Dana White on Trump, men and UFC at the White House | NPR's Newsmakers

We interview some of the most influential people of our time, and today we hear from Dana White, President of the UFC and a prominent supporter of President Trump.

“New episodes of newsmakers can drop anytime, as soon as they're available, so the best way”

to stay caught up is to follow or subscribe to this show on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. We can also find this in the NPR app. Now, here's Dana White on NPR's newsmakers. Dana White is the head of the UFC, the ultimate fighting championship on mixed martial arts,

often brutal sports that he's built into a multi-billion dollar business.

On June 14th, Dana White will stage an event at the White House for his friend and frequent supporter, President Trump, and we talked about that here in Newark, New Jersey, before a UFC event. Dana White, thanks for welcoming us here. This is an amazing event.

Great to see. We were just watching your press conference at New York, New Jersey, where you introduce some of the fighters who are going to fight at the White House, June 14th. What does that event mean for you and for the UFC? Well, if you look at our humble beginnings and where we came from, meaning that when we

bought the company in January of 2001, we weren't even allowed on paperview. venues didn't want us, and many other negative things. Stigma that was attached to the sport, and you haven't-- You haven't came called at Human Cockfighting once upon a time. Perfect.

There you go. Yeah.

That's what we were then.

And now we're on the south lawn of the White House, and with 4,000 people, mostly military, and then across the street at the ellipse, there'll be 85,000 people. Over 300,000 people have applied for tickets. You're setting up a kind of outdoor arena there at the White House, right? Right.

Yeah. There's two things I hate. I hate stadiums, and I hate-- even worse than a stadium is fighting outside.

“There's just so many different variables you have to deal with, you know, the weather,”

and, you know, the worst obviously being rain and lightning. Yeah. And then bugs, and, you know, temperatures and things-- Lots of things. Lots of things.

How involved has the president been in the details?

Not very. Not very. He put Ivanka on it, and Ivanka early on, we were laying this thing out, was our point person, and the only thing we was at the fight in Miami, and he said, "Why is Derek Lewis not on the card?"

We called Derek Lewis, and now Derek Lewis is on the card. This is a fighter that he likes. He's a fan. Obviously. Derek.

The black beast Lewis. Let me ask about a couple of other fighters. The guys who are at the top of the ticket, and you just introduce them here in New York, New Jersey. Ilia Tuporia, who is your lightweight champion, and Justin Gagy is the challenger.

I've seen videos, they're pretty brutal as fighters. Right. But talk to me about their backgrounds. Where do they come from? What kind of people are they?

Yeah. So, Ilia lives in Spain. He's literally-- it's either him or his long market show right now, the pound for pound best fighters in the world, and he is very tight with all the big, like most famous soccer players all throughout Europe.

He has unbelievable grappling, and he has even crazier knockout power. He's beat some of the best fighters in the history of the sport, and he's going up against Justin Gagy, who is the human highlight real. He's another one, unbelievable power, unbelievable knockout highlight reals, and that fight means something in the division, and should be a really good fight.

“Here's the thing that caught my attention about their backgrounds.”

Tuporia, the champion, I believe, comes from a refugee family. Yeah. Look at Georgia. And the challenger used to work on a copper mine. Is that representative of the UFC, people who maybe in some way are on the bottom

in society, and they're using sports to fight their way out? 100% like most sports, whether it's soccer, football, boxing, obviously combat sports. People that are this tough come from some tough backgrounds. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

You were a boxer once, right? That was. What I like about when we get-- when me and my partners, the Fertida Brothers, got into the UFC, what we started to like was some of the stories of these guys. You know, at the time, Chuck Ladell, I don't know if you know who he is, Mohawk, Chinese

writing on the side of his head, Fu Manchu, mustache, and beard, you know, it looks like a serial killer, but he was actually a counting major from Cal Poly, Matt Hughes at the time, who was a farmer from the Midwest, and these were the different types of stories that other than boxing, which was, I came from the mean streets of such and such, if it wasn't for boxing, I'd be dead or in jail, which was everybody's story.

Well, one of the things that I, you know, believed about the UFC in the early days was, no matter what country you come from, what color you are, what language you speak, what are human beings, fighting's in our DNA, we get it, and we like it, and when guys like you and I grew up, your parents would put you in karate or taekwondo, this is the new martial art that men women and children are taking all over the world.

As this, to have the UFC after all these years become an expression of your personality, it is you and you are it. Me? I would say that the live event and the television side, I have honed and sort of dialed in over the last 25 years, but this sport has its own personality and basically whoever

“you are and where you're from, that's what I'm selling.”

