Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. It's good to see you Dana.
It's good to be here. I've got to figure that our audience, let me put it to you this way. Not all of them watch UFC fights regularly. Let's put it that way. Yeah. But I think you would also be surprised in who is and who isn't a UFC fan. So, where does this all come from? We know about the origins of boxing. People have been fighting forever for sport and otherwise. This form of fighting comes from where? In the early '90s, a bunch of television guys, local guy here from New York named Bob Meyrowitz, got together and said, 'Let's answer the age-old question of which fighting style is the best.' We put a boxer against a wrestler, kung fu versus karate and all these type of things. And they did the first one and it rivaled the WWE and boxing pay-per-views at the time. So, they were like, 'Wow, we got something here.' So, they did another one and another one. What they never realized at the time is that they were building a sport. And the answer to that age-old question is, 'No one fighting style is the best. You have to have a little piece of everything to be a complete fighter.' And Bruce Lee was saying that in the '60s.
So, I went to see when I was a kid, I went to see on closed circuit in a movie theater, Muhammad Ali fight a Japanese wrestler. I think the wrestler just stayed on his back and kept kicking Ali in the shins. It was not exciting, I got to tell you.
It's very true. But UFC has what kind of rules? You get into this octagon, two men or two women, and then what? What you're saying is exactly right. When you started pitting style versus style, it wasn't very exciting and there was a lot of stalling. And when we bought the UFC back in 2001, we ran toward regulation. Meaning to have the athletic commissions in each state oversee us.
What are the rules? For the uninitiated, two fighters get into the octagon, this kind of padded ring with a kind of a fence around it. And then I've got these gloves that aren't quite boxing gloves on me. Maybe they protect my hands, maybe they don't.
And then you just go in and, you'll forgive me, you go to beat the living crap out of the other guy. What's allowed, what's not? Because in boxing you can't hit below the belt. There's all kinds of rules.
Here. There's most of the same type of rules except this can go to the ground where you can use submissions. You can strike on the ground. What's a submission? A submission is where probably...
Be called the sleeper hold in professional wrestling?
I was just going to say. Probably the best one is called the rear naked choke where you get the choke in and the guy either taps out or he goes to sleep. Yeah. So 'goes to sleep' is a euphemism.
Right. No, no. So what you do is the carotid arteries, the choke closes the carotid arteries which slows the blood flow to the brain and makes you go to sleep.
Okay, I think I just sensed a lot of people passing out around me. So how dangerous is this compared to boxing and the other martial arts?
This is how dangerous it is. 30 years never had a death or serious injury. Cheerleading can't say that, okay? And six to seven boxers die a year. Nobody's ever died. 30 years. When you spend the money on the proper medical attention before they get in, during the fight, and after the fight, you eliminate a lot of the risks in the sport.
What about injury down the line? We all know the effects of football, CTEs and the rest. And you know, I've met a lot of boxers who might have their wits about them when they're active, but years later you've met them, too. Absolutely.
Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, many other fighters that I've met and tried to interview. They've really lost it and it's very clear that this is the result of repeated blows to the head.
Absolutely. Are you saying that UFC is free of that?
No. Anytime you're taking shots to the head, it is very bad for you. So, how do you justify it? You don't. You have grown adults who choose to do this for a living and this is what they want to do. It's not like that thing that went on in the NFL where they thought helmets were protecting their brains. They became a weapon.
Everyone who goes into this knows that getting punched in the head is bad for you. Yeah. What's the appeal to you? How did you get into this?
So, I was a big fan of boxing and grew up loving boxing. It was my favorite sport. And I went to high school with these guys, the Fertitta brothers. They own Station Casinos in Las Vegas, like the fourth largest gaming company in the...
The East Coast and then you moved to Las Vegas, right?
To Las Vegas when I was in fifth grade. And I ended up going to high school with these guys. One night Frank Fertitta and I were at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. And there was a fighter there named John Lewis who fought in the UFC and he had a jiu-jitsu school. And Frank said, 'I've always wanted to learn jiu-jitsu.' So, we went over and talked to him. We set up a private lesson on Monday and we became obsessed. We started training four or five times a week in jiu-jitsu and through that we started to meet a lot of the fighters that fought in the UFC and we were blown away. Most of these guys, it wasn't the same story as boxing. Boxing story is I came from the mean streets of such and such and if it wasn't for boxing, I'd be dead or in jail.
