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BY JACOB DEBETS
JUL 5, 2019
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.
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Last month, Dana White revealed during an interview with LVSportsBiz Guerrilla Cross Radio that he had signed a new contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, extending his tenure as the president of the organization for another 10 years.
It’s hard to fathom the UFC without White at its helm, which is probably why this news didn’t seem to generate much media buzz. Even though for a while there it looked like the 49-year-old had mentally checked out following the sale of the organization to Endeavor, in the last 18 months he has hit the reset button, looking and sounding like the old Dana again -- bullish, passionate and profane -- at press conferences and other appearances. Barring a force majeure event, he will continue in that role until 2029, after which he hopes to partner up with the Fertitta brothers in running an NFL team.
It’s not surprising that Endeavor wish to keep White around. For all of his flaws -- and we’ll get to those in a moment -- White is regarded by most as the most successful and influential MMA promoter in history, and it is hard to imagine the meteoric ascent of the sport in America without his involvement. It was Dana, armed only with his work ethic, street smarts and several tens of millions of dollars that took the UFC from a fledgling, near-bankrupt property of the Sephamore Entertainment Group to a financial and cultural juggernaut under the Fertittas, and the mythology surrounding him remains a significant factor in the UFC’s cultural relevance today.
White was, and to an extent remains, a sports executive singularly defined by his propensity for confrontation. In the debut season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” he stood down a picket line of fighters wishing to be compensated for their exhibition bouts by repeatedly shouting the phrase “Do you want to be a f—king fighter?” setting a mold for the company’s labor relations philosophy that remains 14 years later. Opposite critical members of the fledgling MMA media, White used his platform to disparage and degrade, pulling credentials for perceived slights and earning a reputation for holding a colossal grudge. Against the UFC’s many competitors, White went to war, verbally lambasting those organizations in the public, making threats behind closed doors and ruthlessly counter-programming their events. He saved his most brutal treatment for recalcitrant stars -- Randy Couture, B.J. Penn and Fedor Emelianenko among them.
Read more at https://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/Opinion-Another-Decade-of-Dana-157873#he9RT3x17pS2cwem.99