What do you mean by that? Who are you as a person, where do you come from, what's your background, you're talking about a fighter, who are you as a person? The story. Who are you and where do you come from, that's what I sell every Saturday night.

How real is that as opposed to performance? Well, you sell who they are and where they come from and then it's up to them to perform.

I always say I'm the bells and whistles guy and then they have to come in and deliver

which for 25 years that's why the sport has grown as big as it has. New shows, new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully over at pop culture happy-hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching listening to and pretending you already knew

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“Why do you think the president has been such a fan since long before he was president?”

He's a fight fan. I mean, if you think about the Trump Atlantic city properties, he was putting on big fights with all the, you know, all the biggest stars back in the '80s and '90s and gave you a big break as I understood.

Yeah, so what happened was we first bought this thing, you know, it wasn't think about

this. It wasn't allowed on paper view. You was a grown adult, didn't have the option to pay for it on paper view, porn was on paper view. UFC was not allowed and our goal was to get on to free TV and everybody thought it was

impossible. So you can imagine venues, venues were like, you know, what kind of people are going to show up for this kind of event with the stigma that was attached to it. So yeah, venues were tough to get. So we Trump ended up reaching out to us somehow, invited us to the Taj and that was where

we did our first two fights. Is there something about this sport that represents Trump's view of America or even Trump's view of the world? Well, Trump can seem like there's no rules, even though there are rules. It's a pretty brutal rule.

Trump is one of the toughest, most resilient human beings that I've ever met in my life, the most. I don't know anybody. And I've been in the fight business since I was 19 years old. He's the toughest, most resilient guy I've ever met.

He's the toughest guy I've ever met before. And does this represent TV? I think fighting, I think sports does. I think the will to win, the will to overcome, the will to, you know, he has every ounce of that plus some even at 80 years old.

He also is very frank, like he doesn't respect rules a lot, he doesn't respect niceties a lot. Does he like that side of the sport? Well, I don't know if that's necessary. They're blood on the face.

I don't know if that's not necessarily true. I think that he comes off that way.

I've never, ever, had anybody, including the, the, the two latest Bill Mar, and I

Iliotoporia show up at the White House and walk out the door and say, yeah, he's not a good guy and I don't like him. What is it that people who don't like him are missing? What are they missing about him? I think that, listen, no matter who you are, you can be Donald Trump, you can be the

president of the United States, not everybody is going to like you and, and multiply that by 10 million when you're in politics. Some people are going to be watching this, listening to this, and think there may be a bit of a contradiction because we've been talking about how your fighters are often immigrants, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, even a refugee in the case of the, your champion fighter

is going to be at the White House. These are people not universally, but in large measure the president once out of the country. And that's not necessarily true either. What what the president wants is what everybody has talked about, including the Democrats

“back in the day, you have to get documented the right way, you know, there's a lot of people”

waiting in line to get green cards in this country. The borders have been open for the last four years and lots of criminals came in here, lots

They've got them out first, I don't think the president has ever said he doesn't want people

from other countries.

“He has said if you do it the wrong way, yes.”

In his first term, he did talk about legal immigration and being in favor of legal immigrants, but in the second term, they've actually canceled a lot of people's legal status. They've taken refugees and said it's time to go. I was actually wondering, as I was watching your fighters at this press conference here, some of them, I wondered if they've come to you and said I got a problem with my aunt.

I got a problem with my brother, can you help me? There's one a kid that retired from here who hit me up last week and he had a problem with his wife. But he said, you know, there was 110% our fault in how they send it up happening. But can you help?

And I don't think I get out. No, you didn't. You all have the president to say, hey, the president has done some great things. For instance, I don't know how long ago it was, now my time is a blur to me. I've been so busy this year, but there was a girl who was a fighter's wife and she was

Russian, but she has American citizenship. She went back to visit her family in Russia and the military kicked her door in the middle of the night and arrested her. No, they had found that she had donated $15 to Ukraine and they arrested her and had her in a Russian prison.

And president Trump, I called him and he got her out. He got a release. And do you know how he did that? He called Putin. I would assume.

That's a pretty high person to call in Russia to get something done. I want to ask about another aspect of your business. You've talked a lot about brain injury, which is part of this sport. It's part of a lot of sports. Of course, but how do you think about it?

How do you think about those guys you were just with at that press conference and their health? Yeah, it's an inevitable side effect of this business. When you get punched in the head, it's not good for you. And everybody going into this knows it's not.

