I've already built the biggest fight brand to ever exist. The UFC was purchased for $2 million. And if the Lakers sold for 12.5 billion, then the UFC is worth 50 billion. And every day that I show up here, I'm here to win. When I'm dead, it's going to be impossible to beat what I built. And I am addicted to chaos. And if there isn't any, I create it. From UFC fighters to CEOs of multi-gazillion pound companies to world leaders, I see in you a man that is truly obsessed. Early on, I knew exactly who I was and I knew that I wanted to be involved in fighting. That's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Was there any athlete that you sort of put in a class of their own?
Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Ronda Rousey. But I didn't want women in the UFC. But Ronda Rousey grabbed me and said, "Can I get 15 minutes with you?" And she came in with the whole bravado, and I'm like, "Holy, I think I'm going to do this." And she's the one to do it with.
If there were principles that you would most attribute to the success of the UFC, what would it be?
When you decide who you are, what you want to do, what you're going to accomplish, and you work toward it, it is impossible for you to fail. Do not be afraid to take the risk. But some of these kids that think they want to be entrepreneurs, they don't know what it really takes. And there is a formula. And guess who has it? And we can talk about this.
And then this is a book your mother published about you, unauthorized as a biography. She's critical of you at certain points.
I don't go on shows to speak negatively about my mother, but I mean that's one of the grossest, most disgusting things. You couldn't even imagine possible until it happens to you. And sometimes family is the worst. And that was the beginning of the end with me and her.
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Dana, you know more than anybody that to become a great fighter, often times you have an anomalous upbringing. And I have some of these fighters in front of me like Khabib and Islam and Mike Tyson. And when you look at their backgrounds and where they came from, they have atypical origins. And when I look at you, I consider you to be a great fighter in your own regard. So that's my question: what is that early context that's made you the fighter that you are?
I don't know. Uh, you know, I always have trouble when we start talking about me and my upbringing and psychoanalyzing me. I don't know how to really answer those questions. Um, I don't know. It's not like I grew up like these guys grew up, but early on I knew exactly who I was and I knew that I wanted to be involved in fighting. That's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
In terms of your mom and dad, I listened to you talk about your dad and his absence and his difficulty with alcohol. Divorced at 8 years old, left with your mother, and that was also a turbulent relationship as you grew up. Is there anything from that early context that you look back on? I know you don't like being psychoanalyzed. I've heard you respond to like Piers Morgan and others who have talked about your childhood before, but is there anything from that early context that you think did shape you into this sort of like...
You know, I always say that, you know, you see these people that play the victim, you know, the victim mentality. It's like, oh, I didn't have any role models when I was growing up. Yes, you did. You just didn't look at it the right way. When you grow up, everybody who's involved in your life, they're all role models in good and bad ways, right? I used to look at, you know, some of my uncles and my dad and some, I was like, "Yeah, we don't want to go in that direction. Let's go in this direction." And in America, you can start drinking when you're 21.
I quit drinking when I was 21. I believe that I wouldn't be able to accomplish all the things that I wanted to accomplish if I was drinking. And I saw a lot of, you know, family members and other people where drinking had been detrimental to their life. And, you know, I think I had some pretty talented, you know, family members that could have lived a different life had they not drank.
Yeah, it's me and my sister.
If I was a fly on the wall during that period of your life, what would I have seen?
I don't know. I don't really remember. Me and my sister, you know, now that we're getting older, we talk about this stuff a lot. Me and my sister are super close. You know, both our parents are dead and it was just us. So, yeah, my mom was an animal. My mom worked her ass off and, you know, if she wasn't working, you know, and picking up extra shifts. She was a nurse. She was going to school.
And she effectively raised you on her own.
Because your dad was absent. I remember him reciting a story of him taking you to the cinema drunk.
Yeah. Yeah. And just, I mean, what I got from that was, I guess, carelessness.
The story of him taking you to the cinema, telling you, asking you if you wanted something, throwing $20 your way, telling you to go get it for your sister.
