Dana Frederick White Jr, CEO and President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a household name, and an incredibly rich man. It wasn’t always that way for the 54-year-old who has a more than interesting origin story.
In this article we take a look at that origin story and also a brief glance at White’s reported net worth. Interested in finding out more about the man that brought us the Octagon? Read on to find out everything you need to know about Dana White.
Formative Years
Dana Frederick White Jr. was born in Manchester, Connecticut to June and Dana White Sr. in a time beloved to Bryan Adams, the Summer of ‘69. His Mother June was a nurse, who worked demanding hours and his Father Dana, struggled with alcoholism.
The family moved to Las Vegas when White was in third grade as there were better wages on offer for nurses in Nevada at the time. Moving became second nature to the White’s during this period with stints in Maine and Boston to follow.
White’s working life began after he graduated from High School in 1987 and had two failed college attempts, both of which resulted in him dropping out in the first semester. To support himself at this time he worked various jobs, laying asphalt, working on the door at an Irish bar and working as a bellhop at a hotel.
At roughly the same time, White met former Golden Gloves champion Peter Welch at a boxing gym and befriended him. Initially, White harboured hopes of one day getting into professional boxing himself but was put off after seeing the neurodegenerative effects that top level boxing had on athletes.
(Dana White shares stories from a difficult and challenging childhood.)
Relocation and a New Beginning
White repurposed his passion for boxing and, abandoning a professional career himself, began to coach others. During this time, the notorious mobster Whitey Bulger tried to extort $2,500 from him, which was money he didn’t have.
One day he received a call telling him the amount was due by 1pm the following day. Instead of waiting around to find out what would happen when the mobsters realised he didn’t have the money, he rang up Delta airlines and booked himself a ticket on a plane to Las Vegas.
In the safety of the Nevada desert, White could indulge his passion for blackjack at Sin City casinos in his free time and begin laying the foundations of his future career during work hours. Running boxercise gyms in Vegas, White met John Lewis, Frank Fetitta III and rekindled an old friendship with Lorenzo Fertitta.
While working in his boxercise gym, he also met MMA artists Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, befriending them and ultimately becoming their managers.
(Unfortunately Chuck Liddell and Dana White didn’t go on to have a fantastic friendship…)
Buying UFC
At the turn of the Millennium, White met Bob Meyrowitz, the owner of the parent company of the UFC and learned that they were looking to ditch the fighting championships. Seeing an opportunity, White rang Lorenzo Fertitta (a man with plenty of loose change) and convinced him and his brother to buy the UFC for $2 million.
Whilst the Fertitta brothers put the money in to save the UFC, it was Dana White who probed to be the ultimate saviour. His work as President took the championships from something that had been asset stripped to avoid bankruptcy to global acclaim.
(Dana White explaining just what that $2 million bought them.)
Utilising modern technology and using the tools usually reserved to the best fight promoters on the planet, White grew the UFC’s appeal year on year, to the point that it was recently valued at an eye-watering $11.3 billion. Which isn’t a bad return of investment for the Fertitta brothers who invested $2 million back in 2001.
But what of White himself, how much is the main man worth?
Dana White Net Worth
The man who once had to leave Boston because he didn’t have $2,500 to pay to a mobster in racketeering money now has an annual salary believed to be worth $20 million. On top of that, White’s total net worth is said to be around $500 million.
It’s not a bad sum at all for a man from such humble beginnings, but some would say, not enough for the person that change the value of an organisation from $2 million to $11.3 billion!
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