Q&A with Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championships
Michael Rand, Star Tribune
Dana White, 37, is largely credited with helping turn Ultimate Fighting Championships from a farce into a force in the world of mixed martial arts. As UFC president, White has overseen staggering growth in the public consciousness and helped UFC stake a larger claim in the pay-per-view market than WWE or boxing last year. As it goes more mainstream -- UFC was featured on recent covers of Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine -- White has ideas about how it can grow even bigger. He talked about a wide range of topics recently with the Star Tribune.
Q The cover of SI is a long way to come for something that used to be compared to "human cockfighting." How did UFC rehab itself and its image to get to this point! ?
A I don't think it's that we necessarily rehabbed. When we bought the company (in 2001), what we did was we took a whole different approach. We didn't run from regulation. We built it as nothing but a sport with great athletes. It's just an education process with the public, and it took us almost seven years.
Q What did you see in mixed martial arts and the UFC that made you and the Fertitta brothers think you could turn it around if you bought it?
A It was around 1997 or 1998 that it all turned around for us. We were all boxing guys and I used to think UFC was a joke. I would say, "Those guys would get their [butts] kicked by a boxer. Me, Frank and Lorenzo [Fertitta] started taking Jujitsu lessons, and it opened our eyes to a whole new world. It literally changed my life. I've been involved with fighting all my life, and I wondered, "How have I walked around for 30 years and not known this. It's incredible." ... S! o that was our introduction. Then we met the athletes. They we! re colle ge educated, they were good guys. There was so much misconception about the sport and the guys that fight. We said, "Imagine if we got out there and really promoted it in the right way and let people know what kind of athletes these are."
Q Right, but it's clearly been cleaned up since it started -- since you guys took over.
A Here's the thing, and it's not to take a knock at the old owners. But this thing started in 1993 when a bunch of TV guys wanted to answer the question, "What fighting style is the best?" Would a boxer beat a wrestler? And so on. ... These guys never knew they were creating a sport at all. They just sort of fell into it.
Q UFC garnered a lot of indirect press recently before the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing match, as some people wondered if it was boxing's final hurrah before UFC took over the stage for good. How do you view the relationship between the two sports, and c! an they coexist?
A I always seem like the guy who's smashing boxing, and really I love the sport. But boxing has a lot of problems right now. You can be a fan of both. You can watch De La Hoya/Mayweather and UFC, but the problem is people are tired of boxing. The way I built this business was to use boxing as a blueprint for what not to do. When I grew up, my uncles and I used to watch boxing on ABC's Wide World of Sports. After that, when I was 18 or 19, it was USA's Tuesday Night Fights. Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis, all those guys fought, and through that they built up to pay-per-view. They used to give you good fights on free TV. On the pay-per-view model, everyone got greedy. We give great fights on free TV and great fights on pay-per-view. With boxing, they didn't do anything to secure the future of the sport.
Q If I read a figure correctly, you had more than $222 million in pay-per-view revenue in 2006 -- more than WWE and boxing. Is tha! t when people really started to take notice of UFC as a major ! player i n the fight business?
A We never release our numbers, so I have no comment on that number. But we did beat WWE and boxing. ... I don't know if people really look at that. I'm serious. And we never got into this to make money. Smart businessmen never would have bought the UFC. They would have said, "Hell, no. We're going to lose our [butts] on this business." We're in it because we're passionate about the sport. All sports have gotten to be too about the money. ... I don't like talking about the money. Who gives a [rip]? Do you like the fights? That's what it's really all about. I'm a guy who did exactly what he wanted to do. When you do that, the money follows.
Q Chuck Liddell is among the most recognizable UFC fighters. What impact does his recent loss to Quinton Jackson have on UFC?
A It happens in this sport. Guys lose. Chuck is one of those fighters that's going to bounce back. He's a tough guy. ... You never know! who's going to win. Chuck getting knocked out was the equivalent of Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson.
Q The fighting happens in an octagon. I'm interested in how that originated.
A Originally, the guys who created the octagon, their reasoning was for safety. They do wrestling takedowns and you can't do that in a ring because you'd fall through the ropes. And it was supposed to be style vs. style, so they didn't want any one style to have an advantage. All different types of styles fight in all types of arenas.
Q So what's the next step -- the UFC one-year or even five-year plan?
A Right now we haven't even scratched the surface of how big this is going to be in the United States. We haven't even gone after the Hispanic market. We just opened an office in London, which is going to be a launching pad to Europe. Eventually, we want to be the first company to do worldwide pay-per-view.
Q&A
