:47):
figuring out what needs to come back to Vegas and
what we can just throw away. So they literally had
a VHS machine and a TV and there were a
million tapes in this place. Man, So I didn't know
what tapes were. These definitely have to keep, or these
we don't need. So I had to sit there and
go through every single tape. And I popped in a
tape and there was an interview on the Ivory keenan
(33:09):
Wayan show, right the oldest Wayne's brother and get a
talk show at the time, and he had Joe Rogan,
the guy from Fear Factor, on the show, and he
was promoting Fear Factor, but all he would talk about
was UFC and he was talking about how people think
that these guys in the martial arts movies are tough,
(33:31):
and he was talking about what UFC fighters would do
to these martial arts guys if they ever got their
hands on them. And I was like, this is exactly
what I need. A guy who isn't afraid to speak
his mind and knows the sport inside and out, but
more importantly, is super passionate about it and loves it.
(33:53):
So when you see Joe Rogan on camera and I
was talking about the paid doc talking heads that they
had in HBO Boxing that were terrible, Joe Rogan does
not come off as a paid talking head. He comes
off as a guy who loves this. And so early on,
no media would cover us. So I had to buy
(34:13):
my way onto radio. So we do these radio tours right,
and they would drop us in. You'd have to get
up at three thirty in the morning in Vegas on
the West Coast, and they because there at six thirty
in the morning in New York and Boston and Florida
and all these other places. So they drop you into
these markets to do radio right, and the fighters were
(34:36):
horrible at it. Fighters getting up at three thirty in
the morning, especially leading up to a fight. Never good.
They sound like they're tired, they act like they're tired,
and they definitely act like they don't want to be
on there, and it's bad radio. What you can have
is bad radio. So the only two people that could
pull off these radio tours were me and Joe Rogan.
(34:58):
So me and Jo would alternate doing these radio tours
all over the country, just.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Talking about fighting, talking about what this whole thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Two guys that are really into it and passionate about
it and love it and and and it's one of
the things about Rogan too, when when early on nobody
understood the ground game, Joe Rogan would walk you through
what was happening, literally before it would happen. He would
tell you the setup, what was going to come next,
and everything. You just absolutely articulate it perfectly, brilliantly, and
(35:32):
people at home started to understand. And the impact that
Joe Rogan has had and continues to have on this
sport is immeasurable. He's the biggest podcaster in the world,
and he is on the UFC pay per views, you know,
fourteen times a year, and he's always talking about the sport.
(35:54):
It's immeasurable what this guy has has has done for
this company in the sport.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah till to this day, Like I'll have dinner with
him offline. It just stuck fighting. Yeah, just loves it,
loves every aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Joe Rogan is one of those guys. I saw that
early on, when why would you go after the fear
factor guy? You know, to be such a key component
to not only the company, but to the sport. I
saw it in the fucking interview and Ivory kenawaians.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
I value loyalty a lot. And I remember there was
a moment not too long ago, maybe a year ago,
when I was sitting with Joe and he had a
phone call with you. Joe was getting canceled for something
and they didn't want him commentating the fights, and you
on the phone offered your resignation over this. I got
(36:51):
teary eyed over that. That's such a you're a good man,
you know.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
That was powerful for anybody who is with me, has
been with me, knows when you're with me, you're with me.
It's a two way street. It's not a it's not
a one way street. I'm not one of these guys
that is going to roll over, and it's like going
through COVID. I wasn't laying any of these people. Some
(37:19):
of these people have been with me for twenty years.
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna lay them off. Mm hmm.
This motherfucker will burn burnah before I would do that
to my people. It's just it's just never that. None
of that type of stuff is ever going to happen
while I'm here. I can't say what's gonna happen when
(37:40):
I leave. But when I'm here, the people who are
with me and have been with me, they know exactly
what's up. And Joe knows what's up, and and and
and it's and again it's a two way street. Joe
Rogan has been very loyal to me, and I am
very loyal to Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Lorenzo another guy you've close friendship with. You seem to
have been extremely effective together as business partners. What's the
magic behind that?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
How can you explain that?
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I love them? Lorenzo and I work really well together
because we have two different personalities. Right, I'm the guy
that always I'm going here. Lorenzo was always here. Right,
you could walk in a room and say, Lorenzo, you
just lost ten million dollars. Lorenzo, you just won ten
million dollars. It never changes. And I'm a guy that
(38:29):
goes like this, right, So we almost balance each other out.
There's a lot of things that he's really fucking good
at and there's a lot of things that I'm really
fucking good at, and they're both on the opposite sides
of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So that level headed thing was useful when the USC
was losing money and it was unknown whether it's gonna survive.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, those low points one percent. What's incredible when you
think of the story of the UFC. At the time,
the casino business was crank right, and station casinos was
killing it, and stations their money from stations is what
was funding the UFC. Then in the eight to nine crash,
(39:13):
the UFC was killing it in eight and oh nine,
and you know, the casino businesses were hurting. So timing
on everything the way that it all worked out couldn't
have worked out better for them and obviously for all
of us. When you think about the UFC and how
big it is and how far it reaches and how
(39:35):
many people it touches, the Fertida's brothers made a two
million dollar investment, then put in like another forty four million,
and look at how many lives that investment has changed
over the last twenty five years. It's fascinating and it's
also crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Just forget the business of it, just the effect it
has on the history of humanity in terms of this
what we do or descendants of apes that fight, and
this is like the organizations that catalyze the innovation in
how we fight. It's crazy. It created a whole new.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Sport that people all over the world participate in. Now
literally there isn't a place on earth that we can't
get a fighter from now.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You said in the UC two ninety nine post fight
press conference that sometimes fighters might complain that, you know,
they get matched up on even odds, but that's actually
when legends are made. I think you gave Dustin Poyet
as an example. Can you elaborate on a little bit
like what makes a legend? What makes greatness in a fight?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
So behind the scenes, fighters are a very paranoid bunch
of people. They're very paranoid, and there's been this this
theme with fighters where they're trying to get me beat right.
We don't determine who wins and loses. If we did,
(41:05):
we'd be the WWE. Okay you do. I'm the bells
and whistles guy. I make sure that as many people
that we can possibly let know that you're fighting on Saturday,
know that you're fighting on Saturday, who you are, who
you're going against, and why people should give a shit.
That's what I do. Right then, the night you show up,
(41:28):
I put on the best live event that I possibly can,
and I put on the best television show that I
possibly can. Once that door shuts, it's all up to you.
You determine whether you lose or not. And if you
get into a position where you become so paranoid that
you think that the powers that be here are against
(41:51):
you and you try to steer yourself away from certain fires,
and that's one of the big things that happens in
these other organizations, and these other organizations, the inmates run
the asylum, right, So if they don't want to fight
(42:14):
bad enough, these other companies don't push and they don't
do this, and they don't We put on the best
possible matchups that we can make. And in this business,
you might be an older fighter. But if you're still
ranked in the top ten, there's young guys coming for you. Killers,
(42:35):
young killers are coming out and they want your position, right,
So you, being the veteran that you are, have to
prepare yourself to go in. And you know, everybody was saying,
we made that fight with Saint Deny, that Poorier was
in big trouble. Da da da da da. That's awesome.
(42:55):
That helps build the entire thing that Pooria and then
Pooria goes out and does what he did that night.
That's what makes fucking legends.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's interesting because, like sometimes being the underdog is a
really good thing for the long term story of who
you are as a fighter.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Especially when you're a big name and a name that
people recognize and a name that people know and you know,
and they're like, oh, man, I remember Israel a out
of Sonya and Sean Strickland. One hundred out of one
hundred people knew for a fact that Israel is going
to win that fight. Yeah yeah, and here comes Strickland
And we could go on for days with this, you
(43:34):
know what I mean. That is what creates legendary moments,
legendary fights, and it's what builds stars. And legends.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I mean, arguably Connor mccag with jose Aldough.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yep, Connor McGregor with a bunch of people. In the beginning,
people said he couldn't wrestle, People said he wouldn't be
able to defend a takedown. Blah blah blah blah. Nate
Dias against Connor McGregor, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
And Gregor against Canbibe underdog probably, but if you won,
there's an opportunity to win. If you won, that's that's
the legend for me. He's now in the conversation for
the greatest of all time without argument.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
And if you look at the way that Habib ran
through so many people, Connor hang in there, you know, yeah,
and it could have been made a fight of it.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
It could have been What do you think about that matchup?
It's one of the one of the greats, one of
the great matchups that you've made. Conor mccago versus Kuldib.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah. I mean, at the time, I was incredibly criticized
for putting together the spot that had the scene with
the buss in it. Yeah, you know, yeah, the fucking
media is but they were saying that I was pandering
to the you know, to the violence that happened and
trying to I'm telling you a story, telling you a
(44:49):
story of how we got here and how big this
fight is and how bad the blood is between these guys.
And I mean, I think that's what we do the
best job at is telling the fucking stories of why
(45:09):
we go into Monday. It's fight week. We got a
whole list of things that we do fight week, right,
and then you get right down to the press conference
on Thursday, the weigh ins on Friday, and then the
fights on Saturday. Now, my people fly back home, they
go to bed on Sunday night, and it's Groundhog Day.
We wake up again on Monday, and it starts all
(45:31):
over again every weekend, every Saturday for a year. So
there's lots of stories that need to be told. There's
lots of when you think about what I compete with,
whatever takes your attention on a Saturday night, is my competitor?
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Do you always trying to build a foundation for great stories,
and like if the fighters step up, they step up
and they can together create greatness.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
That's exactly right. So when we are on line, like
when you get to the UFC, I mean you just
saw it with MVP. You're going to see it with
Kayla Harrison and so many others that have come from
other organizations and they get here, they notice immediately the
difference between fighting here and fighting wherever they were before.
(46:17):
It's not even comparable to the impact that has on
you when you leave whatever organization you're with and you
come to the UFC. And I think that it gives
them a sense of holy shit, I can really. I
mean MVP when he came, I mean there were probably
more people at the press conference than any fight he'd
(46:37):
ever fought in in Bellatore, you know what I mean.
And you feel that energy, and you feel the difference
of the impact of being here, and I think it
takes a lot of these guys to another level.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, just the aura of it, like this is where
you're supposed to step up. Yeah, it's the way people
feel about Ted talks gart. This is your moment. You
get fifteen minutes and this you better say some interesting ship.
And Kayla Harrison, by the way, is a badass. I
can't wait to see what happens there.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
He was walking around like this sleeveless shirt the night
of the fights, and holy shit, she is jacked, man,
it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Two time Olympic gold medalists. Right, you don't fuck with
those people. You want to metal, You're you're you're made.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Of something special, especially in Judea.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, especially in American judo, where it's not you don't
have many training partners that are great, so you fucking
work for it. Ridiculous question. But who is in the
conversation for the greatest of all time?
Speaker 1 (47:32):
John Jones?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
So you talked about John Jones, but what are the
metrics involved here?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
He's never been beat He destroyed everybody at light heavyweight,
which at the time was the toughest weight class in
the company, in the sport. And then I moved up
to heavyweight, one easily at heavyweight, and and and when
you look at a guy and you look at what
(48:00):
he was doing outside the octagon at the same time,
which shouldn't be part of it, shouldn't be part of
the equation. But when you do, wow, John Jones, there's
no debate. Nobody can debate who's the greatest of all time.
It's absolutely positively John Jones. He's never lost, nobody's never
been beaten the octagon ever.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So that's one of the metrics like pure shared dominance,
but there's others right there. You could losing sometimes is
a catalyst for greatness.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I don't disagree. But when you've never lost, right, it's
you've never lost, We've never found somebody. And all the
other thing is that you have to put a factor
into is longevity, how long he's because sometimes with a
lot of these guys, the sport passes them by. You
get younger guys that are faster this that, and the
(48:56):
sport evolves. Nobody's been able to beat John Jones. Oh.
And the other thing that you measure is, you know,
when you said dominance, it's true if you're this guy
that has unbelievable power and you're just going in and
you're just fucking knocking everybody out, and nobody's ever pulled
you into the deep water before that was when my
opinion of John Jones started to change. Gustafson took him
(49:19):
into the deep water. Gustafson hit him with some shit
he'd never been hit with. Gustafson tested him and put
John Jones in a place where I bet if you
sat down and interviewed John Jones going into the deep
rounds of that John Jones thought he was gonna die,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
And he's willing to go there, and he kept going.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
He was willing to do whatever it took to win
that fight.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
And it breaks my heart because he beat d C.
And d C is one of the greatest of all time.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
That's the thing too, And I believe that DC doesn't
get the credit he deserves because of the John Jones thing.
When you look at DC and what he's accomplished, right,
and John Jones beat him twice, it's undeniable. You can
hate all you want. John Jones was the greatest of
all time.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Do you think Habib was tested enough?
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I think that Habib had the potential to be in
the running for that. He didn't. He just didn't stick
around a lot. First of all, he had injuries that
that that you know, he should have been where he
got a lot sooner had he not had the injuries
that he had and the setbacks in his career. But
there's no doubt Habib is one of the all time greats.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
What's the good, the bad, and ugly of your relationship
with Connor?
Speaker 1 (50:33):
There's literally no ugly. Connor McGregor has been an incredible
partner to work with. Everybody thinks that Connor. If Connor
showed up the things on time, there wouldn't be one
fucking bad thing I could say about Connor.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
You know, if you.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Fucking said put a gun to my fucking head right
and said, don't lie, motherfucker, tell me all the bad
things about Connor McGregor, I'd say the guy didn't show
up on time. That's it. If Connor McGregor showed up
to shit on time, and some times he does, sometimes
he does, he'd be He's been a great partner. If
you look at what a huge superstar he became, the
(51:08):
fights that he was involved in. Let me tell you
what Connor McGregor never did. We never walked in a
room and said, Connor, this guy just fell out. We
want you to fight this guy. And he was like,
no way, I'm not taking this fucking risk. I'm at
this point in my career where my money, my this
my that. He was like, fok it, let's do it.
You know, you'd always say let's do it. The other
(51:28):
thing that Connor McGregor never did, no matter how big
he was or whatever it was, and we were heading
into a fight, Oh, Connor. This guy just fell out.
Although fell out, we were looking for another. Yeah, I'll
do it, but I'm gonna need another fucking two hundred thousand.