Yeah. Him embarrassing me.
It's one of those moments, and you know, you have these things that you remember from your young life. And I have a few with my dad, but you know, the movie was Beverly Hills Cop. It had just come out and it was like the biggest movie in the world. And we got there late. He showed up drunk to pick us up and take us to the movies, you know. So getting there was a whole, you know, scene on its own. And then we get there, the place is packed. There's no seats. He walks in and screams, "We're going to have to start moving some people," you know, and throws money at me to go get food and popcorn or whatever. In my opinion, my dad was a very selfish guy. And, you know, he lived the life that he wanted to live and everybody else didn't matter.
Did you ever understand him as you... People always say that when they get older they understand their parents better.
Well, what I understood was once I became a parent. I was like, "Holy, this is the way you're supposed to feel about your kids and this is the way you're supposed to, you know." So, yeah, I think that my parents made me a better parent.
You've got a very atypical drive in you. There's a certain relentlessness that I've seen. I mean, I've seen it all. And one of the sort of defining traits when I think of Dana White is this sort of relentless insatiable ambition. So my line of questioning isn't really to psychoanalyze. It's really just to understand like how that comes to be the case. One would guess that there's some kind of chip on your shoulder to some degree.
Yeah, it's true. But I try to focus on... I like to win. Winning is fun and everything in life. But, you know, I also make sure that the obligations that I have, you know, I pay attention to those too. Like, listen, nobody's perfect, but I've tried to do the best I could to be the best at everything I could at work, at home, with the kids, you know.
And if I'd asked you when you were a young boy, like some of these photos, what you were going to be when you grow up, would you have had an answer for me?
I didn't really know that until I was in my late teens. You know, I literally walked out of a job that at the time and in the place a lot of people would kill for. Um, and had checked all the boxes and made cash every day, got a paycheck every week, 401k, full dental and medical and, you know, all the things that people are looking for. But I didn't like working for other people. I always felt like working in the hotel industry was incredibly disrespectful, the way that they would treat you and talk to you and, uh, I never liked it. It was never for me. So, I walked out one day and I said, "I'm going to get into the fight business." At the time, I didn't know exactly what that meant or, you know, at what level, but that was my goal.
Have you always had a problem with, well, an issue with, dare I say, authority?
Yeah. It was never for me.
Where does that come from? Do you know?
I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer to that. But I never liked it. I never liked working for other people. I never liked being told what to do and I don't treat my employees like that.
Did you think you were going to be successful in your life when you were, I don't know, 14?
I did when I was younger. I believe that I would be. Yeah.
I sort of had these, you know, these ideas in my head which at that time you don't know exactly what it means or at what extent. But let me tell you what. So when I lived with my mom, me and my sister were just talking about this the other day. So my mom worked all the time or was at school and me and my sister were home alone all the time, but we had chores that we had to do. I mean, we were mowing the lawn, you know, cleaning the pool and trimming the bushes and all that. And I was like, let me tell you what, the day I make a dollar, I'm never doing this ever again.
So that's probably an important lesson she taught you.
No doubt about it. And I, you know, I try to do this with my kids, too. My kids have been great and done everything the right way. And I've told this story before, but my son Aiden, my youngest son, flies home from college one weekend and says, "I don't want to stay in school. I have an idea for this business that I want to do." And whatever. I said, he lays it all out for me. And I'm like, "This is a pretty good idea. I get it. I like it. But you're not going to quit school and just try to do this. This won't chew up 8 to 10 hours of your day. You're going to go out and you're going to get a job and you're going to put in applications and you're going to try to get a job because if I die tomorrow, that's what you're qualified to do." And he did it and he went and he worked at U-Haul and, you know, you got to have those kind of jobs. My son right now, my oldest is getting his master's degree in Boston right now. And when I lived in Boston, I used to work for EJ Paving Company. They pave roads. I actually want my son to go do some days at this paving company.
