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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.
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And Dana is truly the mastermind behind the UFC.
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And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got Element for delicious electrolytes, Notion for team collaboration, AG1 for some more delicious health drink type of stuff, and Insight Tracker for tracking your biological data.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or just want to get in touch with me, please go to alexfreeman.com slash contact.
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And now onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff.
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Maybe you will too.
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This episode is brought to you by Element, a thing I m drinking right now.
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I think that s delicious.
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A thing that s really good when you do fasting, whether that s for 24 hours, for 72 hours, for anything.
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I mean, I guess you could fast without any of that, but that s,
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going to be not a fun time.
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When you do low-carb diets like I do, or ultra low-carb, or just carnivore, also getting your electrolytes is really important.
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Also, if you do any kind of long-distance cardio, so long-distance running, for example, for me, getting your electrolytes is really, really important.
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It s kind of crazy how big of a difference it can make when you get the sodium and the potassium and the magnesium right.
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An element is just a delicious way to get those right.
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My favorite flavor is watermelon salt.
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That s what I m drinking right now.
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That s what I ve always been drinking.
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On the podcast, you usually see me with some water.
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There s some element in that water.
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And it s the thing that makes me happy.
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It brings me a little bit of a sip of joy, if you will.
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Get a simple pack for free with any purchase.
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Try it at www.drinkelement.com.
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This episode is also brought to you by Notion, a note taking and team collaboration tool.
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I ve been using it a lot to think through ideas.
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It really helps me to, through bullet point list, nested bullet point list to really map out what I think about a thing and I just kind of do an idea dump, a thought dump, a stream of consciousness dump into it and then I reorganize it.
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They also have a really nice AI assistant, really nice integration of an LLM into the whole process that just helps with everything.
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It can summarize, it can expand on what you re writing, it can generate the first draft of a thing you re writing.
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You can also ask it a bunch of stuff about
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project, like collaboration.
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I know people that use it for that.
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I think that s probably a really amazing thing to use it for.
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SPEAKER_02
I currently just do a Wolfpack of One solo.
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I need to probably start to use it in collaboration with the team.
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It s amazing for that.
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I just haven t taken the leap yet.
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But as a note-taking thing, and actually collaboration on a sort of two-person thing, which I haven t used it for, is really, really amazing.
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I highly recommend it.
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Play around with it, see what you think, especially their AI thing.
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It s called Notion AI.
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You can try it for free when you go to notion.com slash lex, that s all lowercase, notion.com slash lex to try the power of Notion AI today.
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This episode is also brought to you by AG1, a thing I drank one hour ago and enjoyed it.
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I used their container that they ship the AG1 delivery with.
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I fill it with water, put it in the fridge such that it s cold, mix one spoon in.
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The result is just delicious and refreshing.
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I like it cold.
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I ll sometimes put it in the freezer to where it freezes just a tiny bit so it s like a little bit of a slushy consistency if I want a kind of slushy experience, which I m a big fan of.
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The 7-Eleven, Slurpee, Slushie, all that kind of stuff is just incredible.
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SPEAKER_02
And whenever I run into one that has sugar-free, which does happen, I usually run out of it.
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SPEAKER_02
It just makes me so happy.
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SPEAKER_02
Just sitting there with a Slushie or a Slurpee.
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SPEAKER_02
I forget which one it is.
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SPEAKER_02
Which one is the 7-Eleven one?
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SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
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I could look it up, but I m not going to.
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SPEAKER_02
Slurpee, Slushie, same thing.
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I just love it.
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Makes me happy.
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So I go to that place of happiness with a delicious thing of AG1.
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You should consider trying to do the same kind of slushy experience if you like, as well, or just have it cold or have it warm.
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It s always delicious.
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They ll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com slash lex.
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This episode is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track the data that comes from my body, biological data.
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It s in the blood, it s DNA data, it s fitness tracker data, all of that, shoved into a machine learning algorithm that tells me what I should do with my life in terms of lifestyle changes and diet.
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Hopefully this is the future where there s more and more data that could be used from the human body to make suggestions about what you should do.
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with your life.
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Obviously for me, I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a long time.
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I m fascinated with the human mind.
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And to be able to collect data from the human mind, high-resolution data, such that you don t need to make sense of the data, you can just shove it into a very large neural network and it gives you recommendations, that s such an interesting possibility.
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There s been recent breakthroughs on the Neuralink and the BCI fronts.
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It s really, really exciting what you could do with that data and that you could do it in a safe way for humans.
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Just love it.
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So the more data that comes from the body, from the human mind, from the brain, I m really excited by the possibilities of that.
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Of course, it has to be done safely in a way that respects the individual rights and all that kind of stuff.
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Very important.
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But also the possibilities for human health, for human flourishing is just really exciting to me.
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Anyway, you can get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Dana White.
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Do you remember when you saw your first fight?
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I think so.
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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
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I liked at a very young age, and I m pretty sure that was my first fight.
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Ali was something special.
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Yeah, incredible.
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I mean, when you look around, not just here in the office, but at my house, Ali and Tyson are everywhere.
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Would you put Ali as the greatest of all time, boxing?
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Well, I would put Ali as the greatest all-time human being.
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I mean, when you... It s easy as a fight fan to focus on him,
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as a fighter, but when you focus on him as a human and you think about what he meant at that time and place, the things he said, the poems he came up with, just the overall brilliance of Muhammad Ali, the guts
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the guts to have the strength mentally, physically, and emotionally to go against the grain at the time that he did it.
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It was a very dangerous time for him to be who he was.
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because of how smart he was and because of his personality, and how if you sat down with him, you could be the biggest racist on the planet.
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It s hard to get in a room with Ali and not like Ali.
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Yeah, he s all love, humor, all of it.
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100%.
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And had the guts in the ring and the guts to take a stand.
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100%.
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When it was hard.
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He might be one of the
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all time greatest humans, you know what I mean?
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Just an impactful, powerful human being who happened to be a great boxer.
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And sometimes the right moment meets the great human being, that s important.
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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.
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So that might have been your first fight, but when did you fall in love with fighting?
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the art of it, the science of it.
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Yeah, I would say I really fell in love with it.
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So I was a senior.
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It was 1987.
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And Hagler Leonard happened.
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Yeah.
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And I watched that fight, and I taped it.
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And I watched that fight like a million times.
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I was a huge, huge Hagler fan.
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And, uh, I like Sugar Ray Leonard too, but I was a huge Hagler fan.
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And, uh, 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.
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You know what I mean?
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But that was really what made me start to love the sport of boxing.
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The battle of it.
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Like, yeah, I was 17.
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And then after that, um,
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USA s Tuesday Night Fights came out on television.
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It was on every Tuesday night.
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Religiously, never missed Tuesday Night Fights.
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I was there, watched all those fights.
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A lot of the things you see in the UFC, not necessarily just the production, but I would say the feel and the style and all those things are all things that I
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Things that I loved about boxing and things that I hated about boxing, right down to the commentary.
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You loved and hated?
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Hated, yeah.
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Hated the commentary.
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Certain things that I loved about boxing, I incorporated into the UFC.
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Things that I hated about boxing, I made sure that the UFC stayed far away from.
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I think, I can t stand Larry Merchant.
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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.
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Lampley, too.
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You know, 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?
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They were criticizing.
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Yeah, 100%.
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I ve gotten used to the UFC so I don t, I m trying to remember looking back.
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It was bad.
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It was bad?
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It was really bad.
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But the sweet science, the art of boxing was beautiful still.
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Like the stories they told.
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100%.
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I want to do this with you right now.
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Hey, will you bring your cell phone over here and pull up YouTube?
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I want to do this for you so that you can understand this and understand where I was coming from.
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For the commentary.
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Yeah, at this point in time.
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I have all good memories.
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You re going to ruin it for me.
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Yeah, no, there are nothing but great memories about boxing.
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But the presentation and a lot of things, but it s how fucking weird is it that I even cared about this shit at that point in my life and that time in my life?
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Like, what impact could I possibly have on it?
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So think about Tyson and how much everybody loved Tyson at the time.
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And listen to this, listen to this entrance.
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Of the former undisputed heavyweight champion.
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And here he comes, Mike Tyson.
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As he heads toward the same ring, he made his distraceful exit in June of 96.
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Wow.
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One of the baddest motherfucking walk-ins of all time, by the way.
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Right?
