Into the Cage

by Nick Gullo

  Tito laughed. “When I was growing up they called that cockiness, but you said confidence—”

  “But that hubris is how he gets things done,” Joe replied. “That’s why he’s so good at what he does. He’s got a whole lot of Don’t Give a Fuck, and I appreciate that … I like watching people grow … I think you have to have an unflappable belief in yourself to run a company like that. You can say that’s negative all you want, but I think, in order to do what he does, he’s the guy for the job.”

  As a long-time friend, I’ll second Joe on that: yes, of course he’s changed. There’s no equilibrium in a changing environment, and that’s just the fucking way of the world. Job pressure, marriage, children, triumphs, failures, professional acclaim, personal rejection—every stress influences and forces adaptation.

  Evolve or weaken and perish.

  Yet, our friendship hasn’t changed. Take last year, bored senseless in a hotel room, after arguing about what I can’t remember, we started wrestling. Knocking over chairs, plowing into the wall. Finally, he grabbed hold of my collar and choked me until the room dimmed and Marty Cordova shoved him off.

  Or this other night, at a club, I’m mesmerized by the troupe of pint-sized Oompa Loompas—and I mean little people with green hair, orange skin, white overalls—dancing and cavorting onstage. Big Bird peeked from behind the red curtain, and whatever this was, this mad burlesque, I couldn’t get enough. Until a chunk of ice hit my neck. I glanced back, and Dana’s standing on a booth, glass in hand, smirking. A trumpet blared. The Oompa Loompas tossed bowling pins. Another cold pellet slid down my shirt. I flipped him the bird. Then another chunk hit me, the last … because I stormed over the seat and tackled him off the booth. For a moment time froze, the strobe lights blinding white, and suspended parallel to the floor, time engaged and we crashed through the table, shattering glass and splintering wood.

  Dana with the Fertitta brothers.

  Nothing has changed.

  “A friend is the guy that no matter what you did,” Dana told the Canadian reporter, “no matter what’s going on in your life, no matter what you have, you can pick up that phone and can call him and he’s got your back.”

  Chuck Liddell rubbed his face when I recounted Tito’s on-air comment. “I’ve been close with Dana for twelve years,” he sighed. “I’m a fighter, but that doesn’t keep us from being friends. Some guys just don’t know what that really means.”

  Question 2: Why Do You Go to So Many Fights?

  Traveling to UFC events week after week, month after month, for more than a decade takes its toll. The road is a lonely hectic grind. No matter how nice the hotel room, it ain’t home. Ask any traveling salesperson or business consultant—the family misses you, the kids weep for your return.

  So, for many events, to help break up the monotony, I’ll jump on the plane and join the crew. There are usually five of us: Dana; Elliot Howard, video blogger; Craig Borsari, executive VP of production; and Marty Cordova, 1995 American League Rookie of the Year.

  Marty, Dana, and I have been friends since we were teenagers. And nothing stokes us more than the others’ success. Flashback to ’95: Dana lay on the couch after a hard day at the gym, and thumbing the remote, flipping through the channels, on ESPN he read the breaking news: “Marty Cordova Breaks Minnesota Twins Record for Consecutive Homeruns.”

  He leapt up and screamed, “Holy shit, he fucking did it! He did it!”

  Though we’d moved on, each following paths beyond the Vegas valley, we kept tabs. I own Marty Cordova baseball cards, signed balls, action figures. Every few years we’d reconnect over dinner and drinks; but neither time nor distance diminished that stoke. I’d track his stats in magazines and, schedule permitting, catch a game. Dana and I joke over which of us owns more Cordova merchandise. He’s our boy from when we were poor and loaning each other shirts so we didn’t look like goofs at parties—so fuck the haters, we admire and praise his accomplishments.

  In all the magazine articles and newspaper profiles, and I’ve read every one, the writers rehash the same crap on Dana: he travels on a private jet, drives a Ferrari, texts on an antiquated flip phone, loves blackjack—but there’s no truer reflection of a man than his lifelong friends. It’s a testament to Dana’s character that he remains close with so many of us.

  Question 3: What Do You Guys Do for Fun?