I'm gonna need another million dollars. I'm gonna Connor McGregor
never did that kind of chicken shit, you know, bullshit
(51:48):
kind of stuff. He never did any of that. Connor
was as solid a guy as you could possibly work with.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Just fuck it, I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I'll do it, literally would. There's actually a scene because
we were filming something. I don't know if it was
embedded or what we were filming at the time. Me
and Lorenzo walk into his house that he rented here
in Vegas, and I'm pretty sure it was when Aldolf
fell out, and we're telling him this that, and we're
looking at some options. He says, I'm going to the
gym when I'm done working out. Let me know. He
(52:16):
just woke up out of bed, He's in his fucking
underwear and he gets hit with this and he's like,
all right, I'm going to the gym. Let me know
when I get out. Who I'm fighting, doesn't care, doesn't
want to know, doesn't want any more money, nothing, fucking
shows up and he delivers. Yeah. So you know, Connor
has been incredibly successful. He's made a lot of money,
(52:39):
and you know, he's had his ups and downs outside
and inside the octagon. But as for a guy who
was you know, on the dole and was a plumber,
he's actually a really smart businessman and he's been one
of the best partners that I've ever had in the
history of the.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Sport and an important part of the history of the
UFC big he opened it up to all kinds of
new Yep.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
He literally you know, set Europe, Australia, Canada and many
other parts of the world on fire Man. He was
our first legit megastar.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
And I personally think he doesn't get enough credit for
just how good he was as a fighter. And people
love to talk shit about Connor, so I suppose that's
part of his magic.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
And but but it comes with success. Yeah, when you're successful,
there's always people out there that are going to talk shit.
You know, you always have a bunch of know nothing,
do nothing, fucking losers that love to talk shit.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
You think if you were to do it all over again,
Habib is the right matchup.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, listen, you the thing that you can't do is
avoid matchups. You know what I mean. This is what
we're talking about when you talk about being a legend.
Connor McGregor needed Habib. Habib needed Connor McGregor. It's you
can hate each other as much as you want, but
you have to fight these other legendary bad motherfuckers to
(54:05):
yourself become a legend. I mean, it's like John Jones
needed Cyril Gun right, and Cyril gun needed John Jones.
Because if Cyril could have beat John, the first guy,
if anybody can ever figure it out and beat John Jones,
it's a big deal. And it's almost like your obligation
as a fighter. Right. And when you think about John
(54:28):
Jones became who he is today and the reason I'm
sitting here telling you how great he is because all
these other guys gave him the opportunity to beat them, right,
or they beat John. It's all about giving these other
guys the opportunity. Saint Dennis, right, Poorier gave him the
opportunity to come in and beat him. That's how this
(54:50):
all works.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
It's the two of them together, the two fighters together.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
You have to have them both. Listen. I could line up,
I could line up a bunch of no name bums
that John Jones could run through. That's what they do
in all the other organizations. Yeah, right, we would have
nothing to fucking talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's why, luckily, a perfect record in the UFC is
not as important as who you fought, you go through.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
But when you have a perfect record in the UFC,
holy shit, right, yeah, that's what she would. When you
can have a perfect record in the UFC, you are
absolutely one of the most special athletes on planet Earth.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
You and Trump are friends. I just talked to Ivonca
last night and I bought her experience at the at
the in the Miami event. She loves it. She's training too.
You're talking about getting girls to train. She's trained and.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
The kids are training. Yeah. Her father's the biggest fucking
fight fan on the planet. Calls me all the time
to talk about the fights. And Don Junior said that
I'm like the only guy on Earth that he bros
out with, like you know, we it's it's funny when
you talk about how powerful fighting is. Right this last
Miami event, the president of Ecuador and the president of
(56:07):
Spain both posted about the fights. Right. Habib beat Connor
Putin was on FaceTime before he even made it to
the to the locker room. Trump sitting president ex president,
watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.
Valentina Chevshanko. Every time she goes home, she meets with
(56:29):
the president of the country. The list goes on and
on and on. The most powerful Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. I mean,
the list goes on and on and on. The most
powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.
Speaker 2 (56:42):
When did you first discover that Trump loves fighting?
Speaker 1 (56:44):
So I first discovered that Trump was a big fight van.
Obviously you saw him part of all the big you're
talking about how big boxing fans we were. He was
a part of all the big fights back then. But
when we first bought the UFC, this thing was so bad.
Venues didn't even want us, and we ended up doing
you know, our first event in Atlantic City at the
(57:05):
Trump taj Mahal. Now think about this. At that time,
Trump brand here, UFC brand, I mean, I can't go
low enough. And he had us at his venue two
times back to back, showed up for the first fight
of the night and stayed till the last fight of
the night. Then after that, any good thing that would
(57:26):
ever happen to me in my career, Trump would reach out,
whether it was we were on the front page of
the New York Times at one time, and he said,
congratulations day. Now we knew you guys were going to
do it. Little things like that, but that that are
big things, I mean a lot, especially coming from a
guy like him.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
So he saw he saw something in you, like this
is going to be one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
He definitely saw it. And then comes fifteen sixteen whenever
it was, I don't remember, but he called me and
he said, listen, if you don't want to do this,
I completely understand, but I would be honored if you
would speak at the National Republican Convention for me. And
(58:08):
I'm not a very political guy, you know what I mean.
And everybody told me not to do it, do not
do this, but I was like, why would I not
do this? This guy's been great to me, you know,
and I did it, and our relationship is just like
you know what I mean. I consider Donald Trump to
(58:29):
be one of my very very good friends.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Any favorite stories.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
I mean, there's so many stories. I mean, once he
won the election, like I'd be at work and I'd
be down the hall was in the matchmaker room whatever,
and my secretary Dell, the President's on the phone, fucking
come running down the hallway and grab the phone and
he'd want to talk about the fight that was coming up,
with the fight that happened, or I'd be in my
(58:55):
car and i'd answer the phone. It's like, uh, hi,
this is the house. We have the President of the
United States on the phone. You know that's a trip
when that first starts happening. And then just to sum
him up, this is the kind of guy that you
(59:17):
want to talk about. A fighter. This is the most
resilient human being I've ever met. If you see the
shit that this guy's going through publicly every day, and
I'll call him on the phone as a friend and
be like, hey, you're good, how you doing? Unfaced, unfaced,
(59:39):
like nothing's going on, and they'll start talking to me
about this and that and all this other shit. One time,
there's only been one time. I've never talked about this publicly,
but one time I called him and he was not good.
He was a mess. And I've never heard him like that,
and I've never seen him like that. When Ivana died,
(01:00:02):
the only time I've ever seen him fucked up. Obviously,
as soon as I heard it, I reached out, and
I have never think look at all the stuff that's
gone on with Trump, all the bad stuff that they say,
they're trying to attack him, they're trying to ruin him. Unfazed.
I called him that day and he was It's the
first time I've ever seen that guy bust it up
(01:00:22):
and and and not good.
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
But that says something that that's the only time that
guy is let me walk in through he.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Will walk through fire. He's an absolute savage.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
You think he wins the presidential election.
Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I don't know, man, It's going to depend on how
this whole politics is the most dirtiest, scummiest thing on
planet Earth, man, and and who knows how this is
all going to play out. It's it's all dirty, it's
all ugly. And you know, obviously I'm rooting for him,
and and I'm behind him, and I hope he does
what we'll say was.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Dirty or the fighting game in the early days, or politics.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
There's nothing dirtyer than politics. Nothing. There's literally nothing dirtier.
All Right, it is the dirtiest thing on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Planets going to get that on record. Another guy who
doesn't seem to be fazed by the fire I've gotten
to know him is Elon. I have to ask you,
it's a bit of fun. You were a part of
thinking about putting together U versus Elon. I trained with both.
I did a phone call with Elon and you when
you when we were training on the mat. Yeah, you
(01:01:30):
really think that could have been a good fight.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
It would have been the biggest fight ever done.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
The spectacle of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Two of the most powerful, wealthiest man in the world. Right,
lots of guys talk shit and go back and forth
and sue each other and do all this stuff. These
two guys were literally talking about facing each other in
the octagon and fighting. There's nothing. And they're in a
business that's looked at as geeky, you know what I mean.
They're they're they're tech nerds, they're this, they're that. These
(01:01:58):
are two dudes that were willing to throw down and
fight and uh and and you know as well as
I do. There's a lot of public speculation about this.
I was taking serious real time and working on this thing.
I mean, I had projections, I had numbers, I was
looking at venues, I was on the phone with the
fucking coliseum in Italy, you name it. I was in it.
These guys were serious and this was something that was
(01:02:20):
really gonna happen. And I'll tell you right now, in
the short amount of time that it was, it was
going down. It was fun. I was having a blast
with it.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
What do you think about Tyson Tyson fighting Jake Paul?
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
I love Mike Tyson, and I'm not a fan of
anybody fighting at our age. But he's a grown man, obviously,
and you know he's gonna do what he's gonna do.
But at least I know. I talked to I talked
to his wife a couple of days ago, and he's
(01:02:54):
taking this serious and he's trained for it, and you know,
so we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
What do you think he fights still?
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Like?
Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
What is that about? Is there a broader lesson there
about fighters?
Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
I think that Mike Tyson is actually one of those
unique guys who has crossed over any of these other
boxers from his era, they have no way of making
money other than fighting. Mike Tyson's made a lot of
money outside of fighting. I mean, Tyson still has that
aura you could be at a restaurant and he walks
in and you're like, holy fuck, Mike Tyson's here. You know,
(01:03:29):
he still has that type of aura and energy in
a room, and he makes lots of money outside of
the ring. I just I think that he ends up
getting these offers that he can't refuse.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Oh, you think it's financial, So how much? I mean,
that's a good question to ask. You work with a
lot of fighters. For how many of them is it
about money? And for how many is it about the
fact the pure love of fighting.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Well, the guys that get into it for the right
reason are the guys who get into it for greatness,
because you want to be the fucking best, right, And
when you're in it for that reason, right, you love
it and you want to be looked at as the
best ever, and you have the talent, the money happens.
(01:04:19):
Right then you have other guys who get it. I
believe I've dealt with fighters who just wanted to be
famous and just wanted to make money, you know what
I mean. And it's you know, listen, it is what
it is. It's your life, and you live it the
way that you want and do your thing. But the
ones that are beloved are the guys who really want
to be fucking great, and they're the ones that are remembered.
(01:04:41):
And I mean when you look at Tyson in his
early years when he came up under costum motto, I mean,
he was a student of the game. He loved everything.
He became completely infatuated with the fight game. Then he
became such a massive superstar. It's almost like the whole
thing starts to turn on. You know, all the things
that come at you at a young age and that
(01:05:03):
kind of money, and it's it's tough. It's tough to
navigate and get through. And you know, you say something
like that, people are like, oh, poor him. He had
fucking one hundred million dollars and couldn't at that age
and with all the ship that people talk and all
the things that you got to put up with and
the fame. A lot of people deal with fame. Some
people handle it really well and some people don't. And
(01:05:24):
the perfect example of that was Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonner.
You know, they fought that that unbelievable fight on The
Ultimate Fighter. Everything blew up after that. Forrest dealt with
fame really well, and and Stefan did not.
Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
That was a special fight.
Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
It really was.
Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
What do you think attracted people to that fight? So
that that made that was a big leap for the
It was everything.
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
It was everything.
Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Why do you think people love that fight? What attracted
people to that fight? Why did they change everything?
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Well, what happened that night. The rest of the show
was a disaster. You know, we had the co main
event and the main event, Diego Sanchez ran through Kenny
Floyan in seconds. Oh my god, that was terrible. And
the fights that led up to that weren't anything to
talk about either. Then Stefan Forrest got in there and
(01:06:19):
just went toe to toe in this unbelievable slug fest
live on free television when cable still mattered. And what
I heard was at the time, you know, you had
people picking up the phone going are you watching this show?
The numbers just started climbing. Then you got a razor
thin decision. Who's gonna win? He got the crowd stomping
(01:06:42):
their feet. It sounded like a train was going through
the place, and everybody's chanting one more round. Me and
the Ftida brothers get together and we talk. We're gonna
give them both contracts. So we give them both contracts
in the place of Erupts. It just it couldn't have
been a more perfect fight at the most perfect time,
and it just it it all came together. It's almost
(01:07:04):
like this was meant to be, you know what I mean.
So we had so many problems with Spike TV at
the time, right because halfway through the season the president
of the company got fired. All the things that we
thought we were going to get that year. You know,
we had this runaway hit show, and normally at that time,
(01:07:25):
when you would see runaway hit shows, there'd be commercials,
it'd be on be on billboards, it'd be on the
side of buses in LA and New York. We got
none of that, right, We didn't even know if we
were gonna get, you know, a second season coming out
of that. Right, And when that fight was over, I
(01:07:46):
swear to god, I was like, I don't even give
a fuck. We're gonna end up somewhere now after this fight.
And we didn't even make it out of the building
that night. The Spike guys did the contract with us
in the alley on a fucking napkin. After the fight.
Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
He saw the you already saw the magic of the
fight itself.
Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
That happened and all the shit. And at that time
I didn't know what the rating is, not like we
were streaming and we could see what. We had no idea,
but I knew.
Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
He just knew this is I knew what is it.
It's like just two people being willing to stand toe
to toe and just go to the war.
Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
And when you think about what was at stake, there
was a car. Remember the kiya Ya. The winner got
a Kiya right, That's what was the fucking right and
deafenite Forrest the will to win. They both wanted to
win that fight so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
It was bigger than the Kia.
Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Probably, you know, Forrest drove that Kia to like two
hundred thousand miles. The biggest mistake Kia ever made was
not doing a fucking commercial with Forrest Griffin about that car.
Forst Griffin loved that car so much he drove it.
I think he still has it. It's got like two
hundred thousand miles on that ball. I mean, you couldn't
have a better fucking commercial than that. They and we
(01:09:00):
reached out to them too, I said, Kia should know
about this. Yeah, they fucking blew it. You got a
bunch of you know those guys. Yeah, yeah, are in
the business world. They don't get anything.
Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Maybe it was about the Kia, then it was about winning.
Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
They both wanted to win the ultimate fighter so bad. Yeah,
it's the Kia, it's it's the win, it's the it's
the the contractor get the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
But I think at that point you even forget all
of that when you're in there. You probably just there's
the primal thing where like, I'm not backing down.
Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
They're both bad dudes. They were both real fighters at
the end of the day. That's why the fight was
so great.
Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Yeah, you know what I mean, and just throw it all,
all the caution into the wind and just fight. Those
are some of the greatest moments in the FC two
when the technique is not kind of falls apart and
you're just like.
Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Well fuck, because you're in those deep rounds you've had,
you've been through a war. Now it's all about heart
and dog. Who can dig deeper and who's got it
and who wants it? Who wants it? I mean we
all know when that when that moment happens in a fight,
when you see that both of these guys are fucking exhausted,
And for people that are watching this, people that don't
(01:10:08):
know a lot about everybody thinks they know a lot
about fighting. Ninety nine point nine percent of the people
out there don't know fucking jack shit about fighting or
what it takes to do what these people do. But
when you get into those later rounds and fatigue sets in,
and then fatigue makes you start to fucking doubt yourself,
and then you start to wonder, can I even make
(01:10:29):
it through the rest of this round? And then you
start to think, am I gonna fucking die right now?