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So what this guy should be doing, and this is one of the Albert brothers.
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Yeah.
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Shut the fuck up.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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Stay out of the way.
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Yeah.
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Maybe build them up.
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Or that.
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Or don t say anything.
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Just let the fans... That s why we paid our money.
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You don t need to say anything.
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Scary, imposing music.
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Will he be able to intimidate his opponent tonight?
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Will it even matter?
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SPEAKER_00
I really thought there d be more of an explosion by the crowd here, but...
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SPEAKER_00
What a dick.
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SPEAKER_02
You re right.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t remember that.
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SPEAKER_01
You re right.
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SPEAKER_01
Imagine.
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SPEAKER_01
You re right.
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SPEAKER_01
You paid your money to watch Mike Tyson, and you gotta listen to these fucking jerk-offs talk shit about him the whole way to the, right?
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First of all, one of the coolest walk-ins ever.
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SPEAKER_01
First time anybody had heard DMX, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s right.
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He s walking into some scary, imposing music.
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SPEAKER_01
Will it even matter?
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It s just all that kind of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
I literally used to analyze every,
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ounce of the production that would happen on television.
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And at a time when I didn t even know why I was doing it, but... But it s in there somewhere, like you were thinking about it.
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Right?
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So yeah, I hated HBO commentary, I thought, you know, at the time.
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HBO boxing was obviously the gold standard for, you know, but when you really think about boxing at that time, their production, the only thing that changed over 30 years was like HD.
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I mean, even the commentators were the same for 30 years.
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And then you had the time when Larry Merchant gets up and literally starts fighting with Floyd Mayweather during the interview.
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and says if I was 30 years younger, I d kick your ass right now.
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SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah, I remember that, yeah.
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I mean, these are the interviews that we have to listen to when we re trying to watch a boxing match.
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The level of boxing was good.
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Think about a fighter, right?
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Fighter has been gone for months, away from their families and away from everything, training, cutting weight, sparring.
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SPEAKER_01
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 gotta listen to this bullshit.
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from these guys, and then you get interviewed, and your interview is this.
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It s just... And it s not just about the pay-per-view money.
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SPEAKER_02
It s about, like, these are legends of humanity.
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Like, we should celebrate the highest form of, like, accomplishment.
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SPEAKER_02
Because these aren t, like, Mike Tyson.
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So you know who goes in there and interviews fighters?
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Joe Rogan, right?
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Who has trained and done everything and has the utmost respect for the sport and the athletes.
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Or
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You got like Daniel Cormier, who was a former world champion himself and has actually been through it, done it knows.
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And those are the type of people that we put in the booth, people that are actually experienced in it, not, not.
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not these people who ve never been in a fight in their fucking life, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but they re also both, DC and Rogan are like big kids.
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They love it.
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100%.
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SPEAKER_02
They really love it.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, everybody does.
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I mean, if you look at, it s the difference between our commentary and what I feel their commentary was.
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We don t hire paid talking heads.
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We hire people that have actually been in it, done it, love it, and are super passionate about the sport.
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SPEAKER_01
And, and I would say that none of them that ever covered the sport back then were, I don t know if that was Marv Albert or what all Albert brother that was, but he sounded like he s a fan of the sport or anyway, you got me, you, you got me on this and I lose my mind.
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SPEAKER_02
Maybe we wouldn t have a UFC if they didn t fuck it up so bad for the Tyson.
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SPEAKER_01
It would be different.
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SPEAKER_01
You re not wrong.
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SPEAKER_01
You re not wrong.
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SPEAKER_01
It would be different.
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SPEAKER_01
There s no doubt about it.
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SPEAKER_01
All those experiences growing up, being a boxing fan helped create what the UFC is today.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, it s interesting because humans have been fighting for millennia.
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SPEAKER_02
And it seems like with the UFC, the rate of innovation is just insane.
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SPEAKER_02
In these last three decades, it seems like we ve discovered how to do unarmed combat
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faster and better than any time in human history.
0
SPEAKER_01
I agree with you 100%.
0
SPEAKER_01
The first UFC happened in 1993, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Martial art versus martial art.
0
SPEAKER_01
And now over the last 30 years, martial arts has evolved faster than, you know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_01
And like you just said, combat sports, fighting, whatever you want to call it, martial arts, it has evolved so much in 30 years, more than the last
0
SPEAKER_01
300 years.
0
SPEAKER_01
What did you think when you saw UFC 1 with Hoyce?
0
SPEAKER_01
I remember everybody talking that this fight was going to happen and there was going to be no rules and all this other stuff and we re like, there s no way, that s bullshit.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then we ended
1
SPEAKER_00
up at some guy s house that night in Boston and watching it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was happening and it was fun and it was exciting and everything else.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I sort of fell off after that.
1
SPEAKER_00
The first one I watched, but I was too big of a boxing fan.
1
SPEAKER_00
Plus once grappling started taking over and, you know, by grappling, meaning the wrestling and the jujitsu guys had just laid there, you know, I completely lost interest.
1
SPEAKER_00
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, just did jujitsu for the first time yesterday.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was like- Did he get his ass kicked?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but when you first go in, our first jujitsu lesson, me, Lorenzo, and Frank was with John Lewis.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I remember thinking, holy shit,
1
SPEAKER_00
I can t believe that I m 28 years old, and this is the first time I m experiencing this, that another human being could do this to me on the ground.
1
SPEAKER_00
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.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we were training three, four days a week, trying to kill each other, me and the Fertittas.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s how we fell in love with the sport.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think that first time that you do jiu-jitsu, it s like the red pill and the blue pill in the matrix.
1
SPEAKER_00
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?
1
SPEAKER_00
Jiu-jitsu is a real red pill.
1
SPEAKER_01
It really is.
1
SPEAKER_01
You realize, holy shit, all that shit talking I ve been doing about me being a badass, you realize you re not.
1
SPEAKER_01
You get dominated by another human being and you realize, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I mean dominate, I mean completely treat you like you re a little kid.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then we had the opportunity to roll with a lot of different guys at the time because of the whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
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 side control.
1
SPEAKER_00
The pressure that this guy put on my chest
1
SPEAKER_00
made me tap, felt like there was a car on my chest.
1
SPEAKER_00
And with zero effort from him, it was absolutely effortless.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when you train with somebody that s at such a level when you re not, it is the most humbling, mind-blowing experience you can have, especially as a man, but as a human being.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember, just for fun, do you remember what your go-to submission was?
1
SPEAKER_00
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... So you re okay being on, like, on bottom?
1
SPEAKER_00
So, like, your guard is pretty good?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was okay with the bottom.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was okay with being on bottom.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was comfortable there.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you know what I never liked?
1
SPEAKER_00
I never liked gi.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like we started fucking around with a gi in the beginning.
1
SPEAKER_00
We would, you know, that s how we started.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then once I took the gi off, I felt like I had no submissions cause I couldn t grab onto anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I, after that I went all no gi and I never wanted to wear a gi.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s fascinating cause no gi has become big now and there s a lot of interesting people.
1
SPEAKER_01
I got trained with Gordon Ryan.
1
SPEAKER_01
And like the level there is just fascinating.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s become like the science and it looks like fighting now.
1
SPEAKER_01
It looks more like fighting as opposed to with the Gi sometimes it doesn t quite look like fighting.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like it s transferable to actual like MMA fighting, no Gi stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or street.
1
SPEAKER_00
Street, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you start off in your first year, you re in a Gi,
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you better hope guys got like winter jackets on or something if something happens in the street, because in my opinion, I know all the jujitsu fucking people are gonna go crazy over this, but in my opinion, no gi is way better than gi.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s why I also do judo.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in the street scenario, if you re comfortable on the feet and you can clinch and you can throw, you can
1
SPEAKER_01
because most of us wear clothing, especially in Boston.
1
SPEAKER_01
So if you re comfortable on the feet, you could still do well there.
1
SPEAKER_01
The problem with jiu-jitsu is most people are not comfortable on the feet, the sport of jiu-jitsu.
1
SPEAKER_01
Most people kind of want to get to the ground as quickly as possible.
1
SPEAKER_01
So what d you think of hoists at that time?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like in the early, like what, cause it blew a lot of people s minds that there s like more to this puzzle.
