In Sports World Of Stiff Executives, Press Releases, and Boring Cliches, Dana White’s Brutal Honesty, Blue Jeans and Blue Language Give UFC Headline Power
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
He’s the sports executive unicorn of f-bombs, blue jeans and blunt-speaking prose.
While the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL are run by guys in suits who guard their comments and PR folks doling out press releases, Dana White shows up in jeans, a v-neck short-sleeved shirt, adidas sneakers and a brash mouth that helped his MMA promotion sell for more than $4 billion in 2016.
White is so at ease with speaking his mind in brutally honest terms that are occasionally laced with his f-bombs that you wonder why other sports leagues don’t follow suit with providing unrelenting candor, brutal honesty and funny comments. After all, White fills seats and arenas here in Las Vegas and in venues across the globe.
His comments know no boundary.
One week, he’s offering a fired female BestBuy security guard a UFC job for being a “bad ass” for wrestling a would-be shoplifter to the ground in Hawaii.
Another week, he’s hanging with President Donald Trump at a Trump political pep rally in Colorado.
And this week, White was chatting with Patriots quarterbook Tom Brady and videotaped himself urging Brady to play for the Las Vegas Raiders.
“His fights are real and his words are real. Fights are brutal and the way he talks can be brutal too. And you know what can be brutal? The truth,” said former UFC fighter Cody Donovan, a Denver-based MMA coach who is helping train UFC 248 competitor Neil Magny for Saturday’s UFC event at T-Mobile Arena.
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It was about 12:20 p.m. at UFC’s APEX building next-door to the promotion’s headquarters Thursday and White was running the face-offs between the UFC 248 competitors.
One of the headline matches is a hard-punching woman from China named Weili Zhang, the strawweight champion, battling a former UFC champ, Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
Both were chirping at each other on a small stage that was designated for the square-offs.
And White casually broke it up and ended the fighters’ words by simply saying with his trademark sly smirk, “Thank you ladies.”
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Donovan said White speaks his mind and “that could be dangerous.” But Donovan noted White could care less what people think of his comments.
It’s true, White doesn’t care what people think of him and his comments. He could care less what UFC fans think of his friendship with President Trump. TMZ had a report on the topic.
“He says what he thinks and that’s the way it should be,” Brazilian Alex Oliveira, who is fighting in UFC 248, said of White.
What sets White apart from most sports executives is that White has not forgotten his roots of being a boxing trainer who opened his own training business. Even with millions of dollars in the bank, his jeans and T-shirts look comes off as authentic because he still relates to the little guy as much as he does the celebrities he hangs out with like Mike Tyson.
While many sports team executives are guarded with their comments and their PR staffers cut off questions at post-game sessions, White sticks around to answer every last media question after UFC fight events.
“Everybody good,?” White has been known to ask the media when the last post-event question has been posed.
White even went one-on-one with LVSportsBiz.com last June, when this news site celebrated its second anniversary.
White’s known for his close relationships with his fighters, and recognizes everybody like old talent such as Conor McGregor to new emerging talent like China’s Zhang.
“If he’s fighting for me, he’ll fight to his last breath,” UFC 248 fighter Beneil Dariush said during media day. “But if he’s against you, he’ll fight to the last breath, too. We needed someone like him. I have a good relationship with him.”
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