What is it you're trying to teach him?
Well, what hard work really is. So, people like, I run around, I don't sleep much, and everybody's like, "Oh, you work so hard. You work so hard." No, no, no. I'll show you what hard work is. Hard work is construction. Hard work is concrete. Right up the street here, I don't know how many days this summer were 115 degrees out. 115 degrees out. These construction guys are out there working in 115 degree heat. Like hard work, real work. And then in the winter, people don't realize this in Vegas, but it gets down into the 30s. These guys will be outside working when it's 30 degrees out. So, and hard physical labor every day, and then you go home, you eat and you go to bed, you get up the next day, and you go do it again. In your life, to figure out what you want to do, you have to figure out what it is you don't want to do.
I have a bunch of quotes here that you've said. If you just wanted to look at the first one.
There's no such thing as a day off when you run your own business. You know, there's no birthdays, there's no Christmas, there's no Thanksgivings. Bad things will happen every single day that you need to deal with. But when you like what you do, it's fun.
A lot of people, especially young people these days, want to be entrepreneurs. You know, "I'd really like to work for myself and own my own business because I'd love to plan my schedule."
Oh, you're going the wrong way. What you need to do is find a 9-to-5 job where you have weekends and holidays off and, you know, that's your move. If you're looking to start your own business because you want more time to yourself, you are picking the wrong thing to do. I promise you that. The key to becoming a good entrepreneur is you have to find solutions to problems every day. The universe was trying to fuck with me the other day. I got out of bed. I had to be at a board meeting at 9:00, right? I go in, I got to shave. Both my razors died. I use electric razors. They both died. Get through that. I get in the car and I'm driving and the sensor says, "Your back right tire is low. Stop the vehicle immediately." I said, 'Yeah, no, we're not stopping. We're going.' That's just life, right? When you get up and it's life standing there to kick you in the face and you got to get through all this. Then you get to work and there's a laundry list of problems and things you got to deal with. And this younger generation that think you can work from home and build a successful business. It's impossible. You can't do it. I'm in the office from 8:30 in the morning and I don't leave the office till 7, 8, 9, 10 sometimes, still to this day. There are times when I go to work and my schedule's planned out for the day. But people will pop in my office and we start talking about things and, you know, when you have a good group of people like I have at the UFC and we get in a room and you start talking, things pop up that you would never expect and things happen and a lot of good ideas come from everybody being at work.
Has being kicked in the face by business over the last couple of decades changed you?
Definitely. I don't freak out the way that I used to. I've been through it all and I'm way more calm now. I see this with a lot of guys. You become, I don't want to say you get weaker, but you do get weaker as you get older. There's a softer side to you than you had when you were in the early days of building your business. And I don't ever want to be that guy. You know what I mean? I try not to be that guy. But you do relax and chill out. And the things that you used to flip out about when you were younger, you don't when you're older. I mean, I went through a phase where I ripped through like 10 secretaries in two years. Like I need people around me that can keep up. You got to have people that can keep up and can handle the load of work. You know, it's probably the busiest year for me this year because I have Zuffa Boxing, Power Slap, and the UFC that I'm running these three companies. And then there's a ton of other things that I do, too. So, we'll be on the road, you know, I think we just got off the last two months. We were home for like 4 days in the last two months. Then I get home and I don't stop. I just go out and I do things and, you know, these guys that are with me, they're with me and it's tough.
Nobody owes you anything. So, you know, we talked a little bit about my parents and whatever. I had this kid that I grew up with and, you know, we were 12, 13, 14 years old. And I remember his dad had done really well and, you know, they had a beautiful house, they had cars, you know, he had all the things that you would want growing up. And I remember him telling me one time his dad ran into hard times and his dad had put a million dollars away for him in an account. And then his father ran into hard times and his father took the money. He's like, "My father stole a million dollars from me." And I remember thinking, "Are you out of your mind? The fact that your dad even thought of you that way, that he would put that money away for you is incredible. But that was never your money. You didn't earn that money. That wasn't yours." I remember thinking that way when I was 12, 13, 14, right? I'm like, that is definitely the wrong type of mentality. Entitlement. Brutal. And that guy grew up exactly the way you would expect that guy to grow up. He's just, you know, nobody owes you anything. Nobody. Listen, to be set up in a position where somebody can make some phone calls for you and do some things, but then once they do that, you have to go in and deliver.