And these kids dig fucking deep and they just like
you said, all the other shit flies out the window
and now they're just on fucking autopilot to fight and win.
Those are definitely the best fight you'll ever see in
any combat sport.
Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
I mean that's saying it is true, like the exhaustion
makes cowards of us all. I mean, they're there's something
about because I've competed a lot in jiu jitsu, so
there's the violence of being hit too, But even just exhaustion,
it makes you question everything, so true, it just takes
you just some weird place where your brain starts to
(01:11:09):
think you're going to die for sure. Your brain starts
to think, like why am I doing this? All these excuses,
all this, and then the truly heroic action is to
say fuck it in that moment and just to get
in there.
Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
When you think about these fights that you see in
the UFC every fucking Saturday, when these men and women
get to this point where they've been in a dog fight,
yet they keep fucking going and you keep trying to win,
you can't imagine what's going on inside their heads, you know,
self doubt and all these other things that come into
(01:11:44):
play when exhaustion sets in and they fucking power through it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Yeah, those moments sometimes they're not They don't have a
glorious knockout at the end, but your decision in the
third round or the fifth round, they'll keep pushing forward,
not running just then that's that doesn't matter what happened
that like, that is a person winning a battle over themselves.
Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
So true, It's so true, and it happens every fucking weekend.
It's so impressive that I say it all the time.
The people that are involved in this sport are this
much of the population. The people that make it to
the top five are incredibly unique special human beings. Man,
it's it's fucking awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
You love gambling, I do. What's the biggest win of
your gambling career? Maybe psychologically, if not financially.
Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Well, two things. I want a million dollar hand one
night It's happened one time, A million dollar hand one
night at man Le Bay. And then one summer, I
bet I beat Caesars for twelve million, uh, throughout the summer.
Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Throughout the summer.
Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Yeah, and then I'm a pretty good run right now too.
Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
This, Yeah, what's the biggest loss?
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
The biggest loss was? Uh? I would here here was.
I would call this the biggest loss for many different reasons.
This this is what you know. You live and your
learn in life, and you you know, you figure things
out as you go along. So one night I'm over
at the at the rio, right, and uh, they got
(01:13:37):
big sweets over there. So I go over there with
some buddies and we got one of the sweets, and
we have some dinner and we start drinking. Right. So
we're having some drinks at dinner and blah blah blah
starts to ramp up, having a good time, and I
make my way down to the thigh limit room. We
start gambling and I continue to drink, having a blast.
(01:14:02):
I end up leaving and going home that night, and
I lost like eighty grand. Right, So I wake up
the next morning, I'm like, fuck, those motherfuckers got me
for eighty thousand last night, and da da da da da.
So I'm at work the next day and the host
over there calls me and he says, hey, Dana, are
(01:14:22):
you coming back? Do you still need the room that
you guys had where you ate and all the shit
used to And I said, no, I don't need the room,
but don't get don't get too comfortable with my fucking
eighty grand I'm coming back for it. Yeah, dead fucking
silence on the other end of the phone. And he's like, Dana,
you lost three million dollars last night. What the fuck
(01:14:45):
are you talking about. I only have a million and
a half dollar credit line. He goes, yeah, you made
us call the GM of the hotel and you started
calling him a fucking pussy and da da da da da,
and I and I went, yeah, no, that that that
sounds like something I would do.
Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Yeah, so that's the real number.
Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
That was the real number. And then and then you know,
There's been a lot of cases where people are in
Vegas and they're like, oh, you know, I lost all
this money, you know, and they were giving me free drinks,
and I drank too much, and I was taking advantage
of no, no, you stupid motherfucker. Man up, you got
(01:15:29):
fucking drunk, right, they didn't. Alcohol is free, but you
don't have to fucking drink it, you know what I mean?
And you know this, This was a huge learning lesson
for me. So I never drank again when I when
I was playing cards after that night. But yeah, when
you asked me, that's the one that stands. I had
(01:15:51):
the most as far as uh having a bad loss.
And then you know, of course I said call the
GM and I started calling them O plus he at
three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
So of course you did.
Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
That is something I would absolutely do.
Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
How do you deal with those psychologically?
Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
When you gamble? Maybe this supplies to fighting too. Do
you love winning or hate losing more?
Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
They go hand in hand. So the way that I
that I play is I live in Vegas. So twenty
twenty four is a war for me. I go to
war in twenty four. Okay, all these nights that I
play are little battles inside the war that I will
fight in twenty four Now, at the end of the year,
(01:16:36):
we will tal tally up all these little battles and
see where I stand on wins and losses. And you know,
there's lots of talk about out there about my gambling,
you know, places that I've been kicked out of and
things like that, and I do pretty well. I do
(01:16:59):
pretty well, but it's it's what I like to do.
You know. I don't gamble in a way that I
would ever hurt myself or hurt my family or you know,
I'm sure you've heard the Norm McDonald stories. Norm McDonald
lost like his entire personal wealth four times or something
like that. Yeah, that's not gonna happen to me.
Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
So you manage it. But just psychologically you're able to
be even gay.
Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
So when I win, it's awesome. It's always great to win.
Winning is a great feeling in business, in sports, in life,
and definitely in gambling. Losing is never fun, but it's
part of the game, you know what I mean. If
you want to be in the game and it's sports,
(01:17:46):
it's business or whatever, there's going to be wins and
there's going to be losses, and you have to take
them both in stride, and you have to be able
to you know, there's a lot of people when you
gamble right and you lose and you go into a deep,
dark depression. I've seen this with guys that do it
get depressed. Gambling isn't for you, you know, if you
(01:18:08):
are the type of person that's on social media and
people say horrible things to you and you get depressed,
and you shouldn't be on social media, you know what
I mean. These are all part of being in the game.
When you're in the fucking game, great things happen and
really bad things happen, and you got to take it
all in stride, and you got to pick yourself up
the next day, strap your fucking shoes back on, and
(01:18:30):
get out there and go to fucking war again. That's
how it works.
Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
I has some ggging shit right there, all right. I
love that motivational speech.
Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
It's the truth though. It's the truth though. Listen, every
day when you get out of bed, life standing right
there to kick you in the fucking face. Man, could
be anything could be. You get up and you walk downstairs.
You got a fucking flat tire and you're late for work,
and you got this and that life is gonna throw
all kinds of crazy shit at you right and you
have to be ready for it, and you gotta fucking
(01:18:59):
deal with it. Can't curl up into a ball, You
can't run away from it, you can't hide. You have
to take all this shit head on. You have to
get up every every day. When I get up out
of bed, I strap up, and I'm getting ready for
fucking war because I know I'm coming in here. I
know a bunch of bad shit's gonna happen that I'm
ennough to fucking deal with. And if that's not bad enough,
when I finally get out of here, I'm probably gonna
(01:19:20):
go to the casino and I'm gonna get into another
fucking war. You know what I mean. I thrive in chaos.
I actually love chaos. Everybody talks about retiring, Fuck that shit.
What am I gonna do when I retire? What would
I do? What would I I liked? I like to
go to war. I like the battle. I like to win.
Sometimes I lose, but then I have to come back
(01:19:41):
from the loss. And I love the build brands. I
love to set short term and long term goals and
then knock them all down. You know, this is just
the stuff that that that excites me and and and
whether it's business or or gambling or I like being
a fan of things too. Like I like live music,
(01:20:03):
so when I find like a band that I like,
I get excited to go watch the band live, or
a Celtics game. I love the fucking Boston Celtics, and
I love, you know, going to the games and Washington
this is the year. Hopefully we're gonna fucking win it
this year. These are all things that make me happy
and excite me in my life. And it's funny because
there's this post that I post maybe three four nights
(01:20:25):
a week. I also love the city. I can't tell
if the city of Las Vegas was built for me
or I was built for this fucking city, but I
love it. And there's this turn on Smerlan Parkway right
every night, and it's dark and from there you can
see the entire fucking city and it's all fucking lights
and it's badass. And I'm usually driving home after a
(01:20:47):
fucking incredible day, right, this amazing day, and this unbelievable
fucking life that I have, and I have this just
moment of gratitude every time I take that turn and
I'm like, God, damn, I love this fucking city. And
just every night when I go home, I'm just so
happy and grateful for this life that I have.
Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
So you're grateful, you're celebrating. Even if the day is
full of shit, yet full of problems you have to
solve all of this, You're still able to put that
behind you.
Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
I love that too. I love problem solving. I love
I love taking things that seem impossible. Yeah, fucking what's
been shipped on more than this fucking company right here? Yeah?
Power slap right, Yeah, this thing's a fucking beast. It's
an absolute beast. In thirteen months, that's the most successful
(01:21:38):
thing I've ever been a part of. And I love
every fucking minute of it, especially the negativity. I love negativity.
Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I say, you almost feet on it. That's great. You're
a build.
Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
I eat that shit for fucking breakfast, man, I love it.
Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
What's your favorite movie about Vegas? Casino?
Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Yeah it would have to be Casino, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
You ever see a movie that changed your life, that
that actually impacted your life in some way, shape or form.
Probably which one.
Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
That's a good question. I have to think, Well, I
have a lot, a lot, because you know, it could
be one of them. Probably taught me about women, you know,
Forrest gomp for me, it's a simple movie, but it was.
It was a really good movie to show. It reminded
me because I've been really fortunate in my life, like
over and over and over, and I don't think I
(01:22:28):
deserve any of it. So I just always felt like
Forrest com So when I finally saw it, it really
connected with me. It was like, Okay, this this universe
works in weird ways and stuff just materializes and you
just kind of be good to people, like put that
good karma out there and it happens for you. So
that that was a movie like.
Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
That, I'm actually very superstitious about that. I believe that
that that what you what you put out, you get back.
And I believe that when you have you should take
care of other people and you should always try to
bring people up with you and all that kind of stuff.
But the movie that changed the whole trajectory of my
(01:23:06):
life was Vision Quest.
Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Yeah, well yeah that's a good one too.
Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Yeah, Vision Quest, Man, I fucking love that movie. It's basically,
you know, it's telling the story of a kid who
really wasn't anybody in high school, and nobody kind of
knew he was. He wasn't popular or any of that
kind of shit, and he decided that that was the
year that he was going to make his mark. And
he was a good wrestler at one hundred and seventy
eight pounds, but he was going to move down to
one sixty something to take on the shoot the scariest
(01:23:33):
guy in the whatever. But there's all these little things
in the movie that really lay out what life is
all about. One of the parts is he's in a
class and he's talking about the teacher's talking about some
poem and he says, what does this poem mean to you? Well,
this little girl's walking through, you know, the park, and
(01:23:54):
all the leaves are falling off the trees, and she
realizes that she's going to die someday, and that a
lot of people think they have all this time, so
they fucking waste it and then never go out and
do what they really set out to do or accomplish
or do anything great in their life. That's one meeting.
Then he's got the guy that he works with at work.
You know, he's cutting weight and his nose is bleeding
(01:24:16):
and all this shit, and this guy keeps going, why
the fuck are you doing this? Pick that thing up
and eat it like a fucking man. This is ridiculous.
I don't know why you're doing this to yourself. Blah
blah blah blah blah. So then when he meets the
girl and he gets to the point where he feels
like he wants to quit, right, where does he go?
He goes to that guy's fucking apartment because he knows
when he shows up at this guy's apartment, he's gonna go, yeah,
(01:24:37):
fuck this shit. No, he went to work, He went
to work to talk to him, and he wasn't at work.
He took the night off. So he shows up at
the fucking house at the shitty little fucking apartment that
the guy lives, and the guy's putting a suit and
tie on and shit. He's like, they said, you called
in sick. What's going on? He's like, well, yeah, aren't
you wrestling this guy tonight? And he's like, yeah, but
why would you You're gonna get doctor Knight's pay, And
(01:24:58):
all of a sudden she says, you know what, then
it all gets laid out. I get the goosebumps even
telling you this fucking pele. Yeah, when he's saying about,
you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm fucking cooking in an
overnight hotel fucking thing, and I live in this shitty apartment.
A human being can lift himself upside down and backwards
and kick a ball into a fucking net, and the
(01:25:19):
whole stadium goes crazy. And this guy runs around and
I'm sitting here in my fucking apartment alone, and I
start crying. Yeah, I start crying. So the guy who's
been shipping on him the whole fucking time actually really
respects him for what he's done and sees what this
kid is capable of doing, and all this shit. This
just this fucking movie spoke to me on so many
different levels. And I think it's probably the most underrated
(01:25:41):
movie of all time. When you really break down the
meaning of what this movie is about, and and and
and it fucking really spoke to me.
Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
That's probably the greatest movie on combat, one on one combat,
I would agree ever made.
Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
I would agree. Yeah, And especially if you can really
here the messages that it's that, it's that it's given
you in this movie. It's it's it's excellent. You know,
it's funny. They just did like the and I saw
this after the fact, which completely fucking pissed me off.
They did like the twenty five year or the thirty
year thing. It was filmed in Spokane, Washington. They showed
(01:26:17):
the movie at a movie theater there and the cast
members came out and spoke about it. I would have
fucking flown there for that, Are you shitting me? I'd
have been there fucking thirty seconds to go up there
and and and be a part of that that that
movie literally changed my life.
Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
Yeah, I suppose me too. It made me, uh, it
made me want to wrestle. I mean probably the reason
I was maybe it made me love fall in love
with wrestling.
Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Well, you know, it's funny. I wasn't even into wrestling
at all, and I didn't have to be for that movie.
Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
To It's in a basic human story.
Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
It's such a great movie.
Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
I mean that's what fighting does. It brings out the
basic like the humanity of a person. Really, like if
for the people that choose to step up, and it's
step in the ring and then chase greatness and actually
do it from like against the long odds. That's why
it's a beautiful game.
Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
And it's so true. I mean when you think about like,
I'm fifty four years old right now, like that, I mean,
it just fucking flew by, and you think when you're
young that you have all this time. You have no time.
There's there's no time. I mean one of the of
the quotes on the wall in the gym, and there's
(01:27:24):
you know, there is no tomorrow. From from Rocky three,
you know there is no tomorrow. Fuck that ship. Let's
let's let's get all this shit done today.
Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Do you think about your death?
Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
I'm not afraid of death, not even a little bit.
I'm not afraid of it. I don't know if that'll
be the case when I'm facing it, you know, when
I'm looking down the barrel of it, laying in the
hospital bed somewhere, but for now.
Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Just squeezing as much as you can out of it.
Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
I literally I don't even like to sleep. My life
is so fucking awesome. I don't even want to go
to bed at night. I don't even want to go
to sleep. I don't want to stay up. I wish
I could fucking do twenty four hours and never have
to sleep. That's how much I love my life.
Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
What is watching thousands of fights over the years taught
you about human nature? About us humans.
Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
I don't care what color you are, what country you
come from, what language you speak. We're all human beings.
Fightings in our DNA. We get it and we like it.
And it's true. Fighting is in our dna. It's a
part of who we are. And you know, no matter
where you are, fight breaks out. It creates this fucking energy,
this buzz, this sense of fear. I mean a lot
(01:28:34):
of different emotions happen in people when fights break out,
but one thing that is always the case. Everybody's watching, man,
everybody's fucking all of their eyes are on the fight.
I mean, we were just a Mexico fucking fight broke
out like in the good seats, like right here, the
seats they are super expensive insecurity never fucking came. Yeah,
(01:28:57):
they just let these guys fight until they gassed out. Yeah,
and then everybody put their chairs back together and snap
back down. Fucking I literally got up from my table,
walked over and was watching this fight at the fights.
Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
At the fights. Yeah, I mean humans fight and humans
love watching.
Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
Fighting, absolutely, and that was my thought process going into
buying the UFC, and I believe that this would work everywhere,
and thank god we were right.
Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Well, Dana, thank you for bringing this very human thing
of fighting, the art of it, the science of it,
the heroic stories, the vision quests, stories of it all. Boom,
I really appreciate you talking to it.
Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
Brother. Thank you, pleasure buddy, thank you for the kind words.
Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dana White. To
support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from
Muhammad Ali. Impossible it's just a big word thrown around
by small men who find it easier to live in
a world they've been given than to explore the power
they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact,
(01:30:02):
it's an opinion. Impossible it is not a declaration. It's
a dare. Thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time.
HUBI beat Connor Putin was on FaceTime before he even
made it to the locker room. Trump sitting president, ex president,
watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.
Valentina Schevshanko. Every time she goes home, she meets with
the president of the country. The list goes on and
on and on. The most powerful Elon Musk Zuckerberg. I mean,
(00:22):
the list goes on and on and on. The most
powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
The following is a conversation with Dana White, the president
of the UFC, a mixed martial arts organization that revolutionized
the art, the sport, and the business of fighting, and
Dana is truly the mastermind behind the UFC. This is
the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out
(00:50):
our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's
Dana White. Do you remember when you saw your first fight.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I think so. I remember being at my grandmother's house
and I think it was an Ali fight and all
my uncles were going crazy during the fight, and it
was just this buzz and this energy in the house
that I liked at a very young age. And I'm
pretty sure that was my first fight.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Ali was something special.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, incredible. I mean when you look around, not just
here in the office, but at my house, Ali and
Tyson are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Would you put Ali as the greatest of all time boxing?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Well, I would put Ali as the greatest all time
human being. I mean when you it's easy as a
fight fan to focus on him as a fighter, but
when you focus on him as a human and you
think about what he meant at that time and place
(01:50):
the things he said, the poems he came up with,
you know, just the overall brilliance of Muhammad Ali. The guts,
the guts to have the strength mentally, physically and emotionally
to go against the grain. At the time that he
did it, it was a very dangerous time for him
to be who he was. Yet because of how smart
(02:15):
he was, and because of his personality and how if
you sat down with him you could be the biggest
racist on the planet. It's hard to get in the
room with Ali and not like Ali.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, He's all love, humor, all of it, and had
the guts in the ring and the guts to take
a stand.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He might be one of the all time greatest humans.
You know what I mean, just an impactful, powerful human
being who happened to be a great boxer.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And sometimes the right moment meets the great human being.
That's important.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I agree with you. And he was the right guy
in the right place at the right time. And he's
also a guy who used his platform for all the
right things.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So that might have been your first fight. But when
did you fall in love with fighting, the art of it,
the science of it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, I would say I really fell in love with it.
So I was a senior. It was nineteen eighty seven
and Hagler Leonard happened. Yeah, and I watched that fight
and I taped it, and I watched that fight like
a million times. I was a huge, huge Hagler fan.
(03:30):
And I like Sugar Ray Leonard too, but I was
a huge Hagler fan. And you know, I just remember
I watched that fight a million times because I was
I was pissed off and I felt like Hagler got
robbed in the fight, you know what I mean. But
that was really what made me start to love the
sport of boxing, the battle of it. Like, yeah, I
(03:51):
was seventeen. And then after that, USA's Tuesday Night Fights
came out on television on every Tuesday night, religiously never
missed Tuesday Night fights. I was there, watched all those fights,
and uh, you know a lot of a lot of
the things you see in the UFC, not not necessarily
(04:15):
just the production, but I would say the the feel
and the style and all those things are are all
things that I things that I loved about boxing and
things that I hated about boxing, right down to the commentary.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You loved and hated hated the Yeah, hated the commentary.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Certain things that I loved about boxing, I incorporated into
the UFC things that I hated about boxing. I made
sure that the UFC stayed far away from I think
I can't stand Larry Merchant. Can't stand Larry Merchant, and
I used to watch HBO boxing and mute the commentary
so that I didn't have to listen to them. Lampley too,
(04:58):
Uh you know you would, you would spend this money
for the pay per view to watch these people that
you idolized to hear these idiots rip them apart while
the fight was happening. You know, they were criticizing one
hundred percent apart.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I've gotten used to the UFC side, don't I'm trying
to remember looking back.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
It was bad. It was bad, It was really bad,
but that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
The sweet science the art of boxing was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Still, Like, I want to do this with you right now, Hey,
we bring your cell phone over here and pull up YouTube.
I want to do this for you so that you
you can understand this and understand where I was coming
from for the commentary. At this point in time, I have.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
All good memories. You're going to ruin it for me.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, no, there are nothing but great memories about boxing,
but the presentation and and a lot of the things.
But it's how fucking weird is it that I even
cared about this ship at that point in my life
and that time my life, Like what impact could I
possibly have on it? So think about Tyson, how much
everybody loved he at the time, and when to listen
(06:01):
to this. Listen to this entrance of.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The former undisputed heavyweight champion, and here he comes, Mike
Tyson as he heads toward the same ring he made
his disgraceful exit and chewed up ninety six woe.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Of about his motherfucking walkings of all time, by the way, right,
So what this guy should be doing? And this is
one of the Albert brothers. Yeah, shut the fuck up. Yeah,
stay out of the way. Yeah, maybe build him up
or that, or don't say anything. Just let the fence.
That's why. Yeah, yeah, that's why we paid our money.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You don't need to saying scary imposing music. Will he
be able to intimidate his opponent tonight?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Will it even matter?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I really thought that'd be more of an explosion by
the crowd here, but very mixed even with the winds tonight.
No matter how one shided, he will still have his detractors.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Following the two fights to with Holyfield, his stocked plummeted.
The pundits came down hard, feeling they were too that
his knockouts were over second rate fighters. Now the crowd
he roves the dorm as he gets into the rink.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
You know, but it's certainly nothing overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
What a dick.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're right, I don't remember that. You're right.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Imagine you're right. You you you paid your money. Watch
Mike Tyson and you got to listen to these fucking
jerk offs talk shit about him the whole way to
the right. First of all, one of the coolest walkings ever,
you know, first time anybody had heard DMX right, and uh,
you know he's walking into some scary, imposing music. Will
(07:54):
it even matter whether you know, it's just all that
kind of stuff. I you literally used to analyze every
ounce of the production that would happen on television, and
at a time when I didn't even know why I
was doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
But it's in there somewhere, but you were thinking about.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It, right, So yeah, I hated HBO commentary. I thought,
you know, at the time, HBO boxing was obviously the
gold standard, you know, but when you really think about
boxing at that time, their production, the only thing that
changed over thirty years was like HD. I mean, even
the commentators were the same for thirty years. And then
(08:33):
you had the time when Larry Merchant gets up and
literally starts fighting with Floyd Mayweather during the interview and says,
if I was thirty years younger, I'd kick your ass
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Oh yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, I mean, these are the interviews that we have
to listen to when we're trying to watch a boxing match.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
The level of boxing was good.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Think about a fighter, right, fighter has been gone for
months away from their families and away from everything training,
cutting weight sparring. Then they go in and they have
to fight that night, and then you have to you know,
if you watch your fight back, you got to listen
to this bullshit from these guys, and then and then
you get interviewed, and your interview is is this.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
It's just and it's not just about the pay per
view money. It's about like, these are legends of humanity.
We should celebrate the highest form of like accomplishment. These
are like Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So you know who goes in there and interviews fighters,
Joe Rogan right, who has trained and and and and
and done everything and has the utmost respect for the
sport and the athletes. Or you got like Daniel Cormier
who is a former world champion himself and has actually
been through it, done it, knows And those are the
type of people that we put in the booth, people
(09:44):
that are actually experienced in it, not not not not
these people who have never been in a fight in
their fucking life.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right Yeah, but they're also both DC and Rogan are
like big kids.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
They love it, well everybody does. I mean, if you
look at it's the difference between our commentary and what
I feel their commentary was We don't hire paid talking heads.
We hire people that have actually been in it, done it,
love it, and are super passionate about the sport. And
(10:16):
I would say that none of them that ever covered
the sport back then were I don't know if that
was Marv Albert, what all Albert brother that was, but
he sounds like he's a fan of the sport or anyway.
You got me on this, and I lose my mind.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Maybe wouldn't We wouldn't have a UFC if they didn't
fuck it up so bad and.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
For the t it would be different. You're not wrong.
You're not wrong. It would be different. There's no doubt
about it. All those experiences growing up being a boxing
fan helped create what the UFC is today.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know, it's interesting because humans have been fighting for millennia,
and it seems like with the UFC, the rate of
innovation is just insane. In these last three decades, it
seems like we've discovered how to do unarmed combat faster
and better than at any time in human history.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I agree with you one hundred percent. The first UFC
happened in nineteen ninety three, right martial arts versus martial arts,
and now over the last thirty years, martial arts has
evolved faster than you know what I mean. And like
you just said, combat sports, fighting, whatever you want to
call it, martial arts, it has evolved so much in
(11:32):
thirty years, more than the last three hundred years.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
What did you think when you saw UFC one with Hoys.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I remember everybody talking that this fight was going to
happen and there was gonna be no rules and all
this other stuff, and we're like, there's no way, that's bullshit.
And then we ended up in some guy's house that
night in Boston and watching it and it was happening
and it was fun and it was exciting and everything else.
And then and then I sort of fell off after that.
The first one I watched, but I I was too
(12:00):
big of a boxing fan. Plus, once grappling started taking over,
and you know, by grappling meaning the wrestling and the
jiu jitsu guys had just laid there, you know, I
completely lost interest. It's funny that I'm having this conversation
with you right now because last night I was out
last night with my friends and we were talking about
because one of my buddies, who's a host here in town,
(12:22):
just did jiu jitsu for the first time. Nice yesterday. Yeah,
and he was like, did he get his ass kick? Yeah? Yeah.
But when you first go in our first jiu jitsu
lesson me, Lorenzo Frank was with John Lewis, and I
remember thinking, holy shit, I can't believe that I'm, you know,
(12:44):
twenty eight years old, and this's the first time I'm
experiencing this, that another human being could do this to
me on the ground. It is such an eye opening,
mind blowing experience when you do it for the first time,
and then you become completely addicted to it. And you know,
we were training three four days a week trying to
(13:04):
kill each other and me and the fertiitas, and that's
how we fell in love with the sport. I think
that first time that you do jiu jitsu, it's like
the red pill and the blue pill and the matrix.
Do you want to believe that this is the world
that you live in or do you want to see
what the real world looks like?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Just as a real red pill it really is. You realize,
holy shit, all that shit talking I've been doing about
me being a badass, you realize you're not. You're getting
dominated by another human being, and.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I mean dominate, I mean completely treat you like you're
a little kid. And then we had the opportunity to
roll with a lot of different guys at the time
because of the whatever, and we don't have a good
relationship at all. But I'll tell you this, Frank Shamrock
came in one day and Frank Shamrock had me in
(13:56):
side control. The pressure that this guy put on my
chest made me tab felt like there was a car
on my chest. And with zero effort from him. It
was absolutely effortless. And when you when you train with
somebody that's at such a level when you're not, it
(14:17):
just it is the most humbling, mind blowing experience you
can have, especially as a man, but as a human being.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Do you remember, just for fun, do you remember, like
what your go to submission was?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, so you know when we first started out and
started doing it, I had a pretty good guillotine in
the beginning, so I'd catch a lot of people in
guillotines and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
The okay, being like on bottom, So like.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, the bottom. Yeah, I was okay with being on bottom.
I was comfortable there. But you know what, I never
liked I never liked g like we started fucking around
with a g in the beginning, we would you know,
That's how we started. And then once I took the
gee off, I felt like I had no submissions because
I couldn't grab onto anything. So I after that I
went all no g and I I never wanted to
(15:00):
wear a GI.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And it's fascinating because no gia has become big now
and there's a lot of interesting people. I got trained
on Gordon Ryan and like the level there is just fascinating.
It's become like the science, and it looks like fighting now.
It looks more like fighting as opposed to with the gee.
Sometimes it doesn't quite look like fighting, right, And I
feel like it's transferable to actual like MMA fighting, no
(15:23):
g stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Or street street yeah right. I mean, if if you
start off in your first year you're in a gee, man,
you better hope guys got like winter jackets on or
something if something happens in the street, because in my opinion,
and all the jiu jitsu fucking people are gonna go
crazy over this, but in my opinion, no gi is
way better than gig.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's what I also do judo, So in the street scenario,
if you're comfortable on the feet and you can clinch
and you can throw, you could because most of us
wear clothing, especially in Boston and the winter exactly, So
if you're comfortable on the feet, you can still do
well there. The problem with you is most people are
not comfortable on the sports jiu jitsu. Most people kind
(16:06):
of want to get to the ground as quickly as possible.
So what'd you think of Hoys at that time, like
in the early like what because it blew a lot
of people's minds that there's like more to this puzzle.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
One hundred percent. And the fact that you had like
these guys like Ken Shamrock that were jacked right, and
you had all these wrestlers or you know, the big,
massive guys that they had in the different weight classes,
and this skinny little dude like Hoys was out there
beating everybody. I mean, if you look at the way
the Gracies played that, you couldn't have had a better
(16:40):
advertisement for Gracie jiu jitsu at the time, but also like.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
For MMA, because there's just like a lot of surprising elements.
A lot of people's prediction was wrong, right. They didn't
think the skinny guy would win, and they're like, oh shit,
there's more to this.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
What's the real beautiful thing about jiu jitsu. It's like
when you talk about if you wanted to get your
daughter into a martial art, should I put my daughter
into karate? Should I put her into this? You put
your daughter into jiu jitsu one hundred percent because it's
not about size or strength. It's about technique. And you
give your daughter a bunch of jiu jitsu and a
(17:17):
little bit of movie tie, you.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Know, yeah, she becomes dangerous.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It's like the perfect combo. Yeah, because you can put
your son into anything. Your son can get into some
you know, boys are gonna learn how to fight and
they're gonna do whatever. But girls are girls are different.
