50 of the best moments of Dana White’s career

Purchase of Pride FC

By Thomas Albano

The UFC has purchased several rival promotions, but it all began with the fall of the biggest competitor in its early days — PRIDE Fighting Championships.

PRIDE lost its television deal in 2006 after some executives were accused of having ties to the yakuza, hurting the promotion’s revenue before its eventual end in 2007. In March of that year, the UFC purchased PRIDE.

PRIDE would not hold another event after PRIDE 34, but Fertitta’s original comments on the brand’s future were quite different. The then-UFC executive claimed PRIDE would be run separately like the UFC and WEC at the time, with some special crossover shows, using the AFL-NFL merger as a comparison. PRIDE, however, ended up being absorbed into the UFC, with Dana White claiming he was struggling to get PRIDE a TV deal in Japan.

The end of PRIDE may have been a disappointment to many MMA fans, but this purchase and White’s overseeing brought the UFC talent such as Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Anderson Silva,  Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Dan Henderson and more. Without this purchase, maybe we don’t see Anderson Silva’s middleweight title reign or a stacked light heavyweight division of the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Dana “you’re not even famous yet”

By Kristen King

The amount of times Dana White has humbled someone on The Ultimate Fighter is almost impossible to count, but luckily, there are a few stand out moments from the series that show why a tongue-lashing from the UFC President is better to avoid. A perfect example of this comes from the seventh season of the show, where former competitor Jesse Taylor missed out on the opportunity to fight in the finals because of some ill-advised antics during a night out in Vegas.

Before Taylor was removed from the competition, White sat him down in his office alongside then-coaches Forrest Griffin and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson to give him a sobering talk about the consequences of his actions. Out of everything that was said to Taylor, the one line that really stings from White is “Bro, you’re not even f**king famous yet!”

As scathing as those remarks were, they were necessary for the growth of Taylor as a fighter. He eventually returned to the UFC for a chance at redemption and ensured his past was not reflective of his future. If there was one thing to be learned from this moment, it is this: Not only is White in the business of fighting, but he is also in the business of handing out some serious reality checks that no one would want to be on the receiving end on.