Right. The complete opposite with UFC fighters. Most of these...
Would that be? Because when you think about if your parents put you in martial arts when you were young, your parents had money. Yeah.
Martial arts training isn't cheap, you know.
And a lot of these guys were college wrestlers, so they all went to college. Like Chuck Liddell. Do you know who Chuck Liddell is?
So, but tell everybody. The stereotypical ultimate fighter if you saw him, he's got a mohawk, big mean looking guy with a Fu Manchu, and he's got Chinese writing tattooed on the side of his head. He looks like an axe murderer if you saw the guy. He graduated from Cal Poly with an honors degree in accounting. [laughter] So, these were the type of guys that were fighting in the UFC and I thought that their stories were very interesting. And the truth is if you've ever been to a UFC fight, anybody who's listening right now that's been, it is the most exciting live sporting event you will ever see. There's so many different ways to win and lose and just the energy and the buzz inside the building is amazing.
You mean there's so many ways to win and lose? So, in boxing, I punch you to the head or body more times than you punch me to the head or body and I win or I knock you out. In the UFC, you can do all of that too, but you can also kick, knee, elbow, punch. It can go to the ground where you fight for submission. So, it's just non-stop action. Tell me this, Dana. I wrote a book about Muhammad Ali long ago. I think we both agree he might be the greatest athlete who ever lived, certainly the most exciting in my lifetime or human.
Who's the Muhammad Ali of the UFC in your estimation and why?
We have a guy named Conor McGregor who I would say is like our Muhammad Ali. But if you're looking for your Michael Jordan, it would be Jon Jones who is the greatest. Now, why is that? Tell us about Jon Jones and why he...
So, Jon Jones is in his 40s now. He's undefeated still. He's never been beat and he's moved up and down weight classes. It's very unique and hard to be undefeated in the UFC.
How did you buy UFC? Because you seem in retrospect to have bought it for a song.
Yeah, $2 million. So, when we were training in jiu-jitsu and we started to meet a lot of the fighters, I started to manage some of the guys. And I got into a contract dispute with the old owner, Bob Meyrowitz. And Bob said, 'You know what? There is no more money, okay? I don't even know if I can afford to put on the next event.' We hung up and I said, 'Wow, that's interesting.' I called my partners, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, and said, 'I just got off the phone with the owner of the UFC. I think they're going bankrupt. They're in trouble and we should buy them.'
Wasn't it kind of risky? You had Senator John McCain, who's nobody's idea of a wimp, God knows, call MMA human cockfighting.
How do you respond to that?
Yeah, I think that without Senator John McCain, I probably wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation with you right now, you know.
Tell me why. Because I think his stance on the UFC drove them toward regulation and being regulated by the athletic commissions in each state. This many people want to see a freak show. This many people want to see a real sport. So...
So what separated it from the old form to the new form? What were the regulations that were put into place? It used to be banned in 36 states.
Well, think about this. It wasn't allowed on pay-per-view. You as a grown adult didn't have the option to buy it. Porn was on pay-per-view. UFC was not allowed. So when we bought it for $2 million, our goal was to get it back on free television, which everybody thought was impossible.
So what were the regulations put into place so that it was no longer a freak show?
So what sort of tripped them up early was them sensationalizing it like 'two men enter the octagon, one man leaves, the most brutal, bloody, violent sport in the world.' You know, 'there are no rules.' But that's just hype.
Right.
That in boxing, too. But at the time I was involved in boxing and when the first one was coming nobody believed it was true. There's no way this could be real that this is going to happen. And it was real. It did happen and everybody tuned in because of the sensationalism. But...
That eventually ended up biting them in the end. How so? Because Senator John McCain went after it and said this is disgusting. Think about at this time. And again, when you and I grew up, right? John Wayne movie. John Wayne would hit a guy. Guy would go down. John Wayne didn't jump on top of and start pounding him. He'd stand him back up and he'd hit him again. You didn't do that. You didn't jump on a guy when he was down. You didn't hit a man when he was down. What do you tell the referees? At what point do the referees jump in and stop the proceedings? Because sometimes somebody will go down and then the other fighter will jump on them and start punching them mercilessly in the head.