And the other thing, I mean, this is the biggest
selling point for jiu jitsu for women. I mean when
a woman, no matter how big, house small, can put
a guy to sleep in three and a half seconds.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
What's the origin story of the UFC as it is today,
as you have created it, and you and Lorenzo and
for Tito brothers built it.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It started with with John Lewis, you know, and seeing him.
Frank and I were out one night at the hard
Rock and John Lewis was there and he's like, oh,
that's that ultimate fighting guy. And I was like, I
know him. And Frank's like, I've always wanted to learned
ground fighting, and I said, yeah, I'm interested in it too.
(18:08):
So we went over, we talked to John Lewis and
we made an appointment to wrestle with him on Monday. Yeah,
and we told Lorenzo, and Lorenzo came with us, and
that was the beginning of the end. I mean, we
started doing jiu jitsu and and started to meet a
lot of the fighters and we were like, you know,
at the time, there was a stigma attached to the
(18:29):
sport that these guys were, you know, despicable, disgusting human beings.
But which was the first thing from the truth. These
these kids had all gone to college, had college degrees,
most of them because they wrestled in college. And we
started to meet something we love the different stories. You
had Chuck Lidell, who you know, had this mohawk, looks
like an axe murderer and uh but graduated from cal Poly,
(18:52):
you know, with honors and accounting. You know. Then you
had Matt Hughes, who was this farm boy, you know,
literally lived on a farm. And so there were all
these cool stories with all these good people that weren't
what people thought they were. And Lorenzo and I always
felt like there's something here. If this thing was done
the right way, this could be big. And what was
(19:15):
crazy was I was in a contract negotiation with Bob Myerwitz,
the old owner of the UFC, over Tito's contract and
Chuck Lidell. They didn't even want Chuck Ladell in the UFC.
I was trying to get Chuck in the UFC and
they didn't even want them. Wow. And we got into
this contract just beat over Tito's contract and Bob Myers said,
(19:37):
you know what, there is no more money. Okay, I
don't even know if I'll even be able to put
on one more event, and he like flipped out. When
we hung up the phone, I literally picked up the
phone and called the Lorenzo and I said, Hey, I
just got off the phone with Bob Myers own or
the UFC. I think they're in trouble, and I think
we could buy it, and I think we should. You
should reach out to them. So Lorenzo, Lorenzo called my
(20:00):
and I don't know how. I don't remember the timeline,
but within the next two months we ended up owning
the UFC for two million bucks.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And you've said that you fought a lot of battles
during that time.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I mean the early days of building this company and
building the sport. It was the wild, wild West, man,
it was crazy back then. Yeah. I was literally at
war every day with all different types of people. Plus
traditionally there's bad people that are involved in in fighting. Man,
there's lots of bad people, and we had to sift
(20:33):
our way through that for the first seven eight years.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So in general, there's like corruption that people kind of
steal money. They're thinking just about themselves, not the biggest business.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We tell you about this. I mean, I want to
say it was the Netherlands. I don't remember exactly where.
It could have been Amsterdam. I mean, MMA promoters were
like car bombing each other and then the other guys
shot up the other guy's house with machine guns, and
that's the kind of shit that was going on. I'll
tell you the story. So Affliction, Do you remember Affliction? Yeah?
(21:04):
So that was a guy I want to say. I
want to I want to say his name was Tom
Todd Beard or something like that. This guy used to
text me every day when they were when they started
their MMA thing, telling me he was going to kill me,
like legitimately, legitimately going to kill me. You punk motherfucker,
I'm gonna fucking kill you. You don't understand who I
(21:27):
am and what I've done and this and that. I
think this guy would get drunk or do drugs every
night or whatever his deal was. This guy would call me,
text me and threaten my life every day. I used
to go, fuck you and this. Oh yeah, man, especially
back then. Yeah, but yeah, but I mean that this
is the type of ship that went on in the
early days that this guy, this guy who was one
(21:47):
of the owners of Affliction, was like one of the
you know, not not a good human, let's put it
that way.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What about the business side of it. It's tough to
make money in this business.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, we weren't making money, so you know, trying to
build this thing corrupt uh corrupt the guys that work
for in demand pay per view at the time. Uh,
we're not good dudes, you know. And that thing was
a fucking total monopoly. God, I wish I could remember
(22:18):
his name right now. He used to run in Demand
and he was a fucking bad guy. Then he then
he comes over and starts running DirecTV who we always
had a great relationship with, and he's the reason we
left direct TV and said fuck it, we'll just go streaming. Then. Yeah,
I don't remember his name. I'd have to ask Lorenzo.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So in general, just in this whole space, there's a
lot of.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, it's just everybody to deal with is dealing with
a lot of a lot of a lot of different
forces and and and your your hands are in a
lot of different businesses. Uh, you know, from the venue
business to the merchandise business, to the video game business, uh,
the pay per view business. You know, the list goes
(23:01):
on and on of all the different types of the
production business, of all these different you know, when I
first started this, I h we had a production team
that was the production team that was in it before
we bought it. So there was this There was this
incident with Phil Baroni where Phil Baroni, we did an
(23:21):
interview with him and Berni flips out in the interview
when they're interviewing him and goes crazy, and I thought
it was awesome. So I'm like, we're gonna leave this in.
We're gonna leave this interview in the and the production
guys were arguing with me, so like, we can't leave
this in. This is totally unprofessional, and I said, don't
give a shit. This is this is what we're doing.
(23:42):
We're gonna we're gonna do this and clip it like
this and do it like that. We're sitting in the
venue that night, and I lean over to Lorenzo because
the fight's coming up. I go, wait to see this
fucking interview with Baroni. They didn't fucking do it. They
didn't do it. These guys were guys that were freelan
ask guys that worked for Showtime at the time, or
one of something like that. I literally went got up
(24:05):
from my fucking seat, went back there, kicked the fucking
door of the truck open, and I said, you motherfuckers,
you ever do that again, and I'll fire every fucking
one of you. Let's just put it this way. I
ended up firing every one of them anyway, and going
with a whole new crew. But these were the type
of things that early on. You know, there's so much stuff.
I mean, I could sit here for fucking three days
and walk you through all the stuff that used to
(24:25):
go on back in those days. But it was the wild,
wild West.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Man, But how'd you figure out? How'd you know how
to deal with all this mess? First of all, to
fire people, to fire people that aren't doing a good
job all that, Like how to be a leader, how
to be.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, that's the thing too, I mean business leader, get
getting it. In the early days, there was two employees,
me and another girl that that worked for me for
my company before I started doing this. And then we
slowly started to bring people on and you start to
build a team. Then before you know it, we had
ten people. I mean we used to do our Christmas
parties back then too. There'd be eight to ten people
(24:59):
at our Christmas party. You know. But a lot of
it is, uh, you'll learn as you go, you know.
You know what me and the Fertidas knew about production
when we bought this UFC, we had, like I want
to say, we had two or three weeks to pull
off an event. This is what we knew about production,
really jack shit. So we had to dive in and
we had to learn it. We had to figure it out,
and we we knew what we wanted. We knew what
(25:21):
we liked. We knew what we were looking for. It's
just about building building a good team. And I think
that's one of the things. If you want to talk
about what I've accomplished in the last you know, twenty
five years of my life, I've been really good at
building teams already.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have a vision of what you want the final thing
to look like, and then build a team that can
bring that to a lot one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Well, you have to have the vision. Without the vision,
there's nothing. So that's sort of what I do. I
am the vision part of this thing. We're going to
open a PI in Mexico. We're going to do this.
We're going to do that, you know. And then and
(26:05):
then you build the team to come in and help execute.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
A lot of people that do fighting promotions fail. You
succeeded against the long odds. What's the secret to your success?
If you would just look him back over the.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Years, Well, the secret to success, I would say, first
of all is passion and consistency. You have to love
what you do. You have to get up every day
and I get here every day at nine thirty in
the morning. When we sold in twenty sixteen, a lot
of people in the company made a lot of money,
(26:41):
and I all took off and they retired right. Other
than the fertitas, I made the most money. I'm still here.
I get here at nine thirty every morning. Last night
I left here at eight thirty, you know, And I
don't know how late I'm going to be here tonight.
But I love what I do. We get up every
day and grind and I work just as hard now
(27:01):
as I did back then. The difference between back then
and now is I don't have to do a bunch
of the shit that I don't really like to do,
like budget meetings. I don't like budget meetings. I sat
through enough fucking budget meetings. Horrible budget meetings.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Horrible.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
You know, we're losing, you know, millions of dollars a year,
and I'm in these in these budget meetings, you know,
So I get to pick and choose what I do
these days. Back in the early days, you don't get
to pick and choose. You have to be involved in everything.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So costs, you're just looking at costs.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
You literally go through line by line every fucking number
in the company, and where did the money go? And
how can we save costs? How can we do this better?
How can we You know? They are they they are brutal,
and they're multiple times a week and.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Probably helps to deeply appreciate how much the shit costs.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Though, Well, you have to know that in the early
days when you start your busines, you have these people who,
when I hear them say, you know what, I uh,
I want to work for myself. I want to create
my own schedule and I want to do all the Yeah,
it's just it's if that's your thought process going into it,
you're never going to be successful. You have to pay
(28:18):
attention to every single detail of the business. Early on.
You're involved in everything. There's no days off, there's no birthdays,
there's no fucking Christmas, there's none of that shit. I
literally moved the birth of my second son for a
chuclate El fight. We had a Chuck LATEL fight coming
up and I and They're like, yeah, your son's going
to be born in this date. And I'm like, Yeah,
that's not going to work. We're gonna have to take
them earlier. Yea. So they literally gave my wife a
(28:41):
c section and took my son early.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You're all in, all in, yeah, and the fascinating thing,
Like you said, You've said that you could care less
about money. You're doing this for for the love of it.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah. I was doing this when I was broke, and
I'm doing this now and I'm not broke. I'm doing
this because I love it and I feel like there's
so much more to do, and this is truly my
passion in life. It's like the sphere. We're doing the sphere.
Why why would I do this sphere? It's gonna cost
me a bunch of money, it's really challenging. Most people
(29:18):
think it can't be pulled off, and you're looking at
weird angles, different things going on inside other than the
fight and all this other stuff. But yeah, I'm doing
it because it's awesome and it's challenging and it's hard,
and I think that if anybody can do it right,
it's us, So why not take that challenge.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's actually why I'm here. I'm going to this sphere
for the first time because I'm hanging out with Darren Aronowski,
who put together the thing that's in there now. And
I can't believe you're thinking of I don't know how
you're going to solve that puzzle.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
There's many puzzles to solve for this one. Look, many puzzles, So.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
How can you speak to that, Like, what are interesting
challenges that you're encountering.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, so there's a lot. So you have the octagon, right,
and then behind it is the world's biggest screen ever. Right,
So what is the theme? How do you program it?
First of all, it's super expensive to shoot and you
know the format for the sphere angles we were talking
(30:19):
about today. I just had a big meeting today about
the sphere this afternoon and making sure that all my departments,
all the details that I want all start to come
together here in the next two weeks. I want the creative,
the commercial. I have some goals. I will tell people
(30:41):
as we get closer what I'm looking to achieve with
this other than putting on one of the greatest, most
unique sporting events of all time and probably the greatest
combat sporting event of all time. But yeah, there's I mean,
there's challenges. There's a laundry list of challenges for this thing.
And not to mention the fact that it's on independent
(31:01):
actually an independence Day, and we're gonna weave in the
whole history of combat in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, and this is. But the production. I mean, this
is hilarious because we were just talking about knowing nothing
about production something.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Now is the hardest production effort ever.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And that will be live.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
It'll be live, It'll be live on pay per view,
It'll be live in the arena, and it will also
be in movie theaters.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Nice, so there'll be a it will be shown. We'll
be shown at the Sphere later too, Like will you
try to.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Ms doing a dock on it?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Nice?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The making of the sphere? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
What are you feeling good about it?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh? Yeah, I feel incredible about it. I can't wait.
It's gonna be It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I can't wait to see how you solve the puzzle.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Another guy that I feel like could care less about
the money is Joe Rogan. How important is he to
the UFC, to the rise of the UFC, and would
in general? Do you love a bud Joe?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
It's a fact he doesn't care about money. And he
did the first thirteen shows for free for us. Yeah
you know what I mean. That was at a time
when we were hurting, and he's like, wait a minute,
you want me to do the commentary? You're saying that
I get to sit in the best seat in the
house and watch these fights for free. Yeah yeah, I'm
in yeah. So and then obviously when we turn things around,
(32:24):
we made it up to Joe. But Joe is one
of the things that I loved early on about So
I'll tell you the story. So we buy the UFC.
They're based in New York. We're moving the corporate offices
to Vegas. So I have to fly out to New York,
go into the offices and start going through everything and
(32:47):
figuring out what needs to come back to Vegas and
what we can just throw away. So they literally had
a VHS machine and a TV and there were a
million tapes in this place. Man, So I didn't know
what tapes were. These definitely have to keep, or these
we don't need. So I had to sit there and
go through every single tape. And I popped in a
tape and there was an interview on the Ivory keenan
(33:09):
Wayan show, right the oldest Wayne's brother and get a
talk show at the time, and he had Joe Rogan,
the guy from Fear Factor, on the show, and he
was promoting Fear Factor, but all he would talk about
was UFC and he was talking about how people think
that these guys in the martial arts movies are tough,
(33:31):
and he was talking about what UFC fighters would do
to these martial arts guys if they ever got their
hands on them. And I was like, this is exactly
what I need. A guy who isn't afraid to speak
his mind and knows the sport inside and out, but
more importantly, is super passionate about it and loves it.
(33:53):
So when you see Joe Rogan on camera and I
was talking about the paid doc talking heads that they
had in HBO Boxing that were terrible, Joe Rogan does
not come off as a paid talking head. He comes
off as a guy who loves this. And so early on,
no media would cover us. So I had to buy
(34:13):
my way onto radio. So we do these radio tours right,
and they would drop us in. You'd have to get
up at three thirty in the morning in Vegas on
the West Coast, and they because there at six thirty
in the morning in New York and Boston and Florida
and all these other places. So they drop you into
these markets to do radio right, and the fighters were
(34:36):
horrible at it. Fighters getting up at three thirty in
the morning, especially leading up to a fight. Never good.