1
SPEAKER_00
100% and the fact that you had,
1
SPEAKER_00
like these guys like Ken Shamrock that were jacked, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
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 Hoice was out there beating everybody.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you look at the way that the Gracies played that, you couldn t have had a better advertisement for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
But also like,
1
SPEAKER_01
For MMA because there s just a lot of surprising elements a lot of people s Prediction was wrong, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
I didn t think the skinny guy would win and they re like, oh shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s more to this What s the real beautiful thing about jiu-jitsu?
1
SPEAKER_00
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 or should I put her into this?
1
SPEAKER_00
you put your daughter into jiu-jitsu 100% because it s not about size or strength, it s about technique.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you give your daughter a bunch of jiu-jitsu and a little bit of Muay Thai, you know?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she becomes dangerous.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like the perfect combo.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because you can put your son into anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
Your son can get into some, you know, boys are going to learn how to fight and they re going to do whatever, but girls are different.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the other thing, I mean, this is the biggest selling point,
1
SPEAKER_00
for jiu-jitsu for women.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a woman, no matter how big, how small, can put a guy to sleep in three and a half seconds.
1
SPEAKER_01
What s the origin story of the UFC as it is today, as you have created it, and you and Lorenzo and Fertitto brothers built it?
1
SPEAKER_00
It started with...
1
SPEAKER_00
with John Lewis, you know, and seeing him, Frank and I were out one night at the Hard Rock and John Lewis was there.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, oh, that s that ultimate fighting guy.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I know him.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Frank s like, I ve always wanted to learn ground fighting.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, yeah, I m interested in it too.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we went over, we talked to John Lewis and we made an appointment to wrestle with him on Monday.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we told Lorenzo and Lorenzo came with us.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was the beginning of the end.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we started doing jujitsu and started to meet a lot of the fighters.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we were like, you know, at the time, there was a stigma attached to the sport that these guys were, you know, despicable, disgusting human beings, which was the furthest thing from the truth.
1
SPEAKER_00
These kids had all gone to college, had college degrees, most of them, because they wrestled in college.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we started to meet some, and we loved the different stories.
1
SPEAKER_00
You had Chuck Liddell, who, you know, had this mohawk, looks like an axe murderer, but graduated from Cal Poly, you know.
1
SPEAKER_00
with honors and accounting, you know, then you had Matt Hughes, who was this farm boy, you know, literally lived on a farm.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so there were all these cool stories with all these good people that weren t what people thought they were.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Lorenzo and I always felt like there s something here that if this thing was done the right way, this could be big.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what was crazy was
1
SPEAKER_00
I was in a contract negotiation with Bob Meyerowitz, the old owner of the UFC over Tito s contract and Chuck Liddell.
1
SPEAKER_00
They didn t even want Chuck Liddell in the UFC.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to get Chuck in the UFC and they didn t even want him.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we got into this contract dispute over Tito s contract, and Bob Meyerowitz said, you know what?
1
SPEAKER_00
There is no more money, okay?
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know if I ll even be able to put on one more event.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he like flipped out.
1
SPEAKER_00
We hung up the phone, I literally picked up the phone and called Lorenzo, and I said, hey, I just got off the phone with Bob Meyerowitz, the owner of the UFC.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think they re in trouble, and I think we could buy it, and I think we should.
1
SPEAKER_00
You should reach out to him.
1
SPEAKER_00
So Lorenzo called Meyerowitz and
1
SPEAKER_00
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.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you ve said that you fought a lot of battles during that time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the early days of building this company and building the sport, it was the Wild Wild West, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was crazy back then.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was literally at war every day with all different types of people.
1
SPEAKER_00
Plus, traditionally,
1
SPEAKER_00
There s bad people that are involved in fighting, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s lots of bad people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we had to sift our way through that for the first seven, eight years.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in general, there s like corruption and people kind of steal money.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re thinking just about themselves, not the bigger business.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let me tell you about this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I want to say it was the Netherlands.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t remember exactly where.
1
SPEAKER_00
It could have been Amsterdam.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, MMA promoters were like car bombing each other.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then the other guy shot up the other guy s house with machine guns, and that s the kind of shit that was going on.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll tell you the story.
1
SPEAKER_00
So Affliction, do you remember Affliction?
1
SPEAKER_00
So there was a guy, I wanna say the name was Todd Beard or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
This guy used to text me every day when they started their MMA thing, telling me he was gonna kill me.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, legitimately death threats.
1
SPEAKER_00
Legitimately gonna kill me.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
You punk motherfucker.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna fucking kill you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You don t understand who I am and what I ve done and this and that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think this guy would get drunk or do drugs every night or whatever his deal was.
1
SPEAKER_00
This guy would call me, text me, and threaten my life every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
I used to go, fuck you and this and that.
1
SPEAKER_00
You said fuck you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh man.
1
SPEAKER_00
Especially back then.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but yeah, but I mean that this is the type of shit that went on in the early days that these this guy This guy who was one of the owners of affliction was like one of the you know Not a good human.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s put it that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
What about the business side of it?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s tough to make money in this business.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we weren t making money.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, you know Trying to build this thing corrupt
1
SPEAKER_00
Corrupt the guys that work for in-demand pay-per-view at the time We re not good dudes, you know, and that thing was a fucking total monopoly God, I wish I could remember 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 direct TV 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
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t remember his name.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d have to ask Lorenzo.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in general, just in this whole space, there s a lot of shady people.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, everybody you deal with is...
1
SPEAKER_00
dealing with a lot of, a lot of, a lot of different forces and, and, and your, 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 on and on of all the different types of the production business of all these different, you know, when I first started this, I, uh, we had a production team that was the production team
1
SPEAKER_00
that was in it before we bought it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there was this incident with Phil Barone, where Phil Barone, we did an interview with him and Barone flips out in the interview when they re interviewing him and goes crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I thought it was awesome.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, we re going to leave this in.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re going to leave this interview in.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the production guys were arguing with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re like, we can t leave this in.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is totally unprofessional.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, I don t give a shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is, this is what we re doing.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re going to, we re going to do this and clip it like this and do it like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re sitting in the venue that night.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I lean over to Lorenzo cause the fight s coming up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I go, wait, do you see this fucking interview with Barone?
1
SPEAKER_00
They didn t fucking do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
They didn t do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
These guys were guys that were freelance guys that worked for Showtime at the time or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I literally went, got up from my fucking seat, went back there, kicked the fucking door of the truck open.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, you motherfuckers, you ever do that again and I ll fire every fucking one of you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s just put it this way.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ended up firing every one of them anyway and going with a whole new crew.
1
SPEAKER_00
But these were the type of things that early on, you know, there s so much stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I could sit here for fucking,
1
SPEAKER_00
Three days and walk you through all the stuff that used to go on back in those days
1
SPEAKER_00
But it was the wild, wild west, man.
1
SPEAKER_01
But how d you figure out, how d you know how to deal with all this mess?
1
SPEAKER_01
First of all, to fire people, to fire people that aren t doing a good job, all of that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like how to be a leader, how to be a business leader.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s the thing too.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, in the early days, there was two employees, me and another girl that worked for me, for my company before I started doing this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then we slowly started to bring people on and you start to build a team.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then before you know it, we had 10 people.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we used to do our Christmas parties back then too.
1
SPEAKER_00
There d be eight to 10 people at our Christmas party, you know?
1
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of it is you learn as you go.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what me and the Fertittas knew about production when we bought this UFC?
1
SPEAKER_00
We had like, I wanna say we had two or three weeks to pull off an event.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is what we knew about production.
1
SPEAKER_00
Jack shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we had to dive in and we had to learn it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had to figure it out and we knew what we wanted.
1
SPEAKER_00
We knew what we liked.
1
SPEAKER_00
We knew what we were looking for.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just about building a good team.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s one of the things if you wanna,
1
SPEAKER_00
Talk about what I ve accomplished in the last 25 years of my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ve been really good at building teams.
1
SPEAKER_00
Already have a vision of what you want the final thing to look like and then build a team that can bring that to life.
1
100%.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, you have to have the vision.
1
SPEAKER_00
Without the vision, there s nothing.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s sort of what I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
I am the vision part of this thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna open a PI in Mexico.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna do this, we re gonna do that, you know?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you build the team to come in and help execute.
1
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people that do fighting promotions fail.
1
SPEAKER_01
You succeeded against long odds.
1
SPEAKER_01
Uh, what s the secret to your success?
