The Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC for short, might be the most controversial sports business in
the world today. Even the most gentle critics have said the UFC borders on barbaric. More boisterous critics
have thrown around terms such as human cockfighting to describe the fastest growing sport in the world.
Dana White is the president of the UFC. He attributes a great deal of his success at the helm of the UFC to
the sport’s authenticity. In this gilded era of pampered sports celebrities, fans have responded to the
humble and polite nature of the UFC athletes. Women in particular have turned to the sport in droves and now
comprise more than 40 per cent of the fan base.
“Other sports do everything they can to create a distance between their stars and their fans. We have gone
the other way by making our athletes completely accessible and this has driven our sport’s popularity,” he
says. “At the same time, I never anticipated the growth in the female side of the fan base. Women are now
doing girls-only group trips to Las Vegas for the UFC.
“Of course, I am not surprised that women support our athletes. Besides being the best conditioned athletes
in the world, almost 90 per cent of our guys are college-educated,” he adds.
With a closely shaven head and a brawler’s physique, White embodies the sport that he oversees. Listening to
him as he praises one man’s ability to force another man into submission, you are hard-pressed to picture
White as a devoted family guy. As they say, do not judge a book by its cover.
When he is not building his mixed martial arts empire, White is at home with his family. For all of his
success, family is his first priority.
“There are many different levels of success. No matter how successful I become in business, there is another
level of success that is that much more meaningful. What I really want out of life is that when it is all
said and done for me, my kids will say that I was a good dad. That is all I care about,” offers White.
Achieving a healthy work-life balance is difficult for someone who is constantly on the road and in the
public eye.
“I am busy. I travel four times a month. I work and I spend time with my family. If I have some spare time, I
work out or play blackjack,” says White. “My wife has been phenomenal. She doesn’t get jealous. I have a job
where I travel all the time in the public eye yet there is no jealousy. My wife handles all the big things at
home. She has the kids doing all of their activities and keeping life organized. When I am too focused at
work, she smacks me and reminds me of what is important.”
White and his wife Anne have been married for 14 years. They have three children. The two boys, Dana III and
Aidan, are nine and eight respectively. The lone girl, Savannah, is 4 years old. As one would expect, the
kids are all into sports.
“My kids are into everything. You name it, my kids are into it,” says the UFC president. “My son Dana has
become an accomplished quarterback in flag football. Of course, as I have said before, I think football is
incredibly dangerous, so I hope my son does not continue to pursue the sport as he gets older.”
Both Dana III and Aidan now train in mixed martial arts as well.
“I would not want them to fight for a living, but they have been training and they do love mixed martial
arts. Even Savannah has her little workout outfit and goes to the gym with the boys,” adds White.
Having recently purchased a Laguna Beach home, California sports such as surfing and skateboarding have now
become part of the White family routine.
“With the kids on summer holidays, they have been staying in Laguna Beach and are surfing three days a week,”
says White. “They go skateboarding on Mondays at Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, the skate park from Dyrdek’s
MTV show.”
White has been particularly enthusiastic about encouraging his kids to take up sports because he was not an
active child.
“I got into sports on my own. I had my mom and my sister around me and we did not do a lot. I see much of my
youth as wasted time. Lots of television watching and not much else,” he says. “My mom didn’t have much. She
worked hard just to provide us with the basics. I am blessed to have the means to give my kids every
opportunity in the world.”
On any reckoning, White should be in the running for father of the year. Part of his motivation for being
such a dedicated Papa is the way in which his own father abandoned his family.
“Growing up with an alcoholic father, I definitely drew lessons from that experience,” admits Dana. “He was
not a good father and of course, we all want to do some things differently from our parents. It is
mind-boggling to me that some parents would not care about their kids.”
White is full of fatherly advice.
“My mother always said to me, you need to go to college. I went but it was not for me. I could not stand it.
I dropped out early on and went to work as a bellman at the Boston Harbour hotel. On paper, life was good. I
was making about $70,000 US a year. But I hated that job,” recalls White. “I asked myself what am I doing and
I just quit. Some people thought I was crazy to leave that job to go teach boxing, but I walked out the door
and just went after it. I started at the bottom, going around on a bicycle with a hockey bag full of boxing
equipment over my shoulder, teaching boxing classes.”
When asked what he would do if one of his kids says that they want to be a fighter, White offers the
following:
“Success is not measured by your bank account. Ninety per cent of success is finding out what you want to do
in life. You don’t ever want to be that guy who dreads going to work every day. If you have a kid who wants
to pump gas, who says ‘I can’t wait to wake up every morning and pump gas,’ then a good parent will support
their kid’s dream to pump gas. The same goes for my kids and whatever they say is going to make them
happy.”
It is always inspiring to spend time with someone who is so clearly hitting their stride in life. White has
overcome many obstacles on his road to becoming the real king of mixed martial arts. Listening to him now, he
sounds like he could morph into a successful motivational speaker should he want to move on from the UFC.
“I spoke at the Bill Gates CEO Summit and have addressed the varsity athletes at the University of Miami
among other things. I don’t get paid for speeches but I enjoy giving them. It’s fun,” White says. “If my life
got any better, I would not know what to do.” •