They sound like they're tired, they act like they're tired,
and they definitely act like they don't want to be
on there, and it's bad radio. What you can have
is bad radio. So the only two people that could
pull off these radio tours were me and Joe Rogan.
(34:58):
So me and Jo would alternate doing these radio tours
all over the country, just.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Talking about fighting, talking about what this whole thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Two guys that are really into it and passionate about
it and love it and and and it's one of
the things about Rogan too, when when early on nobody
understood the ground game, Joe Rogan would walk you through
what was happening, literally before it would happen. He would
tell you the setup, what was going to come next,
and everything. You just absolutely articulate it perfectly, brilliantly, and
(35:32):
people at home started to understand. And the impact that
Joe Rogan has had and continues to have on this
sport is immeasurable. He's the biggest podcaster in the world,
and he is on the UFC pay per views, you know,
fourteen times a year, and he's always talking about the sport.
(35:54):
It's immeasurable what this guy has has has done for
this company in the sport.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah till to this day, Like I'll have dinner with
him offline. It just stuck fighting. Yeah, just loves it,
loves every aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Joe Rogan is one of those guys. I saw that
early on, when why would you go after the fear
factor guy? You know, to be such a key component
to not only the company, but to the sport. I
saw it in the fucking interview and Ivory kenawaians.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
I value loyalty a lot. And I remember there was
a moment not too long ago, maybe a year ago,
when I was sitting with Joe and he had a
phone call with you. Joe was getting canceled for something
and they didn't want him commentating the fights, and you
on the phone offered your resignation over this. I got
(36:51):
teary eyed over that. That's such a you're a good man,
you know.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
That was powerful for anybody who is with me, has
been with me, knows when you're with me, you're with me.
It's a two way street. It's not a it's not
a one way street. I'm not one of these guys
that is going to roll over, and it's like going
through COVID. I wasn't laying any of these people. Some
(37:19):
of these people have been with me for twenty years.
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna lay them off. Mm hmm.
This motherfucker will burn burnah before I would do that
to my people. It's just it's just never that. None
of that type of stuff is ever going to happen
while I'm here. I can't say what's gonna happen when
(37:40):
I leave. But when I'm here, the people who are
with me and have been with me, they know exactly
what's up. And Joe knows what's up, and and and
and it's and again it's a two way street. Joe
Rogan has been very loyal to me, and I am
very loyal to Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Lorenzo another guy you've close friendship with. You seem to
have been extremely effective together as business partners. What's the
magic behind that?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
How can you explain that?
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I love them? Lorenzo and I work really well together
because we have two different personalities. Right, I'm the guy
that always I'm going here. Lorenzo was always here. Right,
you could walk in a room and say, Lorenzo, you
just lost ten million dollars. Lorenzo, you just won ten
million dollars. It never changes. And I'm a guy that
(38:29):
goes like this, right, So we almost balance each other out.
There's a lot of things that he's really fucking good
at and there's a lot of things that I'm really
fucking good at, and they're both on the opposite sides
of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So that level headed thing was useful when the USC
was losing money and it was unknown whether it's gonna survive.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, those low points one percent. What's incredible when you
think of the story of the UFC. At the time,
the casino business was crank right, and station casinos was
killing it, and stations their money from stations is what
was funding the UFC. Then in the eight to nine crash,
(39:13):
the UFC was killing it in eight and oh nine,
and you know, the casino businesses were hurting. So timing
on everything the way that it all worked out couldn't
have worked out better for them and obviously for all
of us. When you think about the UFC and how
big it is and how far it reaches and how
(39:35):
many people it touches, the Fertida's brothers made a two
million dollar investment, then put in like another forty four million,
and look at how many lives that investment has changed
over the last twenty five years. It's fascinating and it's
also crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Just forget the business of it, just the effect it
has on the history of humanity in terms of this
what we do or descendants of apes that fight, and
this is like the organizations that catalyze the innovation in
how we fight. It's crazy. It created a whole new.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Sport that people all over the world participate in. Now
literally there isn't a place on earth that we can't
get a fighter from now.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You said in the UC two ninety nine post fight
press conference that sometimes fighters might complain that, you know,
they get matched up on even odds, but that's actually
when legends are made. I think you gave Dustin Poyet
as an example. Can you elaborate on a little bit
like what makes a legend? What makes greatness in a fight?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
So behind the scenes, fighters are a very paranoid bunch
of people. They're very paranoid, and there's been this this
theme with fighters where they're trying to get me beat right.
We don't determine who wins and loses. If we did,
(41:05):
we'd be the WWE. Okay you do. I'm the bells
and whistles guy. I make sure that as many people
that we can possibly let know that you're fighting on Saturday,
know that you're fighting on Saturday, who you are, who
you're going against, and why people should give a shit.
That's what I do. Right then, the night you show up,
(41:28):
I put on the best live event that I possibly can,
and I put on the best television show that I
possibly can. Once that door shuts, it's all up to you.
You determine whether you lose or not. And if you
get into a position where you become so paranoid that
you think that the powers that be here are against
(41:51):
you and you try to steer yourself away from certain fires,
and that's one of the big things that happens in
these other organizations, and these other organizations, the inmates run
the asylum, right, So if they don't want to fight
(42:14):
bad enough, these other companies don't push and they don't
do this, and they don't We put on the best
possible matchups that we can make. And in this business,
you might be an older fighter. But if you're still
ranked in the top ten, there's young guys coming for you. Killers,
(42:35):
young killers are coming out and they want your position, right,
So you, being the veteran that you are, have to
prepare yourself to go in. And you know, everybody was saying,
we made that fight with Saint Deny, that Poorier was
in big trouble. Da da da da da. That's awesome.
(42:55):
That helps build the entire thing that Pooria and then
Pooria goes out and does what he did that night.
That's what makes fucking legends.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's interesting because, like sometimes being the underdog is a
really good thing for the long term story of who
you are as a fighter.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Especially when you're a big name and a name that
people recognize and a name that people know and you know,
and they're like, oh, man, I remember Israel a out
of Sonya and Sean Strickland. One hundred out of one
hundred people knew for a fact that Israel is going
to win that fight. Yeah yeah, and here comes Strickland
And we could go on for days with this, you
(43:34):
know what I mean. That is what creates legendary moments,
legendary fights, and it's what builds stars. And legends.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I mean, arguably Connor mccag with jose Aldough.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yep, Connor McGregor with a bunch of people. In the beginning,
people said he couldn't wrestle, People said he wouldn't be
able to defend a takedown. Blah blah blah blah. Nate
Dias against Connor McGregor, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
And Gregor against Canbibe underdog probably, but if you won,
there's an opportunity to win. If you won, that's that's
the legend for me. He's now in the conversation for
the greatest of all time without argument.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
And if you look at the way that Habib ran
through so many people, Connor hang in there, you know, yeah,
and it could have been made a fight of it.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
It could have been What do you think about that matchup?
It's one of the one of the greats, one of
the great matchups that you've made. Conor mccago versus Kuldib.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah. I mean, at the time, I was incredibly criticized
for putting together the spot that had the scene with
the buss in it. Yeah, you know, yeah, the fucking
media is but they were saying that I was pandering
to the you know, to the violence that happened and
trying to I'm telling you a story, telling you a
(44:49):
story of how we got here and how big this
fight is and how bad the blood is between these guys.
And I mean, I think that's what we do the
best job at is telling the fucking stories of why
(45:09):
we go into Monday. It's fight week. We got a
whole list of things that we do fight week, right,
and then you get right down to the press conference
on Thursday, the weigh ins on Friday, and then the
fights on Saturday. Now, my people fly back home, they
go to bed on Sunday night, and it's Groundhog Day.
We wake up again on Monday, and it starts all
(45:31):
over again every weekend, every Saturday for a year. So
there's lots of stories that need to be told. There's
lots of when you think about what I compete with,
whatever takes your attention on a Saturday night, is my competitor?
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Do you always trying to build a foundation for great stories,
and like if the fighters step up, they step up
and they can together create greatness.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
That's exactly right. So when we are on line, like
when you get to the UFC, I mean you just
saw it with MVP. You're going to see it with
Kayla Harrison and so many others that have come from
other organizations and they get here, they notice immediately the
difference between fighting here and fighting wherever they were before.
(46:17):
It's not even comparable to the impact that has on
you when you leave whatever organization you're with and you
come to the UFC. And I think that it gives
them a sense of holy shit, I can really. I
mean MVP when he came, I mean there were probably
more people at the press conference than any fight he'd
(46:37):
ever fought in in Bellatore, you know what I mean.
And you feel that energy, and you feel the difference
of the impact of being here, and I think it
takes a lot of these guys to another level.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, just the aura of it, like this is where
you're supposed to step up. Yeah, it's the way people
feel about Ted talks gart. This is your moment. You
get fifteen minutes and this you better say some interesting ship.
And Kayla Harrison, by the way, is a badass. I
can't wait to see what happens there.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
He was walking around like this sleeveless shirt the night
of the fights, and holy shit, she is jacked, man,
it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Two time Olympic gold medalists. Right, you don't fuck with
those people. You want to metal, You're you're you're made.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Of something special, especially in Judea.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, especially in American judo, where it's not you don't
have many training partners that are great, so you fucking
work for it. Ridiculous question. But who is in the
conversation for the greatest of all time?
Speaker 1 (47:32):
John Jones?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
So you talked about John Jones, but what are the
metrics involved here?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
He's never been beat He destroyed everybody at light heavyweight,
which at the time was the toughest weight class in
the company, in the sport. And then I moved up
to heavyweight, one easily at heavyweight, and and and when
you look at a guy and you look at what
(48:00):
he was doing outside the octagon at the same time,
which shouldn't be part of it, shouldn't be part of
the equation. But when you do, wow, John Jones, there's
no debate. Nobody can debate who's the greatest of all time.
It's absolutely positively John Jones. He's never lost, nobody's never
been beaten the octagon ever.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So that's one of the metrics like pure shared dominance,
but there's others right there. You could losing sometimes is
a catalyst for greatness.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I don't disagree. But when you've never lost, right, it's
you've never lost, We've never found somebody. And all the
other thing is that you have to put a factor
into is longevity, how long he's because sometimes with a
lot of these guys, the sport passes them by. You
get younger guys that are faster this that, and the
(48:56):
sport evolves. Nobody's been able to beat John Jones. Oh.
And the other thing that you measure is, you know,
when you said dominance, it's true if you're this guy
that has unbelievable power and you're just going in and
you're just fucking knocking everybody out, and nobody's ever pulled
you into the deep water before that was when my
opinion of John Jones started to change. Gustafson took him
(49:19):
into the deep water. Gustafson hit him with some shit
he'd never been hit with. Gustafson tested him and put
John Jones in a place where I bet if you
sat down and interviewed John Jones going into the deep
rounds of that John Jones thought he was gonna die,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
And he's willing to go there, and he kept going.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
He was willing to do whatever it took to win
that fight.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
And it breaks my heart because he beat d C.
And d C is one of the greatest of all time.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
That's the thing too, And I believe that DC doesn't
get the credit he deserves because of the John Jones thing.
When you look at DC and what he's accomplished, right,
and John Jones beat him twice, it's undeniable. You can
hate all you want. John Jones was the greatest of
all time.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Do you think Habib was tested enough?
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I think that Habib had the potential to be in
the running for that. He didn't. He just didn't stick
around a lot. First of all, he had injuries that
that that you know, he should have been where he
got a lot sooner had he not had the injuries
that he had and the setbacks in his career. But
there's no doubt Habib is one of the all time greats.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
What's the good, the bad, and ugly of your relationship
with Connor?
Speaker 1 (50:33):
There's literally no ugly. Connor McGregor has been an incredible
partner to work with. Everybody thinks that Connor. If Connor
showed up the things on time, there wouldn't be one
fucking bad thing I could say about Connor.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
You know, if you.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Fucking said put a gun to my fucking head right
and said, don't lie, motherfucker, tell me all the bad
things about Connor McGregor, I'd say the guy didn't show
up on time. That's it. If Connor McGregor showed up
to shit on time, and some times he does, sometimes
he does, he'd be He's been a great partner. If
you look at what a huge superstar he became, the
(51:08):
fights that he was involved in. Let me tell you
what Connor McGregor never did. We never walked in a
room and said, Connor, this guy just fell out. We
want you to fight this guy. And he was like,
no way, I'm not taking this fucking risk. I'm at
this point in my career where my money, my this
my that. He was like, fok it, let's do it.
You know, you'd always say let's do it. The other
(51:28):
thing that Connor McGregor never did, no matter how big
he was or whatever it was, and we were heading
into a fight, Oh, Connor. This guy just fell out.
Although fell out, we were looking for another. Yeah, I'll
do it, but I'm gonna need another fucking two hundred thousand.
I'm gonna need another million dollars. I'm gonna Connor McGregor
never did that kind of chicken shit, you know, bullshit
(51:48):
kind of stuff. He never did any of that. Connor
was as solid a guy as you could possibly work with.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Just fuck it, I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I'll do it, literally would. There's actually a scene because
we were filming something. I don't know if it was
embedded or what we were filming at the time. Me
and Lorenzo walk into his house that he rented here
in Vegas, and I'm pretty sure it was when Aldolf
fell out, and we're telling him this that, and we're
looking at some options. He says, I'm going to the
gym when I'm done working out. Let me know. He
(52:16):
just woke up out of bed, He's in his fucking
underwear and he gets hit with this and he's like,
all right, I'm going to the gym. Let me know
when I get out. Who I'm fighting, doesn't care, doesn't
want to know, doesn't want any more money, nothing, fucking
shows up and he delivers. Yeah. So you know, Connor
has been incredibly successful. He's made a lot of money,
(52:39):
and you know, he's had his ups and downs outside
and inside the octagon. But as for a guy who
was you know, on the dole and was a plumber,
he's actually a really smart businessman and he's been one
of the best partners that I've ever had in the
history of the.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Sport and an important part of the history of the
UFC big he opened it up to all kinds of
new Yep.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
He literally you know, set Europe, Australia, Canada and many
other parts of the world on fire Man. He was
our first legit megastar.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
And I personally think he doesn't get enough credit for
just how good he was as a fighter. And people
love to talk shit about Connor, so I suppose that's
part of his magic.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
And but but it comes with success. Yeah, when you're successful,
there's always people out there that are going to talk shit.
You know, you always have a bunch of know nothing,
do nothing, fucking losers that love to talk shit.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
You think if you were to do it all over again,
Habib is the right matchup.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, listen, you the thing that you can't do is
avoid matchups. You know what I mean. This is what
we're talking about when you talk about being a legend.
Connor McGregor needed Habib. Habib needed Connor McGregor. It's you
can hate each other as much as you want, but
you have to fight these other legendary bad motherfuckers to
(54:05):
yourself become a legend. I mean, it's like John Jones
needed Cyril Gun right, and Cyril gun needed John Jones.