1
SPEAKER_00
If you would just looking back over the years, well, the secret to success, I would say, first of all, is passion and consistency.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to love what you do.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to get up every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I, I, I get here every day at nine 30 in the morning when we sold
1
SPEAKER_00
In 2016, a lot of people in the company made a lot of money and they all took off and they retired, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Other than the Fertittas, I made the most money.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m still here.
1
SPEAKER_00
I get here at 9.30 every morning.
1
SPEAKER_00
Last night I left here at 8.30.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know how late I m going to be here tonight, but I love what I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
We get up every day and grind.
1
SPEAKER_00
I work just as hard now as I did back then.
1
SPEAKER_00
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.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t like budget meetings.
1
SPEAKER_00
I sat through enough fucking budget meetings, horrible budget meetings, horrible.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re losing millions of dollars a year and I m in these budget meetings.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I get to pick and choose what I do these days.
1
SPEAKER_00
Back in the early days, you don t get to pick and choose.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to be involved in everything.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so cost, you re just looking at cost and stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
You literally go through line by line.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every fucking number in the company and where did the money go and how can we save costs?
1
SPEAKER_00
How can we do this better?
1
SPEAKER_00
How can we you know, they are that they they are brutal and They re multiple times a week and probably helps to deeply appreciate how much this shit cost though 100% Well, you have to know that yeah in the early days when you start your business you have these people who when I hear them say, you know, I I
1
SPEAKER_00
I wanna work for myself, I wanna create my own schedule, and I wanna do all the, it s just, if that s your thought process going into it, you re never gonna be successful.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to pay attention to every single detail of the business early on.
1
SPEAKER_00
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.
1
SPEAKER_00
I literally moved the birth of my second son for a chocolate elf fight.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had a chocolate elf fight coming up, and they re like, yeah, your son s gonna be born on this date, and I m like, yeah, that s not gonna work.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re going to have to take them earlier.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they literally gave my wife a c-section and took my son early.
1
SPEAKER_00
You were all in.
1
SPEAKER_01
All in, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the fascinating thing, like you said, you ve said that you could care less about money.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re doing this for the love of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was doing this when I was broke, and I m doing this now when I m not broke.
1
SPEAKER_00
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.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like this fear.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re doing this fear.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why?
2
SPEAKER_00
Why would I do this fear?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s going to cost me a bunch of money.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s really challenging.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
So why not take that challenge?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s actually why I m here I m going to this fear for the first time because I m hanging out with Darren Aronofsky 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 gonna solve that puzzle There s many puzzles to solve for this one.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay many puzzles.
2
SPEAKER_01
So how can you speak to that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what?
2
SPEAKER_01
are interesting challenges that you re encountering.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so there s a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you have the octagon, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then behind it is the world s biggest screen ever, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So, what is the theme?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you program it?
2
SPEAKER_00
First of all, it s super expensive to shoot and, you know, the format for the sphere.
2
SPEAKER_00
Angles, we were talking about
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want the creative.
2
SPEAKER_00
the commercial.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have some goals.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I mean, there s challenges.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a laundry list of challenges for this thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And not to mention the fact that it s on Mexican Independence Day, and we re gonna weave in the whole history of combat in Mexico.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
Into this event.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the production, I mean, this is hilarious, because you were just talking about knowing nothing about production so many years ago.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now I m tackling the sphere.
2
SPEAKER_01
The hardest production effort.
2
SPEAKER_01
Ever.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that will be live?
2
SPEAKER_00
It ll be live.
2
SPEAKER_00
It ll be live on pay-per-view.
2
SPEAKER_00
It ll be live in the arena and it will also be in movie theaters nice, so there ll be a
2
SPEAKER_01
it will be shown at the Sphere later too?
2
SPEAKER_01
Will you try to create an experience?
2
SPEAKER_01
ESPN s doing a doc on it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
The making of the Sphere, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are you feeling good about it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel incredible about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t wait.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s gonna be fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t wait to see how you solve the puzzle.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Another guy that I feel like could care less about the money is Joe Rogan.
2
SPEAKER_01
How important is he to the UFC, to the rise of the UFC, and what in general do you love about Joe?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a fact, he doesn t care about money.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he did the first 13 shows for free for us.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
That was at a time when we were hurting and he s like, wait a minute, you want me to do the commentary?
2
SPEAKER_00
You re saying that I get to sit in the best seat in the house and watch these fights for free?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m in.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then obviously when we turned things around, we made it up to Joe.
2
SPEAKER_00
Joe is one of the things that I loved early on about, so I ll tell you the story.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we buy the UFC.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re based in New York.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re moving the corporate offices to Vegas.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they literally had a VHS machine and a TV and there were
2
SPEAKER_00
a million tapes in this place, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I didn t know what tapes were.
2
SPEAKER_00
These definitely we have to keep, or these we don t need.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I had to sit there and go through every single tape.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I popped in a tape, and there was an interview on the Ivory Keenan Wayans show, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
The oldest Wayans brother, and he had a talk show at the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he had Joe Rogan, the guy from Fear Factor, on the show.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was promoting Fear Factor, but all he would talk about was UFC.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, this is exactly what I need, a guy who isn t afraid.
2
SPEAKER_00
to speak his mind and knows the sport inside and out, but more importantly, is super passionate about it and loves it.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
He comes off as a guy who loves this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so early on, no media would cover us.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I had to buy my way onto radio.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we do these radio tours, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And they would drop us in.
2
SPEAKER_00
You d have to get up at three 30 in the morning in Vegas on the West coast.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they, cause that there at six 30 in the morning in New York and Boston and Florida and all these other places.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they drop you into these markets to do radio.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, uh, the fighters were horrible at it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Fighters getting up at three 30 in the morning, especially leading up to a fight.
2
SPEAKER_00
never good.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s bad radio.
2
SPEAKER_00
What you can t have is bad radio.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the only two people that could pull off these radio tours were me and Joe Rogan.
2
SPEAKER_00
So me and Joe Rogan would alternate
2
SPEAKER_00
doing these radio tours all over the country.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just talking about fighting, talking about what this whole thing is, like getting people excited.
2
SPEAKER_00
Two guys that are really into it and passionate about it and love it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s one of the things about Rogan too.
2
SPEAKER_00
Early on, nobody understood the ground game.
2
SPEAKER_00
Joe Rogan would walk you through what was happening.
2
SPEAKER_00
literally before it would happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
He would tell you the setup, what was going to come next, and everything.
2
SPEAKER_00
He just absolutely articulated perfectly, brilliantly, and people at home started to understand.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the impact that Joe Rogan has had and continues to have on this sport is immeasurable.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s the biggest podcaster in the world, and he is on the UFC
2
SPEAKER_00
uh, pay-per-views, you know, 14 times a year.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he s always talking about the sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s immeasurable, um, what this guy has, has, has done for this company and the sport.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Still to this day, like I ll have dinner with him offline.
2
SPEAKER_01
He ll just talk fighting.
2
SPEAKER_01
He just loves it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s true.
2
SPEAKER_01
Loves every aspect of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_00
Joe Rogan is, is, is one of those guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
I saw that early on when
2
SPEAKER_00
Why would you go after the Fear Factor guy?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, to be such a key component to not only the company, but to the sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
I saw it in the fucking interview on Ivory Cane and Wands.
2
SPEAKER_01
I value loyalty a lot.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
Joe was getting canceled for something.
2
SPEAKER_01
and they didn t want him commentating the fights.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you on the phone offered your resignation over this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got teary-eyed over that.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s such a, you re a good man, you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was powerful.
2
SPEAKER_00
Anybody who is with me, has been with me, knows.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you re with me, you re with me.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a two-way street.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not a one-way street.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not one of these guys that is gonna roll over.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like going through COVID.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t laying any of these people, some of these people have been with me for 20 years.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna lay them off?
2
SPEAKER_00
This motherfucker will burn.
2
SPEAKER_00
Burn yeah 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.
2
SPEAKER_00
I Can t say what s gonna happen when I leave but when I m here The people who are with me and have been with me.
2
SPEAKER_00
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 and
2
SPEAKER_01
Lorenzo, another guy you have close friendship with.
2
SPEAKER_01
You seem to have been extremely effective together as business partners.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s the magic behind that?
2
SPEAKER_00
How can you explain that?
2
SPEAKER_00
I love him.
