Dana White

Dana White (born July 28, 1969, Manchester, Connecticut, U.S.) is the public face and CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the leading mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company. White developed a love of fighting and combat sports from a young age and competed as an amateur boxer before helping transform MMA from a marginal, scorned discipline to a wildly popular and lucrative mainstream attraction. Known for his brash personality, he has attracted controversy for his hard-nosed stewardship of the UFC, political views, and personal conduct.

Childhood and early career

White spent his childhood in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He and his sister were raised mainly by their mother, June White, a nurse; his father, Dana White, Sr., had alcohol use disorder and was an erratic, infrequent presence. Dana White watched his first fight on television—a boxing match featuring heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali—about the age of five at his grandmother’s house. In a 2024 podcast interview with entrepreneur Randall Kaplan, White recalled:

I just remember the energy in the room and the buzz and how everybody was reacting to this fight, and I loved it. I loved every minute of it, and that’s what started to give me…the direction that I wanted to go in in life. I knew that I loved fighting, and I loved everything about it.

Toward the end of elementary school, June White moved the family to Las Vegas. Dana White attended the private Roman Catholic Bishop Gorman High School before being expelled for behavioral issues. He lived with relatives in Maine his senior year and graduated from Hermon High School in Levant in 1987. He moved to Boston and for several years worked for an asphalt paving company and as a hotel bellman before seeking out local boxing legend Peter Welch. Under Welch’s tutelage White briefly trained as a boxer before deciding to focus on learning the business side of fighting. He left Boston in the early 1990s, a move he has attributed to conflict with mobsters who may have been affiliated with notorious crime boss Whitey Bulger. He refused to comply with the mobsters’ attempted extortion of $2,500 and instead fled back to Las Vegas.

Taking over UFC

There the entrepreneurial White opened a gym, arranged boxing bouts, and started an athletic clothing line. During that time he was introduced to the emerging sport of MMA, a form of hybrid combat that incorporates techniques from boxing, wrestling, jujitsu, karate, and Muay Thai and whose fighters compete in a chain-link-fenced octagon. White began managing MMA fighters, most of whom fought under the purview of UFC, and he found himself frequently in conflict with the organization. In his search for a resolution, he discovered that UFC was on the verge of financial collapse. “I ended up finding that out, that they’re in trouble and they’re probably going to go out of business,” White told Forbes magazine in 2014. “And I’d been to a [UFC] event, and I was looking around and thinking, ‘Imagine if they did this, and imagine if they did that. This thing could actually be really big.’ ” Together with casino owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, whom White had first met at Bishop Gorman, White formed Zuffa, LLC, and in 2001 the company purchased UFC for $2 million. White became president and the effective face of the organization and of MMA.

At the time that White and the Fertitta brothers took over, UFC was millions of dollars in debt, and its events were still banned in a number of U.S. states. Under White’s leadership, the company professionalized, adopting rules making the sport less violent, and received official sanction from state regulatory bodies. In 2005 the reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter debuted, introducing new audiences to the sport, and by 2010 UFC was selling an average of 587,000 pay-per-view tickets per event. UFC stars, notably Irish fighter Conor McGregor, began breaking into mainstream celebrity. In 2016 the talent agency WME-IMG bought UFC for $4 billion; White’s share as part owner was more than $300 million. He remained in his role as president until 2023, when the company merged with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and he was named CEO of UFC.

Controversies and personal life

White’s tenure as head of UFC has generated much controversy. As the company has rocketed in value, fighters have increasingly complained that they are not being adequately compensated, an accusation that White has routinely—and profanely—denied. Several antitrust lawsuits alleging unfair pay practices were filed in the 2010s, and in 2024 UFC agreed to settle one suit, covering more than 150 fighters, for $375 million. White has also faced other criticism, including for defending one UFC fighter’s anti-LGBTQ+ comments and another fighter against accusations that he threatened a drug testing agent. During the COVID-19 pandemic White was dismissive of the severity of the disease, and in May 2020 UFC hosted an event, making it the first major sport to return after the onset of the pandemic.

He is also known for his relationship with controversial podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been a commentator for MMA events since the late 1990s. In addition, White is a longtime associate of Donald Trump; Trump hosted a UFC event at his Atlantic City hotel in 2001, which White has said was a crucial step in setting the company on a path toward mainstream acceptance. White was a vocal supporter of Trump’s later political career, and in 2024 The New York Times characterized MMA as “the MAGA movement’s semiofficial sport.”

White has been married to Anne White since 1996, and the couple has three children. In 2023 Dana White was set to debut a new venture, Power Slap, a league for “slap fighting”—a competition involving two fighters repeatedly slapping each other in the face. However, Power Slap’s television premiere was delayed after security camera footage surfaced showing an argument in a Mexico nightclub in which Anne White slapped Dana White, and he slapped her back. White apologized for the incident but rejected the idea that he should be in any way censured for it. “Here’s my punishment,” he told ESPN.com. “I have to walk around for however long I live—and this is how I’m labeled now.…[People]…who had respect for me might not have respect for me now….that’s way more of a punishment than, what, I take a 30-day or 60-day absence?…You don’t bounce back from this.” Nevertheless, Power Slap, began airing later that year.