We talked about this briefly a couple of minutes ago. I did it.

And at that time in my life, I wouldn't take that one punch now or one second of any

of that. This is what I was super passionate about. When I was younger, I absolutely loved it and I wouldn't change a thing. And these are all grown men and women that know the possibilities of competing in a combat sport.

This is what they choose to do. Why didn't you stick with it? Well, you know what happens is, one day, I realized that wasn't it.

“And I think the hard part in this business is I'm known a lot of guys that have met throughout”

the years that didn't realize that and stuck around too long, longer than they should have. Sitting here right now, talking to you, I guess I was right about myself. So you had all worked out in a different way. You made a better choice.

Have you ever had to have that conversation with a fighter who wants to go on? I made a better choice. You made a different choice, okay? I realized that I wasn't the guy. You wouldn't have seen me fighting in a title fight.

You weren't going to be rocky. 100%. Yeah. So you might, it wasn't a fear of injury of permanently hurting yourself. No.

You weren't realizing your ambition. Right. It's the realization when you wake up one day. It's like no, no different than AAA baseball players or guys that are trying to get into the NFL.

At some point you go, you know what, I got to pull the rip cord out. I'm not going to make it or I don't believe I'm going to make it. And if you stick around too long, trying to make it, you might miss another opportunity.

“Have you ever had to have that conversation with a fighter who wants to go on?”

And you're the one who has to tell him, no, you're done. Yeah. I've had a lot of those. Not just guys that probably aren't going to be talented enough to stay here, but guys who are staying here too long past their prime, too, have had to have all those types of

conversations. I'm thinking about there was a lawsuit that you settled recently, having to do with compensation for fighters. And one of the fighters said publicly, I need the money because I got CTE, which is a brain condition.

And I can't take care of myself. That's why I need the money. You're right that a lot of sports have this problem. The military also has this problem. And they think about it and they study it and sometimes they change their practices.

Have you changed anything to make this sport a little less risky? Absolutely. Everything that we do in this business every day, nothing is more important than health and safety does.

Think about this, 30-year history of the UFC, never a death or serious injury.

And 30 years, cheerleading can't say that, okay? I got you, but there are guys like this guy with CTE who did have a long-term condition. Well, later on in life, you're going to, you know, when you are in a combat sport where you get hit and head, this isn't like the NFL where, you know, they believe for years

There's none of that here.

“You know exactly what you're getting into.”

You're getting hit. We had to get into the sport, a hundred percent.

And there's never been a six to seven boxers die a year.

Never been a death or serious injury in this sport. We spend the money to make sure that two healthy guys are stepping into the act again. We have the proper medical attention there, that night, and after, after the fight. The other thing that we do is we started a study with the Cleveland Clinic where we go and we scan their brains and we continue to monitor their brain health throughout their careers.

I want to go on to another topic. You get a lot of credit for encouraging young men particularly to vote for Trump in 2024. And a lot of them did. I mean, young people generally vote Democratic, about half of young men, 18 to 29 voted for Trump, which was a big deal.

And now according to surveys, a lot of them are back to way. Is approval rating is very low among young men. Why do you think that would be? Well, I don't know if that's true. Well, the heart of surveys.

But 28 percent approved. They also said he wasn't going to win the election. All these studies are polls that they did both times. So I don't really believe much in polls.

He wasn't supposed to win the first election.

And he wasn't supposed to win the second election based on polling. And he won both. So I don't listen to any of that stuff.

“I think that during the COVID craziness and all the stuff that went on during that time,”

there was a lot of young men felt displaced and, you know, a lot of negative things were being said about young men. And, you know, obviously, this sport speaks to young men. A lot of the guys in this sport speak to young men, you know, not personally, but. Yeah.

And, you know, we supported Trump. What does this sport say? What message does it send about what it means to be a man? What does this sport say about what it means to be a man? Hmm.

I don't know. I think that hard work, dedication, setting goals for yourself, believing in yourself, those type of things. Does it say something about the need to confront people to be aggressive, to be in combat? No.

I don't think this sport says to be aggressive. It's exactly that. Obviously, really what this sport has is a martial arts history and a martial arts more about controlling yourself, but being able to defend yourself. I want to ask another question.

You said after speaking for Trump at the convention in 2024 and speaking upon its victory, you were quoted as saying you were done with politics. You said you were done with a (bleep) to be exact. Right. Yeah.

That's exactly why. Listen, I don't know how anybody could stay involved in politics, you know, as a career politician or, yeah, I don't like it. I don't like it.