2
SPEAKER_00
Lorenzo and I work really well together because we have two different personalities, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m the guy that always, I m going here.
2
SPEAKER_00
Lorenzo is always here, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You could walk in a room and say, Lorenzo, you just lost $10 million.
2
SPEAKER_00
Lorenzo, you just won $10 million.
2
SPEAKER_00
it never changes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m a guy that goes like this, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So we almost balance each other out.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that level-headed thing was useful when the UFC was losing money and it was unknown whether it s gonna survive those low points.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 100%.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s incredible when you think of the story of the UFC,
2
SPEAKER_00
At the time, the casino business was cranking, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And Station Casinos was killing it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Stations, their money from Stations is what was funding the UFC.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then in the 08-09 crash,
2
SPEAKER_00
The UFC was killing it in 08 and 09, and the casino businesses were hurting.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you think about the UFC, and how big it is, and how far it reaches, and how many people it touches, the Fertittas brothers made a $2 million investment
2
SPEAKER_00
then put in like another 44 million and look at how many lives that investment has changed over the last 25 years.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s also crazy, just forget the business of it, just the effect it has on the history of humanity in terms of this is what we do.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re descendants of apes that fight.
2
SPEAKER_01
And this is like the organizations that catalyze the innovation in how we fight.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It created a whole new sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
that people all over the world participate in now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Literally, there isn t a place on earth that we can t get a fighter from now.
2
SPEAKER_01
You said in the UFC 299 post-fight press conference that sometimes fighters might complain that they get matched up on even odds, but that s actually when legends are made.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think you gave Dustin Poirier as an example.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what makes a legend?
2
SPEAKER_01
What makes greatness in a fight?
2
SPEAKER_00
So behind the scenes, fighters are a very paranoid bunch of people.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re very paranoid.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s been this theme with fighters where they re trying to get me beat, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
We don t determine who wins and loses.
2
SPEAKER_00
If we did, we d be the WWE, okay?
2
SPEAKER_00
You do.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m the bells and whistles guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
Who you are, who you re going against, and why people should give a shit.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what I do, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Then the night you show up,
2
SPEAKER_00
I put on the best live event that I possibly can, and I put on the best television show that I possibly can.
2
SPEAKER_00
Once that door shuts, it s all up to you.
2
SPEAKER_00
You determine whether you lose or not.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you get into a position where you become so paranoid that you think that the powers that be here are against you, and you try to steer
2
SPEAKER_00
yourself away from certain fights.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s one of the big things that happens in these other organizations.
2
SPEAKER_00
In these other organizations, the inmates run the asylum, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So if they don t want to fight bad enough, these other companies don t push and they don t do this and they don t.
2
SPEAKER_00
We put on the best possible match-ups that we can make.
2
SPEAKER_00
And
2
SPEAKER_00
In this business, you might be an older fighter, but if you re still ranked in the top 10, there s young guys coming for you, killers.
2
SPEAKER_00
Young killers are coming out and they want your position, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So you being the veteran that you are, have to prepare yourself to go in and you know, everybody was saying when we made that fight with Saint Denis, that Poirier was in big trouble.
2
SPEAKER_00
Da da da da da.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s awesome.
2
SPEAKER_00
That helps build the entire thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then Poirier goes out and does what he did that night.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s what makes fucking legends.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting, because sometimes being the underdog is a really good thing for the long-term story of who you are as a fighter.
2
SPEAKER_00
Especially when you re a big name, and a name that people recognize, and a name that people know.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, oh, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
I remember Israel Adesanya and Sean Strickland.
2
SPEAKER_00
100 out of 100 people knew for a fact that Israel was going to win that fight.
2
SPEAKER_00
And here comes Strickland.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we could go on for days with this, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
That is what creates legendary moments, legendary fights, and it s what builds stars and legends.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, arguably, Conor McGregor with Jose Aldo.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_00
Conor McGregor with a bunch of people in the beginning.
2
SPEAKER_00
People said he couldn t wrestle.
2
SPEAKER_00
People said he wouldn t be able to defend a takedown, blah, blah, blah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Nate Diaz against Conor McGregor.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
And Conor McGregor against Khabib, underdog probably, but if you won, there s an opportunity to win.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you won, that s the legend for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s now in the conversation for the greatest of all time without argument.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you look at the way that Khabib ran through so many people, Conor hung in there, you know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it could have been made a fight of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It could have been.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about that matchup?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s one of the, one of the greats, one of the great matchups that you ve made.
2
SPEAKER_01
Conor McGregor versus Khabib.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, at the time I was incredibly criticized for putting together the spot that had the scene with the bus in it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
telling you a story of how we got here and how big this fight is and how bad the blood is between these guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, I think that s what we do the best job at is telling the fucking stories of why we go into Monday.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s fight week.
2
SPEAKER_00
We got a whole list of things that we do fight week, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you get right down to the press conference on Thursday, the weigh-ins on Friday, and then the fights on Saturday.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, my people fly back home.
2
SPEAKER_00
They go to bed on Sunday night.
2
SPEAKER_00
and it s crown hog day.
2
SPEAKER_00
We wake up again on Monday and it starts all over again.
2
SPEAKER_00
Every weekend, every Saturday for a year.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s lots of stories that need to be told.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s lots of, when you think about what I compete with, whatever takes your attention on a Saturday night is my competitor.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you re always trying to build a foundation for great stories.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like if the fighters step up, they step up and they can together create greatness.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when we are online, like when you get to the UFC, I mean, you just saw it with MVP.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re going to see it with Kayla Harrison and so many others that have come from other organizations and they get here.
2
SPEAKER_00
they notice immediately the difference between fighting here and fighting wherever they were before.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not even comparable to the impact it has on you when you leave whatever organization you re with and you come to the UFC.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that it gives them a sense of, holy shit, I can really—I mean,
3
SPEAKER_01
MVP when he came, I mean, there were probably more people at the press conference than any fight he d ever fought in Bellator, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you feel that energy and you feel the difference of the impact of being here.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think it takes a lot of these guys to another level.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just the aura of it, like this is where you re supposed to step up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s the way people feel about TED Talks, giving lectures.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is your moment.
3
SPEAKER_00
You get 15 minutes and you better say some interesting shit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and Kayla Harrison, by the way, is a badass.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can t wait to see what happens there.
3
SPEAKER_01
She was walking around with this sleeveless shirt the night of the fights, and holy shit.
3
SPEAKER_00
She is jacked, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s crazy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Two-time Olympic gold medalist.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t fuck with those people.
3
SPEAKER_00
You win a medal, you re made of something special.
3
SPEAKER_00
So true.
3
SPEAKER_00
Especially in judo.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Especially in American judo, where you don t have many training partners that are great, so you better fucking work for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what I m saying.
3
SPEAKER_00
Ridiculous question, but who is in the conversation for the greatest of all time?
3
SPEAKER_00
Jon Jones.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you ve talked about Jon Jones, but what are the metrics involved here?
3
SPEAKER_01
He s never been beat.
3
SPEAKER_01
He destroyed everybody at Light Heavyweight, which at the time was the toughest weight class in the company, in the sport.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I moved up to Heavyweight, won easily at Heavyweight.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when you look at a guy
3
SPEAKER_01
And you look at what he was doing outside the octagon at the same time, which shouldn t be part of it, shouldn t be part of the equation.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when you do, wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
John Jones, there s no debate.
3
SPEAKER_01
Nobody can debate who s the greatest of all time.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s absolutely positively John Jones.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s never lost.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s never been beaten in the octagon ever.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s one of the metrics, like pure sheer dominance.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s others, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Losing sometimes is a catalyst for greatness.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t disagree.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when you ve never lost, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
You ve never lost.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve never found somebody.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, and all the other thing is that you have to put factor into is longevity.
3
SPEAKER_01
How long he s cause sometimes with a lot of these guys, the sport pass them by, you get younger guys that are faster, this, that, and the sport evolves.
3
SPEAKER_01
Nobody s been able to beat John Jones.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the other thing that you measure is, you know, when you said dominance,
3
SPEAKER_01
It s true, if you re this guy that has unbelievable power and you re just going in, you re just fucking knocking everybody out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And nobody s ever pulled you into the deep water before.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was when my opinion of John Jones started to change.
3
SPEAKER_01
Gustafson took him into the deep water.
3
SPEAKER_01
Gustafson hit him with some shit he d never been hit with.
