“…Begged Them Not To Do This…”: 22 Years After the Fertitta Brothers Bought the UFC for $2,000,000, Dana White Recalls the Tough Initial Days of the Promotion

UFC means Dana White, and Dana White means UFC. That’s how the fans have associated the partnership between the two. But what some of them aren’t aware of is the tumultuous initial phase that promotion had to endure. And it all started with $2 million and an old wooden octagon.

The UFC President had humble beginnings, and while running boxercise gyms, he also worked as a manager for Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. While renegotiating Ortiz’s contract and trying to get Liddell into the UFC, White learned about the financial crunch of the promotion. He soon dialed up his childhood friend Lorenzo Fertitta, and they bagged the promotion for $2 million in 2001. However, they soon realized that Bob Meyrowitz, the UFC co-founder, had left them almost nothing.

Dana White: Starting from the scratch

The 54-year-old narrated the details of the initial days when he appeared on BigBoyTV. He revealed that in order to keep the UFC alive, Meyrowitz had sold off everything. There were no rights or ancillary properties that churned out revenue. All they bought were three letters: UFC, a bunch of fighters under contract, and an old octagon.

White said, “Bob Meyrowitz, to keep this thing alive, had stripped everything that he sold away. The video game rights. The DVD rights. That wasn’t DVD at the time. It was f*cking the videotape rights. Everything. All the ancillary things that go around the UFC were sold off. We bought the three letters: UFC, old wooden octagon, and like 12 or 13 contracts guys that he had under contract.”

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The difficulties encompassed not only finances for the newly appointed president, White. He also didn’t receive respect from anyone working for the Fertitta brothers. In addition, everyone blasted them for throwing away money and “begged” them not to do it.

“They hated it”- White

White declared, “All the smart kids that work for the Fertittas, you know, on the finance side, begged them not to do this. Then, once we started to get into, we were like the red-headed stepchild of the f*cking Fertitta portfolio. They hated it.”

White’s tussle to keep the UFC floating hit a high when they failed to even book a venue for their events. Then Donald Trump Jr. stepped up and offered his Taj Hotels to White, and that’s how he became instrumental in saving the UFC. The future of the promotion hinged on uncertainties until Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar bailed out the UFC. Since then, the UFC and White have only been associated with one word: success.

What do you make of these statements by Dana White? Let us know in the comments below.

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