There's going to be a ton of people listening that want to be entrepreneurs. Do you think most people are cut out for it?
No. No. To be an entrepreneur is a very unique thing. I mean, it's hard enough for a lot of people to get up every day and depend on themselves to take care of themselves. When you're an entrepreneur, lots of people depend on you. Lots of people feed their families and I take that role very serious. I mean, when I got into this business, not a lot of people believed in it. That's why we bought the UFC for $2 million, right? Let's be honest here. The UFC was purchased for $2 million. And if the Lakers sold for 12.5 billion, then the UFC is worth 50 billion. Okay? So the people who did believe in this and, you know, when I was trying to hire production people, production people don't want to live in Las Vegas, Nevada, especially 25 years ago. They want New York or LA, right? I was trying to hire sponsorship people, New York and LA. They don't want to live here. And then I had a group of people, Craig Borsari, who is my head of production, who is an absolute rock star, the best in the business. He was a rising star at Fox. He left Fox and came here because he believed in the vision and what was happening here.
When you think back on that journey of buying it for $2 million and then let's say it's worth $50 billion now if it was valued, you know, relevant to the Lakers. If there were principles, if there were like a couple of principles that you would most attribute to the success of the UFC when at the time nobody wanted to put on the fights anywhere. Everybody thought it was like too barbaric.
Is number one, the live event production.
And the television production.
And then on the business side that you think, you know, if we'd gotten that wrong, we definitely wouldn't be here.
The big problem, if you look at how 25 years ago when we bought this, you're never going to compete with boxing. Boxing is too established. It's been around too long. It's this and that. Boxing became a going out of business sale. Every time these guys would put on a fight, they try to grab as much money as they can and run. I am now involved in boxing. I have the only global television deal right on Paramount. All these other guys are on a streaming service called literally every promoter. What they've done is they've chased everybody out of the business. Television networks don't want to deal with it anymore. Sponsors don't want to be a part of it anymore. What we have done over the last 25 years is built a brand that not only the consumer trusts, but sponsors, television networks, the list goes on and on. So, I make sure that when people show up to my live event, which is super important. The people who pay to come to the live event spend way more money than the people on TV. And they got to buy flights and rooms and pay for their dinners. Every time we put on a live event, I want the people walking out of there going, "God damn, that was a good time. I'm glad we did this tonight and I would love to do this again."
And how do you make sure that's the case? I heard somebody saying one time, Dana acts like there's a formula to this. If you look, if you went back, I don't know the actual number, but it's a long list and a big number of guys with a lot of money who are really smart and have done good things in life that have tried to get into this business and couldn't do it. Couldn't make it work.
There is a formula. And guess who has it?
One of the things I've learned as I've gone through my business career that I didn't know at the start of my business career was how much of success is actually determined by the people you're able to assemble. I think at the start of your career, you think if I work weekends and I work really hard and have good ideas myself, then I'll be successful. And somewhere along the way, I realized that it's really about like assembling people and binding them with the right like philosophy or culture, whatever they call it. And the question I have for you is, have you noticed the same? Have you noticed that one of the like obvious but seemingly unobvious things about business building is the quality of people you hire?
There's no doubt about it. No one guy does everything. When we first bought the company, I was the everything guy. There was like two employees, me and somebody else. And, you know, you wear all the hats when you start. Then you start going out and you start building a team. And there are people who fit and people who work and people who don't. And you have to be really good at figuring out who fits and who works and who doesn't. And over the last 25 years, if there's a superpower that I have, it has been picking the right people to surround myself with. And I knew when there wasn't. We made a big decision when we sold on people that we brought in and I knew right away the people that didn't fit and I fired them.