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what I m saying?
3
SPEAKER_01
And he s willing to go there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he kept going.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was willing, willing to do whatever it took to win that fight.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it breaks my heart because he beat D.C.
3
SPEAKER_01
and D.C.
3
SPEAKER_01
is one of the greatest of all time.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the thing too.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I believe that D.C.
3
SPEAKER_01
doesn t get the credit he deserves because of the John Jones thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
When you look at D.C.
3
SPEAKER_01
and what he s accomplished, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And John Jones beat him twice.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s undeniable.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can hate all you want.
3
SPEAKER_01
Jon Jones was the greatest of all time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you think Habib was tested enough?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that Habib had the potential to be in the running for that.
3
SPEAKER_01
He just didn t stick around a lot.
3
SPEAKER_01
First of all, he had injuries 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there s no doubt, Habib is one of the all-time greats.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s the good, the bad, and the ugly of your relationship with Connor?
3
SPEAKER_01
There s literally no ugly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Conor McGregor has been an incredible partner to work with.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everybody thinks that Conor, if Conor showed up to things on time, there wouldn t be one fucking bad thing I could say about Conor.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
Only being late to shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you fucking said, put a gun to my fucking head, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And said, don t lie, motherfucker.
3
SPEAKER_01
Tell me all the bad things about Conor McGregor.
3
SPEAKER_01
I d say the guy doesn t show up on time.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
If Conor McGregor showed up to shit on time, and sometimes he does, sometimes he does,
3
SPEAKER_01
He d be, he d be, he s been a great partner.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you look at what a huge superstar he became, the fights that he was involved in, let me tell you what Conor McGregor never did.
3
SPEAKER_01
We never walked in a room and said, Conor, this guy just fell out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Um, we want you to fight this guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, no way I m not taking this fucking risk.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m at this point in my career where my money, my, this, my, that he was like,
3
SPEAKER_01
Fook it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, he d always say, let s do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
The other thing that Conor McGregor never did, no matter how big he was or whatever it was, and we were heading into a fight.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, Conor, this guy just fell out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Aldo fell out.
3
SPEAKER_01
We were looking for another, yeah, I ll do it, but I m going to need another fucking 200,000.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m going to need another million dollars.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m going to, Conor McGregor never did that kind of chicken shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
you know, bullshit kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
He never did any of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Connor was as solid a guy as you could possibly work with.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just fuck it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Literally would.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s actually a scene cause we were filming something.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it was embedded or what we were filming at the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Me and Lorenzo walk into his house that he rented here in Vegas.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m pretty sure it was when Aldo fell out and we re telling him this, that, and we re looking at some options.
3
SPEAKER_01
He says, I m going to the gym.
3
SPEAKER_01
When I m done working out, let me know.
3
SPEAKER_01
He just woke up out of bed, he s in his fucking underwear.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he gets hit with this, and he s like, all right, I m going to the gym.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let me know when I get out who I m fighting.
3
SPEAKER_01
Doesn t care, doesn t want to know, doesn t want any more money, nothing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Fucking shows up and he delivers.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, Connor has been incredibly successful.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s made a lot of money 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he s been one of the best partners that I ve ever had in the history of the sport and an important part of the history of the UFC.
3
SPEAKER_00
He opened it up to all kinds of new eyes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
3
SPEAKER_01
He literally, you know, set Europe, Australia, Canada, and many other parts of the world on fire, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was our first legit megastar.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I personally think he doesn t get enough credit for just how good he was as a fighter.
3
SPEAKER_00
People love to talk shit about Conor.
3
SPEAKER_00
I suppose that s part of his magic.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it comes with success.
3
SPEAKER_01
When you re successful, there s always people out there that are going to talk shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
You always have a bunch of know nothing, do nothing fucking losers that love to talk shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
You think if you were to do it all over again, Habib is the right matchup?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Listen, the thing that you can t do is avoid matchups.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
This is what we re talking about.
3
SPEAKER_01
When you talk about being a legend, Conor McGregor needed Habib.
3
SPEAKER_01
Habib needed Conor McGregor.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can hate each other as much as you want, but you have to fight these other legendary bad motherfuckers to yourself become a legend.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s like John Jones needed Cyril Gaunt, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And Cyril Gaunt 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s almost like your obligation
3
SPEAKER_01
as a fighter, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And when you think about John 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?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or they beat John.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s all about
3
SPEAKER_01
giving these other guys the opportunity.
3
SPEAKER_01
St.
3
SPEAKER_01
Denis, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Poirier gave him the opportunity to come in and beat him.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s how this all works.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the two of them together, the two fighters together.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to have them both.
3
SPEAKER_01
Listen, I could line up a bunch of no-name bums that John Jones could run through.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what they do in all the other organizations, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
we would have nothing to fucking talk about right now.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s why, luckily, a perfect record in the UFC is not as important as who you fought, how you fought.
3
SPEAKER_00
So true.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when you have a perfect record in the UFC, holy shit, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what you would, when you can have a perfect record in the UFC, you are absolutely one of the most special athletes on planet Earth.
3
SPEAKER_00
You and Trump are friends.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just talked to Ivanka last night about her experience at the, in the Miami event.
3
SPEAKER_00
She loves it.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s training too.
3
SPEAKER_00
You were talking about getting girls to train.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s training.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the kids are training.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Her father s the biggest fucking fight fan on the planet.
3
SPEAKER_01
Calls me all the time to talk about the fights and, and uh,
3
SPEAKER_01
Don Jr.
3
SPEAKER_01
said that I m like the only guy on earth that he bros out with.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s funny when you talk about how powerful fighting is, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
This last Miami event, the president of Ecuador and the president of Spain both posted about the fights, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Habib beat Conor.
3
SPEAKER_01
Putin was on FaceTime before he even made it to the locker room.
3
SPEAKER_01
Trump.
3
SPEAKER_01
sitting president, ex-president, watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights.
3
SPEAKER_01
Valentina Shevchenko, every time she goes home, she meets with the president of the country.
3
SPEAKER_01
The list goes on and on and on.
3
SPEAKER_01
The most powerful, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
3
SPEAKER_01
The most powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.
3
SPEAKER_00
When did you first discover that Trump loves fighting?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I first discovered
3
SPEAKER_01
that Trump was a big fight fan.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, you saw him a part of all the big—you re talking about how big boxing fans we were.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a part of all the big fights back then.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when we first bought the UFC, this thing was so bad, venues didn t even want us.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we ended up doing, you know, our first event in Atlantic City at the Trump Taj Mahal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, think about this.
3
SPEAKER_01
At that time, Trump brand here, UFC brand.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I can t go low enough.
3
SPEAKER_01
But 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
any good thing that would 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, Dana, I always knew you guys were gonna do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Little things like that, but that are big things and mean a lot, especially coming from a guy like him.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he saw something in you, like this is gonna be- 100%, he definitely saw it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then comes 15, 16, whenever it was, I don t remember,
3
SPEAKER_01
But he called me and he said, listen, if you don t want to do this, I completely understand.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I would be honored if you would speak at the National Republican Convention for me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m not a very political guy, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
And everybody told me not to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do not do this.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I was like, why would I not do this?
3
SPEAKER_01
This guy s been great to me, you know, and I did it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And our relationship is just like, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
I consider Donald Trump to be one of my very, very good friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
Any favorite stories?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s so many stories.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, once he won the election, like I d be at work.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I d be down the hall, was in the matchmaking room or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
And my secretary would tell, the president s on the phone.
3
SPEAKER_01
Fucking come running down the hallway and grab the phone.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he d want to talk about the fight that was coming up or the fight that happened.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or I d be in my car and I d answer the phone.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, hi, this is the White House.
3
SPEAKER_01
We have the president of the United States on the phone.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, that s a trip when that first starts happening.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then just,
3
SPEAKER_01
To sum him up, this is the kind of guy that, you wanna talk about a fighter?
3
SPEAKER_01
This is the most resilient human being I ve ever met.
3
SPEAKER_01
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 good?
3
SPEAKER_01
How you doing?
3
SPEAKER_01
Unfazed.
3
SPEAKER_01
unfazed, like nothing s going on.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he ll start talking to me about this and that and all this other shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a mess.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ve never heard him like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ve never seen him like that when Ivana died.
