Dana White: 20Q

Q1

PLAYBOY: Nine years ago the Ultimate Fighting Championship was blacklisted from television. Now your reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, is wrapping up its third season on Spike. How did you turn it around?
WHITE: We always knew we needed to get on television, but television wasn't ready for the UFC. The Ultimate Fighter was our Trojan horse. We got on TV and suddenly people were watching mixed martial arts without realizing they were watching it, because they got caught up in the story lines. You also get to learn about the characters and see that these guys aren't a bunch of fucking gorillas who just rolled in off a bar stool. You can see how hard they train and that they have real lives and families.

Q2

PLAYBOY: The 16 contestants on The Ultimate Fighter live together and aren't allowed to read, watch TV or listen to music. Why?
WHITE: It's not good television. You don't want to tune in and see these idiots sitting around watching TV for eight hours or reading books. It's not easy. It starts to drive them crazy. Imagine me and you in a house together every day, training against each other and knowing that eventually we have to fight each other. These guys start to get on one another's fucking nerves. They've got 15 roommates, and the house is a mess because no one does the dishes. All these things build up.

Q3

PLAYBOY: If you were a UFC fighter, what would you use for your intro music?
WHITE: That's a tough one. I live vicariously through these guys because I pick all the intro music. There's a couple I would use. "For Those About to Rock" by AC/DC. We've been playing around with it and the lights. And DMX is perfect to walk out to. Mike Tyson has walked out to that. That's one of the beautiful things Tyson brought to boxing. There was nothing like sitting there waiting for Tyson to walk out. We would say, "Can you imagine being that fucking guy in the ring right now, waiting for Tyson to come out and knock his fucking head into the ninth row?"

Q4

PLAYBOY: How would Mike Tyson do in a UFC fight?
WHITE: He would get destroyed. I know it. He's been getting destroyed in boxing lately. I'm not trying to slam Mike Tyson, because I'm still a huge fan. I like real fighters. Guys who are real fighters are born with something other people don't have. You either have it or you don't. It's that ability to cash in all your chips. You put them all on the table and say, "This thing is either going to work for me or not," and you go at it and you're aggressive. It's all you do and all you fucking think about.

Q5

PLAYBOY: You were an amateur boxer. Why didn't you turn pro?
WHITE: I found out early in my career that I didn't have it. I was about 26 or 27 when the window started closing. For a long time it really messed with me that I hadn't fought a pro fight. But to fight pro is a lot of work, a lot of money and a lot of sacrifice. I didn't take that step. I've always felt I didn't have the balls to turn pro. It wasn't that I was afraid to fight. Fighting is what I loved more than anything. But I used to see guys at the gym who were 35 or 36 years old who hadn't made it. I would look around and think, Fuck, I don't want to be that guy.

Q6

PLAYBOY: Before you took over the UFC, you managed two UFC fighters, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. How did you become involved with them?
WHITE: One night my partners, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, and I were at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. We all boxed and had been involved with boxing for a long time. Frank said, "There's one of those Ultimate Fighter guys." It was John Lewis. We were saying how we wanted to learn submission fighting. I went over because I knew him, and I told him we wanted to hook up with him to learn. So we made an appointment and we all got together and started doing submissions. We got completely addicted to it. We were training three or four days a week, ripping each other's arms off and doing all kinds of crazy shit. That's how we got into the sport and started to love it. Through that I met Liddell and Ortiz. That's how I started managing them.

Q7

PLAYBOY: Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta are childhood friends of yours from Las Vegas. In 2001 the three of you teamed up to buy the UFC. What was the first thing you wanted to change when you took over?
WHITE: Before we bought the UFC we went to a fight in New Orleans and sat in the crowd. The old owner didn't care about the in-house show. All he cared about was the pay-television event. He didn't care about selling tickets and building up the in-house show and making it exciting. Lorenzo and I sat there, saying, "What if we dim the lights when they walk in, play some cool music and get the light shows going?" We knew the first thing we needed to do was make the in-house show cool. We believed a lot of revenue could be made from ticket sales, which the old owner didn't care about because he was more focused on the pay-per-view. We figured we'd start to build the business from the live show. It ended up being the perfect plan for us. In the early days, when we were just getting this thing off the ground, ticket sales saved our ass.

Q8

PLAYBOY: You worked with regulators to legitimize the UFC, adding weight classes, instituting drug testing and banning things such as head butting and biting. Did you resist any of the regulators' new rules?
WHITE: No. Regulators from different states used to tell the old owner that he needed to be regulated and sanctioned, and he would say, "Fuck you. You aren't going to tell me what to do with my business." So he'd go to Alabama or Puerto Rico. We took a different approach and ran toward regulation. We asked what we could do to make this thing safe and comfortable for the regulators. It was really just an education process. In the 13-year history of the UFC there's never been a death or serious injury. Even back in the crazy days when there was head butting and all that shit, there was never a death or serious injury. So it was just an education process.

Q9

PLAYBOY: Has it been hard to convince people that the UFC has changed?
WHITE: There are people who like football and people who like hockey. I happen to fucking hate golf. Golf is the most useless fucking sport of all time. It's a waste of fucking time. It's a waste of fucking land. It's a waste of everything. Homeless people are sleeping in the streets, and these rich dicks are out there golfing. Give me a fucking break. They ought to build houses for the homeless on all the golf courses. But that's my opinion. Some guys feel that way about ultimate fighting, and you're never going to convert them. No one is ever going to convince me that guys who play golf are athletes and that golf is a fantastic sport. You're never going to convert me, and some people feel that way about the UFC.

Q10

PLAYBOY: Dr. Peter Carmel, a neurosurgeon and a member of the American Medical Association's board of trustees, has said UFC fights are "as close to murder as you can get." How do you respond to a critic like that?
WHITE: He's the ultimate rent-a- doctor. He's a jackass. He doesn't believe in any contact sports. At the end of the day you're either a fight fan or you're not. I'm never going to convert a guy who isn't a fight fan. I would never try. But he is so wrong. These guys are well-conditioned athletes who train and go out there and compete against each other, just like football players, who Dr. Carmel doesn't believe in either. You're never going to get a guy like that to look at this thing objectively and see it as a sport. I'm not sitting here telling you the UFC is safe. When two men go out there and fight, there are risks. The good thing about this country is that we get to choose what we do with our lives. If I want to fight or if I want to play football or golf, I can do whatever the hell I want to do. If Carmel doesn't like Ultimate Fighting, he doesn't have to fucking watch it.