What are you looking for in great people?
First of all, you have to have talented people. You have to have talented people that are not only really good at what they do, but are hard workers, too, and have the drive. But everybody has to be on board with the vision and has to be, you know, on the same page. I am at a place right now with my production team when we do spots and we do vignettes and they'll bring them into me and there are very few changes.
What is your talent there? Like if I ask the people that work closest with you, and I know this is a little bit of a weird question to answer, what is Dana's three skills that are rare relative to other people?
I am a fight fan to the core. 25 years later of doing this, I am still a hardcore fight fan. And when we put something together and we nail it, I know we got it. And now what I do is I push my team, whether it's production, matchmaking, sponsorship side, whatever it is. I push all these guys every day to get us to where I know I want to be.
Yeah. And you have been since I saw in your sort of early, sort of mid-20s, you were captivated with boxing at the time, I believe.
Yep. Every time when we go to an event, there's a red phone on the table where I sit and it goes directly to the truck and our producer's name is Zack.
The truck where the producers are.
Yeah. Zach runs all the shows. He has the freedom to do what he wants and he tries. So I'll pick up the phone and go, "What was that?" And he's like, "I thought we tried that." I say, "Yeah, let's never do that again. Okay, bye." And there's no hurt feelings. There's no whatever. Or we'll do something. I'm like, that was incredible. Yeah, congrats. That's incredible. And, you know, once you get to that level with your team, there's a woman sitting out here. Her name is Len. She's the head of PR. I don't really make a move without talking to her anymore. I trust her so much and she's so smart and she's so talented that she's involved in a lot of different aspects of my life. Craig Borsari, who I talked about, who is the head of production, my head of sponsorship. Once you build this like rockstar team, it's all just like it becomes a well-oiled machine where everything just starts to work the right way. Like when we were going through COVID, these people that I'm talking about, you know, when you go through something like this, who the hell knows how long this is going to last? And as crazy as the world was during that time, here's one thing that wasn't going to happen. I don't give a fuck. We were not going to lay off our employees. These people that have been here with me and that I'm super close to saw this quote from, I don't know who the CEO was, but says, "Anybody that's trying to sell you that we're a family is full of shit. This is transactional and it's the..." I don't know who wants to run through a wall for that guy. But he's full of shit. Okay, my team. That is the way I feel about my team. And I do care. And I will never pick money over people ever.
Scariest time in our lifetime was COVID. You're looking at the numbers and going, "Oh, you know, we got to let go of some people. We got to..." What? During the scariest time in human history. No. Your job as the CEO is to figure out how to keep your business running and to take care of all your people, right? Here's what you don't do. Oh, we're looking at hard times. Let's just start putting bullets in people who have missed their kids' first step, didn't go to a game, missed this and missed that to help build this company. It is your job as the CEO to take care of these people and figure out how to make money. That's the way that I look at it and that's what we did.
The reason why people have a problem with this whole like, you know, my team are my family thing is because they always say, well, you don't fire your family. And what you're saying is actually those that have been loyal to you are the ones that you treat like family, I'm hearing.
Yeah. If you don't have loyalty, what do you have? Right. If you work in a place where you feel like the rug could be pulled out from under you at any minute for no reason other than the numbers don't look good. You think you want to be an entrepreneur and you think you want to be the CEO of a company. Every day when your foot hits the floor out of bed, you're going to war. There's people trying to take what you have. There's people trying to screw you over. You know, people are coming after you every day. And the more successful you become, the more people that are coming after you. And I look at the UFC and other businesses that I run as a battleship. And me and my team are going to war. And we either all go down together or we don't go down at all.
I guess in that context, if you are at war, then you need, you know, your brothers in arms. You need soldiers.
