Between speaking at the Republican National Convention and the fact the UFC continues to make international headlines, Dana White has been a busy man of late.
The UFC president was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live Thursday night where he opened up about the UFC’s recent $4-billion sale and his relationship with Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump among other things.
On being friends with Presidential candidate Donald Trump…
“When we first bought the UFC (in 2000) it had such a bad stigma attached to it, no venues wanted us at all…(the sport) wasn’t regulated by any athletic commissions except New Jersey. Donald Trump called and the thing is when you look at where Donald Trump’s brand was then and where our brand was, the fact that this guy called and said, ‘I would love for you to come and hold the event here in Atlantic City.’ He did the deal himself. He was so involved. Then, when we go out there and we put on the show, the guy shows up for the first prelim to the main event.
“Any time anything’s ever happened in my career he’s the first guy to pick up the phone and say, ‘congratulations, unbelievable, I knew you’d do it.’ He’s just always been a great guy to me.”
On the UFC selling for a cool $4 billion…
“When this deal closed, it bugged me out a little. When you make that kind of money — and my partners, I’ve been with them for 20 years so that’s all going to change; I have new partners now — I kind of Howard Hughes’d myself for a couple days in a hotel room for a couple days. Didn’t sleep or eat. it kind of freaked me out a little bit.”
On how he got first involved in the UFC…
“I managed Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell at the time and I used to get into these contract negotiations with the old owner of the UFC and basically one day when we were on the phone I was talking about pay-per-view and he was like, ‘Pay-per-view? There is no pay-per-view. This thing’s going out of business, we’re losing money,’ and all this stuff and I called my partner Lorenzo [Fertitta] and I said, ‘I think we can buy the UFC. I think these guys are in trouble and are going out of business.’ A couple months later we bought it for $2 million.”