  New York, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles—in every city and every country, the goal is let loose, eat and drink, and blow off steam. But the most anticipated destination is hardly the most luxurious: Levant, Maine, the small country town in which Dana spent his early childhood.

  Soon as he made money he purchased a large tract that included his grandmother’s drafty trailer. The strained relationship with both his mother and father is so overexposed in the media, but don’t think Dana was some unloved orphan. For years he lived with his grandmother, a rock throw from cousins, aunts and uncles. And while walking those fields, the fresh air and tree-lined horizon, it’s clear that during the drudgery and endless UFC meetings, this is where his mind wanders.

  Environment shapes us, uplifts and breaks us. Since the first humans traversed the plains of Africa, more than parents and friends, environment molds. Overcrowded cities breed violence. Sweltering deserts, agitation. Wide forests, calm.

  “Across that field—” Dana pointed to a trail vanishing into the trees “—when I was a kid my uncle bought me a horse. I thought it was cruel to cinch the saddle, so I’d ride her bareback through this field.

  “And one day, she must’ve seen a snake because she bucked and threw me. Next thing I know, my head snaps and the lights go out. Kenny and David [cousins] freaked out, thought I was dead. They carried me back to the trailer, and my grandma held me all night, keeping me awake because we didn’t have money for the doctor, so—”

  So that’s why Levant is home.

  Later that night we walked those same moonlit fields, grass crunching underfoot. “This silence is what I dig most,” he said. “The world is so fucking chaotic, but up here it’s peaceful.”

  Question 4: How Does a Guy from a Broken Home, Who Barely Graduated High School, Never Completed Even a Semester of College, Come to Rule an Entire Industry?

  Dana is the most successful fight promoter to ever walk the earth. There’s really no debate—events promoted, cumulative tickets sold, broadcasts aired, fighters groomed—by virtually every empirical metric he’s eclipsed Tex Rickard, Don King, Bob Arum.

  Oh, how he despises the boxing promoters that have sucked the life from his first love. Every time we watch a PPV boxing match, and, yes, we catch every big fight, invariably there’s Dana’s pacing in front of the TV, bemoaning boxing’s demise. “Those greedy motherfuckers. [Bob] Arum could have saved boxing, but all these years the pig hasn’t invested a dollar in the sport.”

  What he means is: Bob Arum and Don King take their cut of the purse and run, vanishing until the next bout. Here’s all it takes to promote boxing (hypothetical example): Get two boxers to agree on a bout for $1 million each. Next, call HBO and say, “I’ve got these boxers matched up, how much will you pay me? Six million? Okay.” Now call MGM Casino and tell those guys, “I’ve got HBO and these two boxers, you keep the gate, we’ll split the merchandise sales, how much will you pay me? Seven million? Okay …” The fight happens, and afterward everyone counts their money, and the promoters vanish until the next bout. “All you need to promote boxing is a secretary and a fax machine,” Dana says.

  On the flipside, the UFC “four walls” the event—which means they handle everything: broadcast production, ticket and merchandise sales, designing posters, you name it. The organization 24/7 promotes its fighters, pushes them in the UFC magazine and The Ultimate Fighter, features them on the UFC website, the television shows, video blogs, billboards. Drive down the highway, enter a grocery store, flip on the TV, wherever you turn it’s UFC Nation. And because they do everything and control everything, they deliv
er product that eclipses boxing.

  So there’s good reason for Dana to ask, Where the FUCK is the boxing equivalent?!

  Now you can appreciate what he’s really accomplished. Not even P.T. Barnum rescued a floundering industry. Oh, and let’s not skip his ancillary credits: television producer, merchandising exec, marketing maven, Twitter maestro, YouTube star, and so on.

  Now I don’t want to get all glum here, but to ignore Dana’s upbringing is to ignore a major component of his makeup. I’m talking childhood. The foundation that provides us with confidence, stability, and a healthy self-image. In short, Dana’s father was a violent alcoholic, often absent for months at a time. And his mother, well, I’ll let Dana’s sister, Kelly, recount life in the White household: “ ‘You’re going to be a fucking loser, just like your father,’ our mother used to tell Dana, ‘You know all your rich friends at school? Well, you’re going to be pumping their gas.’ ”

  Dana White, holding court at the Beacon Theater, NYC.