And I'll tell you this. So I know lots of different stories coming out of COVID. The day that everything started to shut down, I literally got all my employees in a room together downstairs at our dining room and I said, "Listen, I don't understand this. I don't know what's going on, but if any of you feel unsafe or feel that, you know, you have loved ones at home that could be unsafe from this whole thing, you can go home." Nobody walked out. Nobody walked out. I said, "We're going to figure this out. We're going to get through this together." And, you know, every week I had weekly FaceTime calls with all my employees. And it sounds weird now, but I was like, "If you need anything, if you need groceries, toilet paper, a loved one of yours gets sick, make me the first call. We'll get through this together." And then, you know, it was only a couple weeks and I said, "We're going to work." And everybody, men, women, they all said, "We're with you. Let's roll."
Do you know what's interesting is the last time I heard a founder or CEO of a company say this to me, they also had a very turbulent childhood where they didn't have a family. And he ended up admitting to me, he goes, "You know, I guess to some degree, as an adult, I've been able to build my own community family that I really never had." And so I was just wondering as you were speaking there if there's a link there at all between how you treat...
No, here's the link for me. If I had, again, psychoanalyzing me, I've worked for companies that you go in and you give your time and your energy to and they treat you like you don't even matter, right? It's like, well, if you don't like it, there's 10 other people right behind you that would love to have this job. Wow, that's how much you value me and what I do here.
Yeah, it goes both ways, right? I've been in those positions before and I've... The red phone reminds me of another quote that I read from you, which is that you are always in the weeds. And one would think, you know, Dana, you're 57...
57 years old, very, very successful, made a lot of money in your life, peak of your powers. One would assume that by this time you'd be a little bit out of the weeds and dare I say even, I don't know, delegating and enjoying yourself a little bit more. I mean, that's presumptive, the word enjoying yourself, but would be out of the weeds by now.
No. You ever hear the saying, "It's easier to get to the top than it is to stay on top." True words were never spoken. When you're at the top, everybody's gunning for you. And everybody's looking at your blueprint and saying, "How do I use what he's done and how he's built this to beat him? How do I steal his people?" It's like being a world champion. So, you become a world champion and then everybody starts studying you and how you fight or how you play or how you do, trying to figure out how to beat you. And I love that.
How do you respond to that? Because it's easy to get distracted when there's that many people gunning for one guy.
And don't get distracted. You know what you get distracted on? You get into a business like this, right? And lots of goofy stuff starts coming at you like, "Hey, we want to do a movie about this. Hey, we want to do a thing on your life. Hey, we want to..." There's three things that I focus on every day, and I'm not going to say it. But...
You're not going to say it.
There's three things that I focus on every day. And if I don't fuck this up...
Why wouldn't you tell me?
It's part of the formula.
It's part of the formula.
Three things you focus on every day.
There's lots of ancillary things that come around the brand of the UFC, right? That if you start diving into all the, you know, and let your ego take over. You let your ego get into, you know, all this. You can't mess it up because I've seen other companies that are so big and massive and have been around for a hundred years and you make a couple of mistakes and then somebody else is coming trying to eat your lunch, man. And nipping at your heels. Nobody's nipping at my heels. All these other guys that are out there, we are not the same. Okay, this thing has gotten to a level now. My competitors are the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NHL, and the NBA. We did an 8 billion deal with Paramount. Right now, I don't know this for a fact, but I know this for a fact. The NFL are a bunch of animals, right? Soon as that deal was announced, all the powers that be at the NFL got in a room and said there was $8 billion out there that we didn't get. We'll do games on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know what I mean? And if you look at me now, we're sitting in my arena. Next door, I have the performance institute and our headquarters. We have everything that the NFL and Major League Baseball, all these guys have. We are part of the four major sport organizations in the United States.
Dana, can you give me one of these three things?
Um, no. No, no, no, no. It's part of the formula, but, you know, we have gotten to a level now where we are one of the top four major... All these other promoters and all these other guys putting on fights and all this, they don't matter.