Because if Cyril could have beat John, the first guy,
if anybody can ever figure it out and beat John Jones,
it's a big deal. And it's almost like your obligation
as a fighter. Right. And when you think about John
(54:28):
Jones became who he is today and the reason I'm
sitting here telling you how great he is because all
these other guys gave him the opportunity to beat them, right,
or they beat John. It's all about giving these other
guys the opportunity. Saint Dennis, right, Poorier gave him the
opportunity to come in and beat him. That's how this
(54:50):
all works.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
It's the two of them together, the two fighters together.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
You have to have them both. Listen. I could line up,
I could line up a bunch of no name bums
that John Jones could run through. That's what they do
in all the other organizations. Yeah, right, we would have
nothing to fucking talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's why, luckily, a perfect record in the UFC is
not as important as who you fought, you go through.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
But when you have a perfect record in the UFC,
holy shit, right, yeah, that's what she would. When you
can have a perfect record in the UFC, you are
absolutely one of the most special athletes on planet Earth.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
You and Trump are friends. I just talked to Ivonca
last night and I bought her experience at the at
the in the Miami event. She loves it. She's training too.
You're talking about getting girls to train. She's trained and.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
The kids are training. Yeah. Her father's the biggest fucking
fight fan on the planet. Calls me all the time
to talk about the fights. And Don Junior said that
I'm like the only guy on Earth that he bros
out with, like you know, we it's it's funny when
you talk about how powerful fighting is. Right this last
Miami event, the president of Ecuador and the president of
(56:07):
Spain both posted about the fights. Right. Habib beat Connor
Putin was on FaceTime before he even made it to
the to the locker room. Trump sitting president ex president,
watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.
Valentina Chevshanko. Every time she goes home, she meets with
(56:29):
the president of the country. The list goes on and
on and on. The most powerful Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. I mean,
the list goes on and on and on. The most
powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.
Speaker 2 (56:42):
When did you first discover that Trump loves fighting?
Speaker 1 (56:44):
So I first discovered that Trump was a big fight van.
Obviously you saw him part of all the big you're
talking about how big boxing fans we were. He was
a part of all the big fights back then. But
when we first bought the UFC, this thing was so bad.
Venues didn't even want us, and we ended up doing
you know, our first event in Atlantic City at the
(57:05):
Trump taj Mahal. Now think about this. At that time,
Trump brand here, UFC brand, I mean, I can't go
low enough. And he had us at his venue two
times back to back, showed up for the first fight
of the night and stayed till the last fight of
the night. Then after that, any good thing that would
(57:26):
ever happen to me in my career, Trump would reach out,
whether it was we were on the front page of
the New York Times at one time, and he said,
congratulations day. Now we knew you guys were going to
do it. Little things like that, but that that are
big things, I mean a lot, especially coming from a
guy like him.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
So he saw he saw something in you, like this
is going to be one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
He definitely saw it. And then comes fifteen sixteen whenever
it was, I don't remember, but he called me and
he said, listen, if you don't want to do this,
I completely understand, but I would be honored if you
would speak at the National Republican Convention for me. And
(58:08):
I'm not a very political guy, you know what I mean.
And everybody told me not to do it, do not
do this, but I was like, why would I not
do this? This guy's been great to me, you know,
and I did it, and our relationship is just like
you know what I mean. I consider Donald Trump to
(58:29):
be one of my very very good friends.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Any favorite stories.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
I mean, there's so many stories. I mean, once he
won the election, like I'd be at work and I'd
be down the hall was in the matchmaker room whatever,
and my secretary Dell, the President's on the phone, fucking
come running down the hallway and grab the phone and
he'd want to talk about the fight that was coming up,
with the fight that happened, or I'd be in my
(58:55):
car and i'd answer the phone. It's like, uh, hi,
this is the house. We have the President of the
United States on the phone. You know that's a trip
when that first starts happening. And then just to sum
him up, this is the kind of guy that you
(59:17):
want to talk about. A fighter. This is the most
resilient human being I've ever met. If you see the
shit that this guy's going through publicly every day, and
I'll call him on the phone as a friend and
be like, hey, you're good, how you doing? Unfaced, unfaced,
(59:39):
like nothing's going on, and they'll start talking to me
about this and that and all this other shit. One time,
there's only been one time. I've never talked about this publicly,
but one time I called him and he was not good.
He was a mess. And I've never heard him like that,
and I've never seen him like that. When Ivana died,
(01:00:02):
the only time I've ever seen him fucked up. Obviously,
as soon as I heard it, I reached out, and
I have never think look at all the stuff that's
gone on with Trump, all the bad stuff that they say,
they're trying to attack him, they're trying to ruin him. Unfazed.
I called him that day and he was It's the
first time I've ever seen that guy bust it up
(01:00:22):
and and and not good.
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
But that says something that that's the only time that
guy is let me walk in through he.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Will walk through fire. He's an absolute savage.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
You think he wins the presidential election.
Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I don't know, man, It's going to depend on how
this whole politics is the most dirtiest, scummiest thing on
planet Earth, man, and and who knows how this is
all going to play out. It's it's all dirty, it's
all ugly. And you know, obviously I'm rooting for him,
and and I'm behind him, and I hope he does
what we'll say was.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Dirty or the fighting game in the early days, or politics.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
There's nothing dirtyer than politics. Nothing. There's literally nothing dirtier.
All Right, it is the dirtiest thing on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Planets going to get that on record. Another guy who
doesn't seem to be fazed by the fire I've gotten
to know him is Elon. I have to ask you,
it's a bit of fun. You were a part of
thinking about putting together U versus Elon. I trained with both.
I did a phone call with Elon and you when
you when we were training on the mat. Yeah, you
(01:01:30):
really think that could have been a good fight.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
It would have been the biggest fight ever done.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
The spectacle of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Two of the most powerful, wealthiest man in the world. Right,
lots of guys talk shit and go back and forth
and sue each other and do all this stuff. These
two guys were literally talking about facing each other in
the octagon and fighting. There's nothing. And they're in a
business that's looked at as geeky, you know what I mean.
They're they're they're tech nerds, they're this, they're that. These
(01:01:58):
are two dudes that were willing to throw down and
fight and uh and and you know as well as
I do. There's a lot of public speculation about this.
I was taking serious real time and working on this thing.
I mean, I had projections, I had numbers, I was
looking at venues, I was on the phone with the
fucking coliseum in Italy, you name it. I was in it.
These guys were serious and this was something that was
(01:02:20):
really gonna happen. And I'll tell you right now, in
the short amount of time that it was, it was
going down. It was fun. I was having a blast
with it.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
What do you think about Tyson Tyson fighting Jake Paul?
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
I love Mike Tyson, and I'm not a fan of
anybody fighting at our age. But he's a grown man, obviously,
and you know he's gonna do what he's gonna do.
But at least I know. I talked to I talked
to his wife a couple of days ago, and he's
(01:02:54):
taking this serious and he's trained for it, and you know,
so we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
What do you think he fights still?
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Like?
Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
What is that about? Is there a broader lesson there
about fighters?
Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
I think that Mike Tyson is actually one of those
unique guys who has crossed over any of these other
boxers from his era, they have no way of making
money other than fighting. Mike Tyson's made a lot of
money outside of fighting. I mean, Tyson still has that
aura you could be at a restaurant and he walks
in and you're like, holy fuck, Mike Tyson's here. You know,
(01:03:29):
he still has that type of aura and energy in
a room, and he makes lots of money outside of
the ring. I just I think that he ends up
getting these offers that he can't refuse.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Oh, you think it's financial, So how much? I mean,
that's a good question to ask. You work with a
lot of fighters. For how many of them is it
about money? And for how many is it about the
fact the pure love of fighting.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Well, the guys that get into it for the right
reason are the guys who get into it for greatness,
because you want to be the fucking best, right, And
when you're in it for that reason, right, you love
it and you want to be looked at as the
best ever, and you have the talent, the money happens.
(01:04:19):
Right then you have other guys who get it. I
believe I've dealt with fighters who just wanted to be
famous and just wanted to make money, you know what
I mean. And it's you know, listen, it is what
it is. It's your life, and you live it the
way that you want and do your thing. But the
ones that are beloved are the guys who really want
to be fucking great, and they're the ones that are remembered.
(01:04:41):
And I mean when you look at Tyson in his
early years when he came up under costum motto, I mean,
he was a student of the game. He loved everything.
He became completely infatuated with the fight game. Then he
became such a massive superstar. It's almost like the whole
thing starts to turn on. You know, all the things
that come at you at a young age and that
(01:05:03):
kind of money, and it's it's tough. It's tough to
navigate and get through. And you know, you say something
like that, people are like, oh, poor him. He had
fucking one hundred million dollars and couldn't at that age
and with all the ship that people talk and all
the things that you got to put up with and
the fame. A lot of people deal with fame. Some
people handle it really well and some people don't. And
(01:05:24):
the perfect example of that was Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonner.
You know, they fought that that unbelievable fight on The
Ultimate Fighter. Everything blew up after that. Forrest dealt with
fame really well, and and Stefan did not.
Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
That was a special fight.
Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
It really was.
Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
What do you think attracted people to that fight? So
that that made that was a big leap for the
It was everything.
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
It was everything.
Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Why do you think people love that fight? What attracted
people to that fight? Why did they change everything?
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Well, what happened that night. The rest of the show
was a disaster. You know, we had the co main
event and the main event, Diego Sanchez ran through Kenny
Floyan in seconds. Oh my god, that was terrible. And
the fights that led up to that weren't anything to
talk about either. Then Stefan Forrest got in there and
(01:06:19):
just went toe to toe in this unbelievable slug fest
live on free television when cable still mattered. And what
I heard was at the time, you know, you had
people picking up the phone going are you watching this show?
The numbers just started climbing. Then you got a razor
thin decision. Who's gonna win? He got the crowd stomping
(01:06:42):
their feet. It sounded like a train was going through
the place, and everybody's chanting one more round. Me and
the Ftida brothers get together and we talk. We're gonna
give them both contracts. So we give them both contracts
in the place of Erupts. It just it couldn't have
been a more perfect fight at the most perfect time,
and it just it it all came together. It's almost
(01:07:04):
like this was meant to be, you know what I mean.
So we had so many problems with Spike TV at
the time, right because halfway through the season the president
of the company got fired. All the things that we
thought we were going to get that year. You know,
we had this runaway hit show, and normally at that time,
(01:07:25):
when you would see runaway hit shows, there'd be commercials,
it'd be on be on billboards, it'd be on the
side of buses in LA and New York. We got
none of that, right, We didn't even know if we
were gonna get, you know, a second season coming out
of that. Right, And when that fight was over, I
(01:07:46):
swear to god, I was like, I don't even give
a fuck. We're gonna end up somewhere now after this fight.
And we didn't even make it out of the building
that night. The Spike guys did the contract with us
in the alley on a fucking napkin. After the fight.
Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
He saw the you already saw the magic of the
fight itself.
Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
That happened and all the shit. And at that time
I didn't know what the rating is, not like we
were streaming and we could see what. We had no idea,
but I knew.
Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
He just knew this is I knew what is it.
It's like just two people being willing to stand toe
to toe and just go to the war.
Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
And when you think about what was at stake, there
was a car. Remember the kiya Ya. The winner got
a Kiya right, That's what was the fucking right and
deafenite Forrest the will to win. They both wanted to
win that fight so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
It was bigger than the Kia.
Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Probably, you know, Forrest drove that Kia to like two
hundred thousand miles. The biggest mistake Kia ever made was
not doing a fucking commercial with Forrest Griffin about that car.
Forst Griffin loved that car so much he drove it.
I think he still has it. It's got like two
hundred thousand miles on that ball. I mean, you couldn't
have a better fucking commercial than that. They and we
(01:09:00):
reached out to them too, I said, Kia should know
about this. Yeah, they fucking blew it. You got a
bunch of you know those guys. Yeah, yeah, are in
the business world. They don't get anything.
Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Maybe it was about the Kia, then it was about winning.
Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
They both wanted to win the ultimate fighter so bad. Yeah,
it's the Kia, it's it's the win, it's the it's
the the contractor get the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
But I think at that point you even forget all
of that when you're in there. You probably just there's
the primal thing where like, I'm not backing down.
Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
They're both bad dudes. They were both real fighters at
the end of the day. That's why the fight was
so great.
Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Yeah, you know what I mean, and just throw it all,
all the caution into the wind and just fight. Those
are some of the greatest moments in the FC two
when the technique is not kind of falls apart and
you're just like.
Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Well fuck, because you're in those deep rounds you've had,
you've been through a war. Now it's all about heart
and dog. Who can dig deeper and who's got it
and who wants it? Who wants it? I mean we
all know when that when that moment happens in a fight,
when you see that both of these guys are fucking exhausted,
And for people that are watching this, people that don't
(01:10:08):
know a lot about everybody thinks they know a lot
about fighting. Ninety nine point nine percent of the people
out there don't know fucking jack shit about fighting or
what it takes to do what these people do. But
when you get into those later rounds and fatigue sets in,
and then fatigue makes you start to fucking doubt yourself,
and then you start to wonder, can I even make
(01:10:29):
it through the rest of this round? And then you
start to think, am I gonna fucking die right now?
And these kids dig fucking deep and they just like
you said, all the other shit flies out the window
and now they're just on fucking autopilot to fight and win.
Those are definitely the best fight you'll ever see in
any combat sport.
Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
I mean that's saying it is true, like the exhaustion
makes cowards of us all. I mean, they're there's something
about because I've competed a lot in jiu jitsu, so
there's the violence of being hit too, But even just exhaustion,
it makes you question everything, so true, it just takes
you just some weird place where your brain starts to
(01:11:09):
think you're going to die for sure. Your brain starts
to think, like why am I doing this? All these excuses,
all this, and then the truly heroic action is to
say fuck it in that moment and just to get
in there.
Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
When you think about these fights that you see in
the UFC every fucking Saturday, when these men and women
get to this point where they've been in a dog fight,
yet they keep fucking going and you keep trying to win,
you can't imagine what's going on inside their heads, you know,
self doubt and all these other things that come into
(01:11:44):
play when exhaustion sets in and they fucking power through it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Yeah, those moments sometimes they're not They don't have a
glorious knockout at the end, but your decision in the
third round or the fifth round, they'll keep pushing forward,
not running just then that's that doesn't matter what happened
that like, that is a person winning a battle over themselves.
Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
So true, It's so true, and it happens every fucking weekend.
It's so impressive that I say it all the time.
The people that are involved in this sport are this
much of the population. The people that make it to
the top five are incredibly unique special human beings. Man,
it's it's fucking awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
You love gambling, I do. What's the biggest win of
your gambling career? Maybe psychologically, if not financially.
Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Well, two things. I want a million dollar hand one
night It's happened one time, A million dollar hand one
night at man Le Bay. And then one summer, I
bet I beat Caesars for twelve million, uh, throughout the summer.
Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Throughout the summer.
Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Yeah, and then I'm a pretty good run right now too.
Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
This, Yeah, what's the biggest loss?
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
The biggest loss was? Uh? I would here here was.
I would call this the biggest loss for many different reasons.
This this is what you know. You live and your
learn in life, and you you know, you figure things
out as you go along. So one night I'm over
at the at the rio, right, and uh, they got
(01:13:37):
big sweets over there. So I go over there with
some buddies and we got one of the sweets, and
we have some dinner and we start drinking. Right. So
we're having some drinks at dinner and blah blah blah
starts to ramp up, having a good time, and I
make my way down to the thigh limit room. We
start gambling and I continue to drink, having a blast.
(01:14:02):
I end up leaving and going home that night, and
I lost like eighty grand. Right, So I wake up
the next morning, I'm like, fuck, those motherfuckers got me
for eighty thousand last night, and da da da da da.
So I'm at work the next day and the host
over there calls me and he says, hey, Dana, are
(01:14:22):
you coming back? Do you still need the room that
you guys had where you ate and all the shit
used to And I said, no, I don't need the room,
but don't get don't get too comfortable with my fucking
eighty grand I'm coming back for it. Yeah, dead fucking
silence on the other end of the phone. And he's like, Dana,
you lost three million dollars last night. What the fuck
(01:14:45):
are you talking about. I only have a million and
a half dollar credit line. He goes, yeah, you made
us call the GM of the hotel and you started
calling him a fucking pussy and da da da da da,
and I and I went, yeah, no, that that that
sounds like something I would do.
Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Yeah, so that's the real number.
Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
That was the real number. And then and then you know,
There's been a lot of cases where people are in
Vegas and they're like, oh, you know, I lost all
this money, you know, and they were giving me free drinks,
and I drank too much, and I was taking advantage
of no, no, you stupid motherfucker. Man up, you got
(01:15:29):
fucking drunk, right, they didn't. Alcohol is free, but you
don't have to fucking drink it, you know what I mean?
And you know this, This was a huge learning lesson
for me. So I never drank again when I when
I was playing cards after that night. But yeah, when
you asked me, that's the one that stands. I had
(01:15:51):
the most as far as uh having a bad loss.
And then you know, of course I said call the
GM and I started calling them O plus he at
three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
So of course you did.
Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
That is something I would absolutely do.
Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
How do you deal with those psychologically?
Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
When you gamble? Maybe this supplies to fighting too. Do
you love winning or hate losing more?
Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
They go hand in hand. So the way that I
that I play is I live in Vegas. So twenty
twenty four is a war for me. I go to
war in twenty four. Okay, all these nights that I
play are little battles inside the war that I will
fight in twenty four Now, at the end of the year,
(01:16:36):
we will tal tally up all these little battles and
see where I stand on wins and losses. And you know,
there's lots of talk about out there about my gambling,
you know, places that I've been kicked out of and
things like that, and I do pretty well. I do
(01:16:59):
pretty well, but it's it's what I like to do.
You know. I don't gamble in a way that I
would ever hurt myself or hurt my family or you know,
I'm sure you've heard the Norm McDonald stories. Norm McDonald
lost like his entire personal wealth four times or something
like that. Yeah, that's not gonna happen to me.
Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
So you manage it. But just psychologically you're able to
be even gay.
Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
So when I win, it's awesome. It's always great to win.
Winning is a great feeling in business, in sports, in life,
and definitely in gambling. Losing is never fun, but it's
part of the game, you know what I mean. If
you want to be in the game and it's sports,
(01:17:46):
it's business or whatever, there's going to be wins and
there's going to be losses, and you have to take
them both in stride, and you have to be able
to you know, there's a lot of people when you
gamble right and you lose and you go into a deep,
dark depression. I've seen this with guys that do it
get depressed. Gambling isn't for you, you know, if you
(01:18:08):
are the type of person that's on social media and
people say horrible things to you and you get depressed,
and you shouldn't be on social media, you know what
I mean. These are all part of being in the game.
When you're in the fucking game, great things happen and
really bad things happen, and you got to take it
all in stride, and you got to pick yourself up
the next day, strap your fucking shoes back on, and
(01:18:30):
get out there and go to fucking war again. That's
how it works.
Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
I has some ggging shit right there, all right. I
love that motivational speech.
Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
It's the truth though. It's the truth though. Listen, every
day when you get out of bed, life standing right
there to kick you in the fucking face. Man, could
be anything could be. You get up and you walk downstairs.
You got a fucking flat tire and you're late for work,
and you got this and that life is gonna throw
all kinds of crazy shit at you right and you
have to be ready for it, and you gotta fucking
(01:18:59):
deal with it. Can't curl up into a ball, You
can't run away from it, you can't hide. You have
to take all this shit head on. You have to
get up every every day. When I get up out
of bed, I strap up, and I'm getting ready for
fucking war because I know I'm coming in here. I
know a bunch of bad shit's gonna happen that I'm
ennough to fucking deal with. And if that's not bad enough,
when I finally get out of here, I'm probably gonna
(01:19:20):
go to the casino and I'm gonna get into another
fucking war. You know what I mean. I thrive in chaos.
I actually love chaos. Everybody talks about retiring, Fuck that shit.
What am I gonna do when I retire? What would
I do? What would I I liked? I like to
go to war. I like the battle. I like to win.
Sometimes I lose, but then I have to come back
(01:19:41):
from the loss. And I love the build brands. I
love to set short term and long term goals and
then knock them all down. You know, this is just
the stuff that that that excites me and and and
whether it's business or or gambling or I like being
a fan of things too. Like I like live music,
(01:20:03):
so when I find like a band that I like,
I get excited to go watch the band live, or
a Celtics game. I love the fucking Boston Celtics, and
I love, you know, going to the games and Washington
this is the year. Hopefully we're gonna fucking win it
this year. These are all things that make me happy
and excite me in my life. And it's funny because
there's this post that I post maybe three four nights
(01:20:25):
a week. I also love the city. I can't tell
if the city of Las Vegas was built for me
or I was built for this fucking city, but I
love it. And there's this turn on Smerlan Parkway right
every night, and it's dark and from there you can
see the entire fucking city and it's all fucking lights
and it's badass. And I'm usually driving home after a
(01:20:47):
fucking incredible day, right, this amazing day, and this unbelievable
fucking life that I have, and I have this just
moment of gratitude every time I take that turn and
I'm like, God, damn, I love this fucking city. And
just every night when I go home, I'm just so
happy and grateful for this life that I have.
Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
So you're grateful, you're celebrating. Even if the day is
full of shit, yet full of problems you have to
solve all of this, You're still able to put that
behind you.
Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
I love that too. I love problem solving. I love
I love taking things that seem impossible. Yeah, fucking what's
been shipped on more than this fucking company right here? Yeah?
Power slap right, Yeah, this thing's a fucking beast. It's
an absolute beast. In thirteen months, that's the most successful
(01:21:38):
thing I've ever been a part of. And I love
every fucking minute of it, especially the negativity. I love negativity.
Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I say, you almost feet on it. That's great. You're
a build.
Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
I eat that shit for fucking breakfast, man, I love it.
Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
What's your favorite movie about Vegas? Casino?
Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Yeah it would have to be Casino, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
You ever see a movie that changed your life, that
that actually impacted your life in some way, shape or form.
Probably which one.
Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
That's a good question. I have to think, Well, I
have a lot, a lot, because you know, it could
be one of them. Probably taught me about women, you know,
Forrest gomp for me, it's a simple movie, but it was.
It was a really good movie to show. It reminded
me because I've been really fortunate in my life, like
over and over and over, and I don't think I
(01:22:28):
deserve any of it. So I just always felt like
Forrest com So when I finally saw it, it really
connected with me. It was like, Okay, this this universe
works in weird ways and stuff just materializes and you
just kind of be good to people, like put that
good karma out there and it happens for you. So
that that was a movie like.
Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
That, I'm actually very superstitious about that. I believe that
that that what you what you put out, you get back.
And I believe that when you have you should take
care of other people and you should always try to
bring people up with you and all that kind of stuff.
But the movie that changed the whole trajectory of my
(01:23:06):
life was Vision Quest.
Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Yeah, well yeah that's a good one too.
Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Yeah, Vision Quest, Man, I fucking love that movie. It's basically,
you know, it's telling the story of a kid who
really wasn't anybody in high school, and nobody kind of
knew he was. He wasn't popular or any of that
kind of shit, and he decided that that was the
year that he was going to make his mark. And
he was a good wrestler at one hundred and seventy
eight pounds, but he was going to move down to
one sixty something to take on the shoot the scariest
(01:23:33):
guy in the whatever. But there's all these little things
in the movie that really lay out what life is
all about. One of the parts is he's in a
class and he's talking about the teacher's talking about some
poem and he says, what does this poem mean to you? Well,
this little girl's walking through, you know, the park, and
(01:23:54):
all the leaves are falling off the trees, and she
realizes that she's going to die someday, and that a
lot of people think they have all this time, so
they fucking waste it and then never go out and
do what they really set out to do or accomplish
or do anything great in their life. That's one meeting.
Then he's got the guy that he works with at work.
You know, he's cutting weight and his nose is bleeding
(01:24:16):
and all this shit, and this guy keeps going, why
the fuck are you doing this? Pick that thing up
and eat it like a fucking man. This is ridiculous.
I don't know why you're doing this to yourself. Blah
blah blah blah blah. So then when he meets the
girl and he gets to the point where he feels
like he wants to quit, right, where does he go?
He goes to that guy's fucking apartment because he knows
when he shows up at this guy's apartment, he's gonna go, yeah,
(01:24:37):
fuck this shit. No, he went to work, He went
to work to talk to him, and he wasn't at work.
He took the night off. So he shows up at
the fucking house at the shitty little fucking apartment that
the guy lives, and the guy's putting a suit and
tie on and shit. He's like, they said, you called
in sick. What's going on? He's like, well, yeah, aren't
you wrestling this guy tonight? And he's like, yeah, but
why would you You're gonna get doctor Knight's pay, And
(01:24:58):
all of a sudden she says, you know what, then
it all gets laid out. I get the goosebumps even
telling you this fucking pele. Yeah, when he's saying about,
you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm fucking cooking in an
overnight hotel fucking thing, and I live in this shitty apartment.
A human being can lift himself upside down and backwards
and kick a ball into a fucking net, and the
(01:25:19):
whole stadium goes crazy. And this guy runs around and
I'm sitting here in my fucking apartment alone, and I
start crying. Yeah, I start crying. So the guy who's
been shipping on him the whole fucking time actually really
respects him for what he's done and sees what this
kid is capable of doing, and all this shit. This
just this fucking movie spoke to me on so many
different levels. And I think it's probably the most underrated
(01:25:41):
movie of all time. When you really break down the
meaning of what this movie is about, and and and
and it fucking really spoke to me.
Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
That's probably the greatest movie on combat, one on one combat,
I would agree ever made.
Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
I would agree. Yeah, And especially if you can really
here the messages that it's that, it's that it's given
you in this movie. It's it's it's excellent. You know,
it's funny. They just did like the and I saw
this after the fact, which completely fucking pissed me off.
They did like the twenty five year or the thirty
year thing. It was filmed in Spokane, Washington. They showed
(01:26:17):
the movie at a movie theater there and the cast
members came out and spoke about it. I would have
fucking flown there for that, Are you shitting me? I'd
have been there fucking thirty seconds to go up there
and and and be a part of that that that
movie literally changed my life.
Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
Yeah, I suppose me too. It made me, uh, it
made me want to wrestle. I mean probably the reason
I was maybe it made me love fall in love
with wrestling.
Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Well, you know, it's funny. I wasn't even into wrestling
at all, and I didn't have to be for that movie.
Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
To It's in a basic human story.
Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
It's such a great movie.
Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
I mean that's what fighting does. It brings out the
basic like the humanity of a person. Really, like if
for the people that choose to step up, and it's
step in the ring and then chase greatness and actually
do it from like against the long odds. That's why
it's a beautiful game.
Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
And it's so true. I mean when you think about like,
I'm fifty four years old right now, like that, I mean,
it just fucking flew by, and you think when you're
young that you have all this time. You have no time.
There's there's no time. I mean one of the of
the quotes on the wall in the gym, and there's
(01:27:24):
you know, there is no tomorrow. From from Rocky three,
you know there is no tomorrow. Fuck that ship. Let's
let's let's get all this shit done today.
Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Do you think about your death?
Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
I'm not afraid of death, not even a little bit.
I'm not afraid of it. I don't know if that'll
be the case when I'm facing it, you know, when
I'm looking down the barrel of it, laying in the
hospital bed somewhere, but for now.
Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Just squeezing as much as you can out of it.
Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
I literally I don't even like to sleep. My life
is so fucking awesome. I don't even want to go
to bed at night. I don't even want to go
to sleep. I don't want to stay up. I wish
I could fucking do twenty four hours and never have
to sleep. That's how much I love my life.
Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
What is watching thousands of fights over the years taught
you about human nature? About us humans.
Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
I don't care what color you are, what country you
come from, what language you speak. We're all human beings.
Fightings in our DNA. We get it and we like it.
And it's true. Fighting is in our dna. It's a
part of who we are. And you know, no matter
where you are, fight breaks out. It creates this fucking energy,
this buzz, this sense of fear. I mean a lot
(01:28:34):
of different emotions happen in people when fights break out,
but one thing that is always the case. Everybody's watching, man,
everybody's fucking all of their eyes are on the fight.
I mean, we were just a Mexico fucking fight broke
out like in the good seats, like right here, the
seats they are super expensive insecurity never fucking came. Yeah,
(01:28:57):
they just let these guys fight until they gassed out. Yeah,
and then everybody put their chairs back together and snap
back down. Fucking I literally got up from my table,
walked over and was watching this fight at the fights.
Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
At the fights. Yeah, I mean humans fight and humans
love watching.
Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
Fighting, absolutely, and that was my thought process going into
buying the UFC, and I believe that this would work everywhere,
and thank god we were right.
Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Well, Dana, thank you for bringing this very human thing
of fighting, the art of it, the science of it,
the heroic stories, the vision quests, stories of it all. Boom,
I really appreciate you talking to it.
Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
Brother. Thank you, pleasure buddy, thank you for the kind words.
Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dana White. To
support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from
Muhammad Ali. Impossible it's just a big word thrown around
by small men who find it easier to live in
a world they've been given than to explore the power
they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact,
(01:30:02):
it's an opinion. Impossible it is not a declaration. It's
a dare. Thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.