  Top: Lorenzo meeting with GSP after his Condit win.

  Bottom: Dana on-stage for a fan Q&A.

  So again: how does a kid, barely graduating high school, acquire a bankrupt company and turn around not only that entity but also an entire sport?

  Read enough business bios and you’ll appreciate the two ingredients in every success: (1) relentless hustle and sacrifice and (2) a model for that success.

  HUSTLE AND SACRIFICE

  At nineteen, while manning the bell desk at the Boston Harbor hotel, Dana decided to start boxing, so he sought out Peter Welch, a former Golden Gloves champ and legendary trainer in South Boston. “If I was going to box, I wanted to learn from the best,” Dana said, “and what’s crazy is, though everyone knew the guy, he was so mysterious and elusive it took me months of asking around, dropping by gyms, before I tracked him down.”

  He put in the hours with Welch. Which meant training to box, really box, not just get in shape. Hours on the mitts, the bags, knocked senseless while sparring. After a few months in this new environment, he looked around and realized he wanted to do this every day of his life—which beat schlepping suitcases, hauling gravel, anything he’d done before. So he partnered with Peter, and they started signing clients. At the time, traditional gyms catered only to core boxers. That’s just how it was. But Peter and Dana saw the opportunity and decided to train all comers.

  They gave free lessons. Taught group sessions. Built the business until the business attracted unwanted attention from Whitey Bulger’s crew, etc. etc.

  This is well-trodden territory, so I’m going to detour from the known narrative and fill in a personal gap. What the magazines haven’t reported is that while living in Boston, every few weeks he was on the phone with a girl. From Vegas. Who we’d grown up with, and who he’d crushed on since the day they met in eighth grade. So when Dana left Boston for Vegas, it was Anne Stella who picked him up at the airport, and they’ve been together ever since.

  The morning after he landed, he nabbed a job parking cars at a local hospital. In the off-hours he visited local gyms, and damn if the boxing/aerobics craze hadn’t yet arrived. No, he wasn’t certified, as required by state regulations, and, no, he didn’t have a client book to prove his worth as a trainer—but the nascent promoter talked a local gym owner into giving him a chance, so again he quit a job for boxing, and soon he was packing them in for the group sessions and became the biggest draw in the city.

  Compressing these events into a convenient narrative in so many ways diminishes the struggle, the fear, and the sacrifice. Quitting a steady job after tying the knot, trying to launch a new business while friends and family scoff—unless you’ve entered that dark cave, it’s hard to fathom. The fighter’s journey without elbows to the face.

  “Bro, on Sundays I’d spar a hundred rounds with clients,” Dana told me. “Money got so tight, I didn’t have a choice. I’d spar until the skin peeled off my feet. At the end of every five-week cycle I’d pocket three grand, which paid for groceries, diapers, formula. It was fucking rough.”

  Especially after Anne left her six-figure job at the Mirage Hotel & Casino in order to give birth to their first son, Dana White III. The next year, son Aidan. Dawn to dusk Dana taught privates and four nights a week group classes. “24 Hour Fitness paid me $150 a class. That was unheard of—usually it was $12 per, but I brought in so many students, other clubs wanted me.”

  Next, he hit on a strategy: in the gym business, overhead devours profit. It’s the leash that keeps most owners on the floor, personally working with clients. But if he partnered with a wealthy client and opened a private gym, he could hire other trainers and free himself to open the next private gym. Rinse and repeat.

  Which begs the question: how did he convince wealthy investors to back him in these ventures? Answer, the same way he garnered so many clients. In the groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, author Dan Goleman, a science reporter for the New York Times, probed the link between academic IQ and business success. To prove a point, Goleman profiled scientists at Bell Labs, the world-famous think tank where of course you’d rank high IQ as the leading asset. But the results startled even him, for it wasn’t the most academically gifted that rose to leadership positions but researchers that excelled in conflict resolution, self-motivation, and communicating empathy. In summary: Across every field, whether bio-tech or construction, great leaders possess the highest degrees of emotional intelligence. And if there’s one thing I can say about Dana, he is, and always has been, a social animal.