But on this point of being in the weeds, is that important for, you know, people out there that are...
So here's what can happen, you know, and people say this to me all the time. We did the $7.7 billion deal with Paramount and they're like, "Wow, that's incredible." You know, you didn't make it. You never make it. You don't make... Do you know why Paramount did a 7.7? Because they believe that we can impact their business. Now, my job over the next five years is to make sure we do that because guess what I want? I want 10 billion after we get out of this deal, right? And the way that you do that is you added value to their company and, you know...
Is it not tiring though, constantly having to be in the weeds for 25 years and now you're rich and you've made all this money? Like, is it not?
I could understand for some people maybe, but not me. I mean, I'm 57, and I'm sure to a lot of young people that seems old, but 57 isn't that old. And what the hell would I be doing? I am addicted to chaos and, you know, and if there isn't any, I create it. It's a weird thing, but I'm definitely an addict. Yeah.
There's a particular quote in this pile of quotes which I think is really relevant.
Yeah. I love the haters. The haters are the best, man. There's nothing better than haters. Haters will lay out what they think is wrong with your business and how you're not, you know, doing this or doing that. And you know what this used to be called was, you know, the critics or the whatever. Now these days they're called the haters. And I love the haters.
Do you listen to the haters?
Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you don't listen to the haters, you know. It's not like you don't... You know what is real and you know what's just... They're just, you know, but you have to have these guys. They sort of keep you on your game. Now, most people would say I drown that. What I drown out is like the media that covers our sport. I don't look at them as haters. I look at everything they say is wrong. And when I look at what they say, it's like it's amazing that you could be involved in this business for 25 years and know nothing about it, you know? But I guess that's why, you know, we've never had any real competitors because when you think about what we're doing, it's never been done before. So what I'm thinking and what's coming next, these guys could never know. So literally all the guys that cover our sport, I block them out of my feed. I don't want to hear. They're all wrong and everything they say is wrong and it's a waste of my time to even listen to anything they say. But the hardcore fans, you know, and the people who hate and the people who say we're great and all this, I like that information. I like hearing what they have to say.
The two points you just made, this one and the point before, brought to mind this point of focus. You talked about these three things. You talked about blocking out the haters. When you're at the top, there are so many things screaming for your energy.
There's a... Everybody's going, "Look over here, Dana. Give me five minutes of your thoughts and energy." Then you've got a journalist over here. Then you've got this fighter saying something over here. And so I wanted to understand what your relationship with like focus and how important this idea of focus has been to your success.
Yeah. That's why you have to, like I was saying, you have to figure out what you pay attention to and what you don't pay attention to.
Kevin O'Leary called this signal and noise.
You told me about a great film.
Yeah.
The noise. You got to block out a lot of the noise. The problem is these days anybody with a phone, all right, can consider themselves an expert and I'm criticizing what they do, but it's just always wrong and it's always just such a waste of time. I want to hear what the fans think. I don't want to hear what these guys who are trying to start a podcast or a website or an Instagram account, you know, on the business think. I want to hear what the real fans think. And when you have been doing this long enough, you can sort of go through and tell what's what and who's who, right? So when I feel like somebody has made a really good point or an opinion on the show or the match, it's like when we put together a fight, and I've been saying this since day one, they're like, "This card sucks." You can't say the card sucks until it's over, right? Because these are obviously all really talented people that are on the card. Maybe some of them are, you know, younger and haven't proven themselves yet, but you can't judge a card until the card's over. And believe me, if the card sucks, I'll be the first one to say that the card sucked. So, there's just lots of things that make sense and things that don't.
What has made the biggest difference to you in terms of your energy, your health, and making sure that you can show up really well every day? Because you're the reason I heard about Gary Brecka and then I brought him on the show and he did really, really well on the show and then it was that watching you talk about some of the impact he had on your life. He's a health expert that transformed your life. But I say all this to say that in my life I noticed this variance between my good days and my bad days in terms of energy level, my ability to articulate myself. And so I'm longing to like get to a high baseline. So I'm wondering for you, like what has that been for you?