3
SPEAKER_01
The only time I ve ever seen him fucked up.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously as soon as I heard it, I reached out and I have never, 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
I called him that day and he was, this is the first time I ve ever seen that guy busted up and not good.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that says something that that s the only time.
3
SPEAKER_00
That guy is, I mean, walking through the fire.
3
SPEAKER_00
He does not get rattled.
3
SPEAKER_00
He will walk through fire.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s an absolute savage.
3
SPEAKER_01
You think he wins the presidential election?
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s going to depend on how this whole...
3
SPEAKER_01
Politics is the most dirtiest, scummiest thing on planet Earth, man, and who knows how this is all gonna play out.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s all dirty, it s all ugly, and obviously I m rooting for him and I m behind him and I hope he does, but we ll see.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s dirtier, the fighting game in the early days or politics?
3
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing dirtier than politics.
3
SPEAKER_01
Nothing.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s literally nothing dirtier.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is the dirtiest thing on planet Earth.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just wanted to get that on record.
3
SPEAKER_00
Another guy who doesn t seem to be fazed by the fire I ve gotten to know him is Elon.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have to ask you, it s a bit of fun.
3
SPEAKER_00
You were a part of thinking about putting together Zuck versus Elon.
3
SPEAKER_00
I trained with both.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did a phone call with Elon and you when we were training on the mat.
3
SPEAKER_00
You really think that could have been a good fight?
3
SPEAKER_00
It would have been the biggest fight ever done.
3
SPEAKER_01
The spectacle of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
of the most powerful, wealthiest man in the world, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Lots of guys talk shit and go back and forth and sue each other and do all this.
3
SPEAKER_01
These two guys were literally talking about facing each other in the octagon and fighting.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing, and they re in a business that s looked at as geeky, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
They re tech nerds, they re this, they re that.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are two dudes that were willing to throw down and fight, and you know as well as I do,
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of public speculation about this.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was taking serious real time and working on this thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I had projections.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had numbers.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was looking at venues.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was on the phone with the fucking Coliseum in Italy.
3
SPEAKER_01
You name it, I was in it.
3
SPEAKER_01
These guys were serious and this was something that was really going to happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll tell you right now, in the short amount of time that it was going down, it was fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was having a blast with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about Tyson fighting Jake Paul?
3
SPEAKER_01
I love Mike Tyson, and I m not a fan of anybody fighting at our age.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he s a grown man, obviously, and he s going to do what he s going to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
But at least I know.
3
SPEAKER_01
I talked to his wife a couple days ago.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he s taking this serious and he s training for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, so we ll see how it plays out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think he fights though?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, what is that about?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there a broader lesson there about fighters, about great fighters?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that Mike Tyson is actually one of those unique guys who has crossed over.
3
SPEAKER_01
Any of these other boxers from his era, they have no way of making money other than fighting.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mike Tyson s made a lot of money outside of fighting.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, Tyson still has that aura.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could be at a restaurant,
3
SPEAKER_01
And he walks in and you re like, holy fuck, Mike Tyson s here.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, he still has that type of aura and energy in a room.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he makes lots of money outside of the ring.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just, I think that he ends up getting these offers that he can t refuse.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you think it s financial?
3
SPEAKER_00
So how much, I mean, that s a good question to ask.
3
SPEAKER_00
You work with a lot of fighters.
3
SPEAKER_00
For how many of them is it about money?
4
SPEAKER_01
And for how many is it about the fact, the pure love of fighting?
4
SPEAKER_01
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?
4
SPEAKER_01
And when you re in it for that reason,
4
SPEAKER_01
right?
4
SPEAKER_01
You love it and you want to be looked at as the best ever and you have the talent, the money happens, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Then you have other guys who can, I believe me, I ve dealt with fighters who just wanted to be famous and just wanted to make money.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s, you know, listen, it is what it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s, it s, it s your,
4
SPEAKER_01
It s your life and 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 and I mean when you look at Tyson in his early years when he came up under Costi Amato, I mean he was a student of the game.
4
SPEAKER_01
He loved everything he became
4
SPEAKER_01
completely infatuated with the fight game.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then he became such a massive superstar.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like the whole thing starts to turn on you.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, all the things that come at you at a young age and that kind of money.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s, it s tough.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s tough to navigate and get through.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you know, you, you say something like that, people like, Oh, poor him.
4
SPEAKER_01
He had fucking a hundred million dollars and couldn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
At that age and with all the shit that people talk and all the things that you got to put up with and the fame, a lot of people deal with fame.
4
SPEAKER_01
Some people handle it really well and some people don t.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the perfect example, um, of that was Forrest Griffin and Stephen Bonner.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, they fought that, that unbelievable fight on the ultimate fighter.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everything blew up after that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Forrest dealt with fame really well and, and, and Stephen did not.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was a special fight.
4
SPEAKER_00
It really was.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think attracted people to that fight?
4
SPEAKER_00
So that made, that was a big leap for the UFC.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think people loved that fight?
4
SPEAKER_00
What attracted people to that fight?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why did they change everything?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, what happened that night is that the rest of the show was a disaster.
4
SPEAKER_01
Um, you know, we had the co-main event and the main event, uh, Diego Sanchez ran through Kenny Florian in seconds.
4
SPEAKER_01
Um, oh my God, that was, that was terrible.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the fights that led up to that weren t anything to talk about either.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then Stephan and Forrest got in there and just went toe to toe and this unbelievable slugfest live on free television when cable still mattered.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what I heard was at the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, you had people picking up the phone going, are you watching this show?
4
SPEAKER_01
The numbers just started climbing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then you got a razor thin decision.
4
SPEAKER_01
Who s going to win.
4
SPEAKER_01
He got the crowd stomping their feet.
4
SPEAKER_01
It sounded like a train was going through the place and everybody s chanting one more round.
4
SPEAKER_01
Me and the Fertitta brothers get together and we talk, we re going to give them both contracts.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we give them both contracts and the place erupts.
4
SPEAKER_01
It just, it couldn t have been a more perfect fight at the most perfect time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it just, it, it, it all came together.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like.
4
SPEAKER_01
this was meant to be, you know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_01
So we had so many problems with Spike TV at the time, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because halfway through the season, the president of the company got fired.
4
SPEAKER_01
All the things that we thought we were going to get that year, you know, we, we, we had this runaway hit show.
4
SPEAKER_01
And normally at that time, when you would see runaway hit shows, there d be commercials.
4
SPEAKER_01
It d be on beyond billboards.
4
SPEAKER_01
It d be on the side of buses and LA and New York.
4
SPEAKER_01
We got none of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
We didn t even know if we were going to get a, you know, a second season coming out of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And.
4
SPEAKER_01
When that fight was over, I swear to God, I was like, I don t even give a fuck.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re going to end up somewhere now after this fight.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we didn t even make it out of the building that night.
4
SPEAKER_01
The spike guys did the contract with us in the alley on a fucking napkin after the fight.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you saw the, you already saw the magic of the fight itself.
4
SPEAKER_01
Once that happened.
4
SPEAKER_01
And all the shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at that time, I didn t know what the ratings, not like we were streaming and we could see what we had no idea, but I knew.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just knew this was special.
4
SPEAKER_00
I knew.
4
SPEAKER_00
What is it?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like just two people being willing to stand toe to toe and just go to war.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when you think about what was at stake, there was a car.
4
SPEAKER_01
Remember the Kia?
4
SPEAKER_01
The winner got a Kia.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s what was the fucking, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And Stefan and Forrest, the will to win, they both wanted to win that fight so bad.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was bigger than the Kia probably.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, Forrest drove that Kia to like 200,000 miles.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
The biggest mistake Kia ever made was not doing a fucking commercial with Forrest Griffin about that car.
4
SPEAKER_01
Forrest Griffin loved that car so much he drove it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think he still has it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s got like 200,000 miles on it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you couldn t have a better fucking commercial than that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we reached out to him too.
4
SPEAKER_01
I said, Kia should know about this.
4
SPEAKER_01
They fucking blew it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You got a bunch of, you know how those guys are in the business world.
4
SPEAKER_01
They don t fucking get anything.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it was about the Kia then.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was about winning.
4
SPEAKER_01
They both wanted to win the Ultimate Fighter so bad.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the Kia.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the win.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the contract you get.
4
SPEAKER_01
The whole thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think at that point, you even forget all of that when you re in there.