It's the fighter's job to keep going, I assume. It's the referee's job to do what?
It's the fighter's job to protect himself at all times. And if the referee feels like he can't anymore and the fight needs to be stopped, he stops it. No different than boxing. I mean, you've seen some boxing fights where the guy's out on his feet.
Yeah, but I've seen some terrible refereeing.
I agree. You'll see it in the UFC, too. There's terrible refereeing sometimes in the UFC. But you're saying it's terrible because they're too hesitant to stop it or too quick to stop it?
Both. So, sometimes they're too quick, sometimes they're too late. You know, there's terrible refereeing in boxing, UFC, basketball, the NFL. I mean, you're always going to have some human error.
What is the breakdown of fans, men and women?
Well, a lot more women now than there was in the beginning. In the beginning, my base was males 18 to 34. I mean, that was a no-brainer. And then over the last really, you know, I went through COVID, right? I don't own brick-and-mortar. All I need to do is set up an octagon somewhere and beam it back, then I was on ESPN, beam it to ESPN, and our business grew like 77% during COVID. And a lot of them were women.
I've noticed that there are a lot of foreign-born fighters in the UFC, and a lot of them come from Dagestan, Georgia, Chechnya, Uzbekistan. Why is the Caucasus such a seedbed for the UFC?
Yeah, if you came from anywhere that ends in Stan, you're a tough human being.
[laughter]
You're a tough human being.
Yeah. And let me ask you this, is it a challenge to try to market the UFC when you have so many foreign fighters or it doesn't really matter?
No, no. You know, people ask me about foreign, about language barriers, about this. You can be a deaf mute, okay? If you are the baddest man or woman in the world, people want to watch you. If you have that Conor McGregor, that Muhammad Ali thing, I mean, that's just a...
Okay, tell me about Conor. What does Conor McGregor have that separates him out?
He has that ability that when he walks into a room, people are fascinated by them, to listen to them. They're funny. They have incredible magnetic personalities. And they're real personalities, you know, or are they put on in the way that pro wrestlers of my childhood and after? Some are. Some have the thing that they turn on when they're... Conor McGregor has like Muhammad Ali was the same guy in the living room with his wife and kids that he was when you saw him on TV. And Conor McGregor's the same.
Why do you think UFC has taken off now? What is it about the culture, the other sports, the media sphere? Why now?
Well, I have this philosophy that no matter what color you are, what country you come from, what language you speak, we're all human beings, and fighting's in our DNA. We get it, we like it. Even a sophisticated guy like you that writes for The New Yorker and whatever, if a fight broke out in here right now, it would create this sort of energy in here with you and I and we'd be like, 'Oh, wow, there's a...' and we would watch the fight play out.
Right. It's just in humans. It's just in us. It's in us, absolutely, 100%.
Ugly in us?
I don't know about ugly. We're all fighters. Even everybody listening to this show right now, we get up every day and we battle something. We all have to fight. When you get out of bed every morning, life is standing right there to kick you in the face.
I've noticed. And it could be as soon as you get outside, you got a flat tire. Dana, I think you got to give me credit for going 17 minutes or whatever it is without mentioning Donald Trump's name.
But you're associated with him. You're associated with him.
He's one of my very good friends. Okay. You spoke for him at the nominating conventions.
Yep. I think at the victory celebration, you were one of the speakers right there with him. Which I didn't see coming. That was not planned. Why? Tell me a bit about the origins of your relationship with Donald Trump. I don't know if it's political in origin or just maybe UFC and political.
So, when we started this, all the things that we've talked about, buying and building the UFC. Now, imagine if this wasn't allowed on pay-per-view.
Imagine venues. Right? Arenas did not want us. What kind of people would show up to see an event like this, human cockfighting? So, Donald Trump owned the Atlantic City casinos at the time and he had us come to the Taj Mahal for the first fight that we did, UFC 30. We did UFC 30 and UFC 31 at the Taj Mahal. What year is this? 2001. He showed up for the first fight of the night and stayed till the end both times that we went there. And every good thing that ever happened to me in my career after that, he was always the first guy to reach out and say, 'Congratulations. I always knew this was going to be big. I knew you were going to...'