  Despite a lack of formal education, Dana is also one of the most intellectually curious people I know. For days on end we hole up in his movie room and watch political documentaries. While traveling, we tour historical sites. “School bored the fuck out of me.” He laughed. “But riding my bike around Boston, I’d listen to audio tapes on marketing, business strategy, motivational talks. Anything to teach me about success. Every night I’d fall asleep with headphones playing.”

  “It’s crazy, coming from someone who didn’t last a week in college, but education is critical. Not school, but real knowledge. You’ve got to learn everything you can about the industry you want to enter, from every means at your disposal. Work in the mailroom. Sweep the floors. Talk to people. Intern. Read. And most important, don’t ever quit, no matter how many roadblocks you hit, because you will hit roadblocks. That’s just the nature of life. I can’t tell you how many people have told me no.”

  During all this Dana trained a handful of amateur and pro boxers, but the constant hassles wear on him. Boxers never keep their word. Never pay commissions on time. They are, quite simply, a difficult bunch. So the fight business loses its luster, until he meets John Lewis, a UFC fighter. Together they attend a few MMA events. Dana interacts with the tribe, and this rekindles his love for the fight game. “MMA fighters are a different breed from boxers. You’ve got to realize, boxing programs rescue troubled kids from inner-city streets, but martial arts schools exist in middle-class neighborhoods. The parents are involved. The kids work hard in school. Same with wrestlers, most go to college. It’s just a different world.”

  Around this time, at a mutual friend’s wedding, Dana reconnected with Lorenzo Fertitta. Which now seems fated: Dana teaching boxing, Lorenzo serving as a commissioner on the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Lorenzo wanted to get in shape, so he dropped by Dana’s gym. Big brother Frank joined the workouts, and the three grew close.

  Very close.

  BUSINESS LINEAGE

  In 1993, Lorenzo left New York University armed with an MBA and a desire to make his mark. In the mid- to late 1990s, as the tech world heated up, he ran a venture fund from what is now the UFC headquarters. There he’d pour over investment proposals, listen to pitches, monitor the family portfolio. Since the 1980s he’d served as director of the publicly traded Station Casinos, the enterprise started by his father, Frank Fertitta, Jr., so he knew the long game: scour business opportunities for an underexploited niche,
invest in the company, nurture it through the rough times, then reap.

  This timeworn strategy under-girds our capitalist system. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs—each legendary entrepreneur enticed an investor to fund his vision.

  Top: Dana, in Levant, Maine.

  Bottom: Marty Cordova, Dana, and Nick backstage.

  Dana addresses Nike conference.

  The UFC wasn’t Lorenzo’s first rodeo. In 1995, he invested in Gordon Biersch, and stepping in as president and CEO he oversaw the rapid expansion of distribution and also the growth and sale of the company’s restaurant division. Then, from 1997 to 1999, he helped friends Timothy Poster and Tom Breitling launch Travelscape, a company that provided room reservations at Las Vegas hotels. From a back office at the Palace Station casino they grew the business, migrating from telemarketing phone banks to the Internet, and in early 2000 they sold the company to Expedia (parent company, Microsoft) for a hefty chunk.

  In 1996, Lorenzo joined the Nevada State Athletic Commission as a commissioner. Growing up he watched boxing with his father and brother and, of course, like any kid in the 1970s, idolized Muhammad Ali. So when he began training with Dana, that steady clack-clack-clack wasn’t just the speed bag ricocheting off the platform, it was the invisible gears in motion.

  To facilitate workouts, Lorenzo built a private gym in his office building’s basement. He tapped Dana to design the gym, then allowed him to train clients there for free in exchange for helping run the facility. Now take note, for this right here is the lucky break of Dana’s career. Not moving back to Vegas, or chancing into Lorenzo at the wedding, or even the famed Griffin versus Bonnar bout. Or the Fox deal. No, it was the arrangement with this private gym. So you’re telling me that a deal involving a tiny weight room for some millionaire prepared Dana White to conquer the corporate world?