Yeah, he completely changed my life. When I hit 50, Gary Brecka changed everything. So, I have two doctors, one in Vegas, one in LA. They're both great doctors. So, when I started the whole Gary Brecka thing, they called me up together. They're like, "Dana, what are you doing? What are you doing with this shit?" And I said, "Listen, man." The guy said, "Give me 12 weeks and I'll change your life." We'll see what happens in six weeks. I was like, "Wow, I feel incredible." And all these things that they couldn't fix. They just kept switching up the pills and all this. And one of them that was real bad was sleep apnea. I was waking up almost every night and throwing up from sleep apnea, right?
And how did you meet him? Someone referred him to you and...
Carrie Kasem. Carrie Kasem was like, "I want you to meet this guy. I'm telling you, he'll do this and that." I didn't want to meet him. And then the weirdest thing ever is that my son turned 21 and I had his 21st birthday down in Miami and Gary Brecka lives in Miami and he says, "Well, we do IVs so we could do all the IVs for you guys down there and whatever." And I said, "All right, cool." So, we would go out and drink and, you know, then do the IVs. And then one day we're doing the IV. And he says, "Let me take your blood and let me do your blood work for you."
Yeah. And Gary had this thing that he could predict, you know, when you would die. And then I became obsessed with that. I said...
So then he said, "Give me 12 weeks. I'll change your life. It's going to be hard." And I said, "It won't be hard." Once I set my mind to it, I'll do exactly what you tell me to do. It took 6 weeks. 6 weeks in, I was like, I never felt better. And clarity, legs, and all these other problems I have and then sleep apnea gone. Me and my wife truly believe that he's wrong. I didn't have 10 years. We thought I had less because of the way that I would sleep and all the things that was going on with me. And, you know, this guy is a life changer. I wouldn't be doing all the things. I mean, I'd probably still be doing UFC, but I wouldn't be doing all this other stuff that I'm doing. I wouldn't be able to run at the level I run at right now without him.
I hear another one of your quotes here.
It says, "You either have the killer instinct or you don't."
And it's so true. So, this happened with Ian Garry.
You know, I saw your interview.
I felt like Ian Garry in that fifth round, you have this opportunity. You're fighting possibly the greatest fighter of all time. And you did a damn good job for four rounds. And, you know, he was battered. His whole right side was busted up. His face was busted up, but he was beating you as far as rounds go. Now you're the younger, bigger, rangier fighter. You just fought four incredible rounds. Get out there and put it on. You go out and start shaking his hands and hugging him and do that when they're strapping the belt on you. Show Islam all the love you want when the fight's over. This is the fifth round. You have five minutes to shock the world and, you know, everything you ever dreamed of and worked for can happen in this next five minutes and you didn't do it.
Does that mean he doesn't have the killer instinct?
I don't know. You know, he's a classy, really nice guy, but that's not the time or place to be it. You have to go out and you have five minutes left to... You know, he didn't show it. If he does have it, he didn't show it.
Any guy, company or person that wants to be a sponsor of ours. I'm not a logo slap guy. You just take your logo and slap it in and let's hope this works out. No, I want you to win. When you're with me and your name is on our canvas, I want this to be a mutually beneficial deal for both of us. I want you to win. And I want you to go, "Damn, thank God I spent my money on the UFC."
And you have to get up and you have to kick ass every single day. Not just for you, not just for your employees, but for your sponsors, the network, and, you know, you're never out of the weeds, I guess, is the answer.
You have to be an absolute savage in business. I mean, that goes right along with what I was just saying.
I don't like to... You know what I mean? I don't know. I would let other people judge whether I am a savage or not. But yes, I will tell you this. I absolutely positively have killer instinct. And every day that I show up here, I'm here to win.
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