What did he like about it?
Well, I think he's a fight fan. You want to talk about a fighter. I mean, that guy's a fighter. One of the most resilient human beings I've ever met in my life. And he had the big Tyson fights and boxing matches at his place. So, he's a fight fan. And the guy has always been a good friend to me. And then in 2015, when he decided he was going to run, he reached out to me and he said, 'I would be honored if you'd speak for...' Well, this is the way he said it. Called me and said, 'If you don't want to do this, I completely understand, but I would be honored if you would speak for me at the Republican Convention.' And everybody told me not to do it.
Well, Dana, tell me a little bit what your politics were like up until then. And what was your sense of his politics up until then?
I would say that my politics have always been common sense, down the middle, leaning a little left.
Mhm. That's what I would say I was.
In what sense?
In my 20s, my late teens and 20s, I spent in Massachusetts, which is very liberal. Yeah, I would consider myself an '80s, '90s Democrat.
Have you changed over time politically?
A kind of center-left Democrat?
Do you talk politics with Trump? Or did you before the first convention?
No. No. That wasn't a currency of our conversation, of our relationship.
In any of my speeches at the conventions or any of that, I don't ever say the left is wrong or the left is bad or the left is this. I spoke about who he is as a person and as a friend and as a human being because a lot of the narrative that they put out there about him and who he is as a person is gross.
Okay, so let's dig into that a little bit, too. I think it's fair to say that if he has that reputation, it doesn't come from outer space.
Oh, it does. It comes from politics. That's where it comes from.
Does it come from his some of his rhetoric and some of his way of treating people and talking about people?
No, I think that listen, do I wish that back in the day he'd stay off Twitter a little bit more and things like that? Listen, he's a tough guy and he's not afraid to give his opinion, but he's been talking about politics since he was young. I mean, if you look back at him, but these things that he's a racist and he's a Nazi and he's this and that. I mean, Donald Trump... All this stuff's coming out now. You know, the Michael movie just came out and you see all these videos now popping up of Trump defending Michael Jackson and the type of person that he was and that Michael Jackson was around his children and around his family a lot.
Wait a minute, Dana. Michael Jackson, as talented as he was, as brilliant as he was, was a deeply, deeply flawed human being, to say the least, and was abusive. Everything we know about him. To kids.
Yes, it's terrible. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true. But I can tell you that the president had a very good relationship with Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson around his kids all the time and defended him when that stuff was going down.
Do you ever talk politics with the president? Call the guy a racist is crazy. He's not a racist.
Well, how do you... Look, I don't want to go on endlessly about Donald Trump because then that's all we'll do. But when he puts out a video that shows the Obamas as apes and then won't even apologize for it, you don't get the willies from that?
No. I've been around the guy so much.
But that doesn't give you pause, Dana?
As far as what? About his views of... just about his way he talks about other human beings, much less race.
Well, if that's the way he... If he was that type of a person, first of all, I became friends with this guy never even imagining that he would be the president of the United States someday. Right. And if he was that type of person, I would never associate with that type of a person, no matter who he was or who he thinks he is.
But if he does that, how is he not that kind of person?
Something that I... No, no, what you're telling me is that you kind of know... Of course you know him better personally, but he's the most transparent personality we have in public life. He talks to the press all the time. He's on social media all the time. It seems sometimes there's nothing that we don't know about him.
So he's almost as apparent to me as he is to you.
And I don't know about the Obama thing to speak on. I've never seen it. I didn't know that. But I can tell you this: he's not a racist. He's not a fascist. He loves this country. And if you're an American, race, religion, whatever it is, President Trump is on your team. That I guarantee you.
There's another person you have a very close relationship with. In fact, you hired him as an announcer, color commentator, Joe Rogan.
Tell me about him because I listen to him from time to time, written about him. But he's pretty now that he's hugely famous, he's kind of protective of himself and his brand. Tell me about your relationship with him.