“I think it's dirty, especially after seeing what happened to him, you know, going”

into that second election, the media, the things the media said about him, and it's just

all of it's nasty, and the day in time we live in now with social media, I mean, everybody has an opinion and we all have to hear it if you're on social media, but I'm in the fight business, my whole life, and I think politics is the nastiest business there is. But does the White House event bring you right back into politics? It's on Trump's birthday.

It landed on Trump's birthday. It's the 250th birthday of America, is it's coming up, yeah, I got true. His flag coming up. That's what we're celebrating. Okay, gotcha.

Gotcha. Gotcha. We're celebrating America's 250th birthday on the lawn of the White House, and, you know, there possibly couldn't be a greater honor than that, especially for me as an American. And I think that everybody thought that I was going to build a card America versus

the world where we did the exact opposite America is a country of immigrants that all came from somewhere else, and they're all going to be represented. I tried hard to have a Chinese fighter on the card, too, but didn't work out. I want to underline that for people who don't follow this. Like the old time, WWF, was, you know, there's the iron shake, and people could hate

the foreigner, and you're saying you didn't want to do that. Well, it wasn't about that. That wasn't my thought process. And there was, you know, everybody thought that there was going to be, you know, it's

It's 250th birthday of America, an American versus, you know, a foreigner where, hopefully all Americans went and America feels, you know, no, we did the exact opposite.

We are global sport, and, you know, I always have to deal with something bad going on

in the world when you're a global sport. When the Russia and Ukraine war started, you know, I had people going, "You're going to have Russia, yeah, we're going to have Russians fight, we have Russians under contract. This is how, you know, my guy's feed the family." So you weren't going to be like the Olympics and say, "No, I don't do that," you know,

and everybody that fights in the UFC, America's a free country, there's free speech, and, you know, like I said, whoever you are, Sean Strickland. One of the fighters, he was just introducing, yeah. He's a nightmare, a nightmare, says horrible things about lots of different people, and you know, freedom of speech.

I want to note what for some people is an irony. You're a friend of the president, you've been very close to the president, you're doing this event on the president's back lawn, and your boss is Ari Emanuel, big time Democrat. What is that? Could you explain that first?

Or left as you could possibly yet. Yeah. How's that work? I mean, how do you work? Great, actually.

We built an incredible team, and the new business that we built over the last ten years,

which is TKO, we built an incredible team with him, everybody plays a role in all the different businesses, and you know, Ari is greatest agent of all time, and, you know, he adds a lot to his bit, but when you think about where we are in the world right now, like we're talking about all these young people that are into politics.

“When I was in my 20s, I don't even know who the governor was, okay?”

You didn't think like that. We're more political than we've ever been now. When you think back to the Democrats and the Republicans of the '80s and '90s, they used to at least get together and talk. It's like we're a place where people can't even talk anymore, and if they find out that I'm

friends with the president, I'm a maga piece of shit, you know, and people who don't even know me, have these ideas about me, and the same, I'm talking to NPR right now, I talk to everybody. I did a CNN interview about two weeks ago at the office, and it was a great interview. I asked great questions. She was a very, very smart woman with great follow-up questions, and I like talking to everybody. I have no problem with any of this stuff.

Did you tell somebody who's not political? Did you tell somebody recently you feel like you're a 1980s Democrat? Yeah, words to that effect. Yeah. So what does that mean?

It means that I have common sense, and whether you're right or left, I consider myself in the middle and probably lean a little left in a normal world, and I don't hate anybody because of their politics or what they believe, if you look at any of my speeches that I've ever done at the Republican convention, tell me one thing that I've ever said bad about somebody who's Democratic or Leans left.

“If you lean a little left, is there a political issue the president is wrong about?”

I'm here perspective. I don't know. I don't really, every four years, somebody else is going to come in. Nobody's ever going to 100% agree with the president, whether they're left or right. And you know, I think what you do is, this is what happens, I'll be putting on a fight

on Saturday night, and you'll have a group on the internet going, "This fight sucks." What do you mean, "This fight sucks." "This fight has even happened yet." You can't judge the fight until the fight's over, that's my ride. You can't judge the fight until the fight's over, the president has three more years.

You might not love everything that's going on, but you don't know everything. We don't know everything that's going on behind the scenes. Judge him in three more years when his term is up. Now he did in four-year term. I hope people can hear that.

We're hearing a helicopter overhead. It's landing on the roof to take you away. Dana, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Joyce.

Thanks for coming out. Okay, have a good flight. Just a reminder that new episodes of NewsMakers drop whenever they're available.

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