Dana White
speaker
1,304 appearances
17 recordings
16 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard 17 Jun
Dana White’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.
Appearances
I get here at 9.30 every morning. Last night, I left here at 8.30. I don't know how late I'm going to be here tonight, but I love what I do. We get up every day and grind. I work just as hard now 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. Horrible. We're losing millions of dollars a year, and I'm in these budget meetings. 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.
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 probably helps to deeply appreciate how much the shit costs though. A hundred percent.
Well, you have to know that in the early days when you start your business, 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 that. 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 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 chocolate elf fight. We had a chocolate elf fight coming up and I, and they're like, yeah, your son's going to be born on this date.
And I'm like, yeah, that's not going to work. Right. We're going to have to take him earlier. Yeah. So they literally gave my wife a C-section and took my son early. You were all in. All in.
I was doing this when I was broke. Yeah. And I'm doing this now when 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 the sphere? It's going to cost me a bunch of money. It's really challenging. Most people 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?
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 about...
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 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, 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 Mexican Independence Day.
And we're going to weave in the whole history of combat in Mexico into this event.
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. Nice.
The making of the Sphere, yeah. Are you feeling good about it? Oh, yeah. I feel incredible about it. I can't wait.
It's a fact. He doesn't care about money. And he did the first 13 shows for free for us.
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 turned things around, 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 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 we 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 Wayans show, right? The oldest Wayans brother. And he had 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 And he was talking about how people think that these guys in the martial arts movies are tough. 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. So when you see Joe Rogan on camera, and I was talking about the paid 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.
Showing 1141–1160 of 1,304 · page 58 of 66
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