4
SPEAKER_00
You probably just, there s a primal thing where like, I m not backing down.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re both bad dudes.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were both real fighters at the end of the day.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s why the fight was so great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_00
and just throw all the caution to the wind and just fight.
4
SPEAKER_00
Those are some of the greatest moments in the FC2 when the technique is not, kind of falls apart, and you re just like, fuck it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s because you re in those deep rounds, 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.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean,
4
SPEAKER_01
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.
4
SPEAKER_01
People that don t know a lot of, everybody thinks they know a lot about fighting.
4
SPEAKER_01
99.9% of the people out there don t know fucking jack shit about fighting or what it takes to do what these people do.
4
SPEAKER_01
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 it through the rest of this round?
4
SPEAKER_01
And then you start to think, am I going to fucking die right now?
4
SPEAKER_01
And these kids dig fucking deep.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they just like you said, all the other shit flies out the window.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now they re just on fucking autopilot to fight and win.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those are definitely the best fights you ll ever see in any combat sport.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that saying is true.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like the exhaustion makes cowards of us all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they re
4
SPEAKER_00
There s something about, because I ve competed a lot in jiu-jitsu, there s the violence of being hit too, but even just exhaustion, it makes you question everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
It just takes you to some weird place where your brain starts to think you re going to die for sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
Your brain starts to think, like, why am I doing this?
4
SPEAKER_00
All these excuses, all this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then the truly heroic action is to say, fuck it in that moment and just to get in there.
4
SPEAKER_01
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 dogfight, yet they keep fucking going and you keep trying to win.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t imagine.
4
SPEAKER_01
what s going on inside their heads, you know, self-doubt and all these other things that come into play when exhaustion sets in and they fucking power through it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, those moments, sometimes they re not, they don t have a glorious knockout at the end, but.
4
SPEAKER_00
your decision in the third round or the fifth round to still keep pushing forward, not running.
4
SPEAKER_00
That doesn t matter what happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
That is a person winning a battle over themselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
So true.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s so true.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it happens every fucking weekend.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s so impressive.
4
SPEAKER_01
I say it all the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
The people that are involved in this sport,
4
SPEAKER_01
are this much of the population.
4
SPEAKER_01
The people that make it to the top five are incredibly unique, special human beings, man.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s fucking awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
You love gambling.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the biggest win of your gambling career?
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe psychologically, if not financially.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, two things.
4
SPEAKER_01
I won a million dollar hand
4
SPEAKER_01
One night, it s happened one time, a million dollar hand one night at Nantale Bay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then one summer, I beat Caesars for 12 million throughout the summer.
4
SPEAKER_01
Throughout the summer.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I m on a pretty good run right now too.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is Blackjack.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the biggest loss?
4
SPEAKER_00
Biggest loss was,
4
SPEAKER_01
I would call this the biggest loss for many different reasons.
4
SPEAKER_01
You live and you learn in life and you figure things out as you go along.
4
SPEAKER_01
So one night I m over at the Rio, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
They got big suites over there, so I go over there with some buddies and we got one of the suites and we have some dinner and we start drinking, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So we re having some drinks at dinner and blah, blah, blah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Starts to ramp up, having a good time, and I make my way down to the Thai limit room.
4
SPEAKER_01
We start gambling.
4
SPEAKER_01
I continue to drink, having a blast.
4
SPEAKER_01
I end up leaving and going home that night, and I lost like 80 grand, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I wake up the next morning, I m like, fuck, those motherfuckers got me for 80,000 last night, and da-da-da-da-da.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m at work the next day, and the host over there calls me, and he says, Hey, Dana,
4
SPEAKER_01
Um, are you coming back?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you still need the room that you guys had where you ate and all this shit?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said, no, I don t need the room, but don t get, don t get too comfortable with my fucking 80 grand.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m coming back for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Dead fucking silence on the other end of the phone.
4
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And he s like, Dana, you lost $3 million last night.
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What the fuck are you talking about?
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I,
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I only have a million and a half dollar credit line. 
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He goes, yeah.
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You made us call the GM of the hotel and you started calling him a fucking pussy and dah, dah, dah, dah.
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And I went, yeah.
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That sounds like something I would do.
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Yeah.
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So that s the real number.
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That was the real number.
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And then, and then, you know, there s been a lot of cases where people are in Vegas and they re like, um, 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 taken advantage of.
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No, no, you stupid motherfucker, man up.
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You got fucking drunk.
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Right.
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They didn t,
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The alcohol is free, but you don t have to fucking drink it.
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You know what I mean?
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And you know, this, this was a huge learning lesson for me.
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So I never drank again when I, when I was playing cards after that night.
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But yeah, I mean, when you ask me, that s the one that stands out in my head the most as far as, uh, having a bad loss and then, you know,
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Of course I said call the GM and I started calling him a pussy at three o clock in the morning, so.
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Of course you did.
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That is something I would absolutely do.
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How do you deal with those psychologically?
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When you gamble, maybe this applies to fighting too, do you love winning or hate losing more?
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They go hand in hand.
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So the way that I play is, I live in Vegas, so 2024,
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is a war for me.
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I go to war in 24, okay?
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All these nights that I play are little battles inside the war that I will fight in 24.
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Now, at the end of the year, we will tally up all these little battles and see where I stand on wins and losses.
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You know, there s lots of talk out there about my gambling, you know, places that I ve been kicked out of and things like that.
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I do pretty well, I do pretty well, but it s what I like to do.
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I don t gamble in a way that I would ever hurt myself or hurt my family.
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I m sure you ve heard the Norm Macdonald stories.
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Norm Macdonald lost like his entire personal wealth four times or something like that.
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Yeah, that s not gonna happen to me.
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So you manage it, but just psychologically you re able to be even feel.
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Yeah, so when I win,
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It s awesome.
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It s always great to win.
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Winning is a great feeling in business, in sports, in life, and definitely in gambling.
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Losing is never fun, but it s part of the game.
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You know what I mean?
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If you want to be in the game and it s sports, it s business or whatever, there s going to be wins and there s going to be losses.
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And you have to take them both in stride and you have to be able to, you know, there s a lot of people
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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.
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You know, if you 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?
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These are all part of being in the game.
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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 get out there and go to fucking war again.
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That s how it works.
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That s some Goggins shit right there.
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All right.
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I love that motivational speech.
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It s the truth though.
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It s the truth though.
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Listen, every day when you get out of bed, life s standing right there to kick you in the fucking face, man.
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Could be anything.
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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.
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Life is going to throw all kinds of crazy shit at you, right?
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And you have to be ready for it and you got to fucking deal with it.
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You can t curl up into a ball.
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You can t run away from it.
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You can t hide.
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You have to take all this shit head on.
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You have to get up every day.
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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.
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I know a bunch of bad shit s going to happen that I m going to fucking deal with.
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And.
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If that s not bad enough, when I finally get out of here, I m probably going to go to the casino and I m going to get into another fucking war.
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You know what I mean?
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I thrive in chaos.
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I actually love chaos.
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Everybody talks about retiring.
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Fuck that shit.
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What am I going to do when I retire?
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What would I do?
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What would I?
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I like to go to war.
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I like to battle.
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I like to win.
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Sometimes I lose, but then I have to come back from the loss.
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I love to build brands.
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I love to set short-term and long-term goals and then knock them all down.
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This is just the stuff that excites me, whether it s business or
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or gambling or I like being a fan of things too.
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Like I like live music.
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So when I find a, like a band that I like, I get excited, uh, to, to, to go watch the band live or Celtics game.
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I love the fucking Boston Celtics and I love, you know, going to the games in Washington.
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This is the year.
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Hopefully we re going to fucking win it this year.
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Um, these are all things that make me happy and excite me in my life.
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And it s funny because there s this post that I post maybe three, four nights a week.
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I also love this city.
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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.
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And there s this turn on Summerlin Parkway, right?
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Every night and it s dark.
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And from there you can see the entire fucking city and it s all fucking lights and it s badass.
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And I m usually driving home after a fucking incredible day, right?
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This amazing day and this unbelievable fucking life that I have.
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And I have this just moment of gratitude.
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Every time I take that turn and I m like, God damn, I love this fucking city.
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And just every night when I go home, I m just so happy and grateful for this life that I have.
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So you re grateful, you re celebrating, even if the day is full of shit, full of problems, you have to solve all of this, you re still able to put that behind you?
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I love that too.