UFC CEO Dana White continues to regret his actions from one night in December 2022. He was in a Mexican nightclub’s VIP section on New Year’s Eve when he was captured slapping his wife on camera. Although he apologized for the incident and claimed his actions should not be defended, the 56-year-old came under heavy backlash.
It has been over three years since then, but people haven’t forgotten what happened. During a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club podcast with host Charlamagne Tha God and other co-hosts, White was pressed about the incident. But more importantly, he was asked, had it been one of his fighters, would the company have reacted the same way?
“You know, what’s funny is that, it’s not funny, but I used to say that you don’t recover from those,” White said. “Those are ones you don’t recover from.”
Despite the severity of the incident, UFC and its parent company, Endeavor, and then broadcast partner ESPN refused to comment on the matter. And, of course, White himself largely didn’t face any consequences from his actions. No firing. No stepping down. This led Charlamagne to question whether White’s position in the UFC protected him.
“No,” White said. “Definitely not,”
When Charlamagne and his co-host refused to accept White’s response, the UFC CEO swiftly shifted blame for a lack of consequences to the board of directors and the benefit of the company.
“Listen, there’s a board of directors,” White said. “There [are] other people that are involved that could have pushed for that, but I think that, and obviously they think too, it would have hurt the company more if I did step away.”
Dana White, however, has lashed out at fighters whose behavior outside reflected poorly on the promotion. And that hypocrisy wasn’t lost on the hosts of the show, so they called out White for it.
“Well, I mean, I’m probably the most lenient guy in sports when it comes to dealing with whether it’s free speech or bad things that happen…,” White said. “I’m in the fight business. It’s not like I run Microsoft… This is as bad as it could get… I would never in a million years think that that was going to happen.”
While his job at UFC was safe, things weren’t so great at home.
Dana White revealed his son didn’t talk to him for four days
Speaking further on the matter, the UFC CEO claimed no one knows the person you really are better than your children.
“And your kids [know] whoever you really are, your kids see it,” White said. “They hear it, everything that goes on at home.”
White also revealed that his oldest son stopped speaking to him after the incident.
“My oldest son didn’t talk to us for like four days,” White added. “He was in college. So, he was 19, probably.”
So, White and his wife’s first decision was to put their children first and handle the situation at home.
“And then obviously I had to handle the business side of the, of the whole thing, but yeah, we handled the kids first.”
Despite the incident, the couple remained together. And Dana White’s wife had even released a statement shortly after the incident, suggesting they had been drinking a little too much that night, which led to the incident. She claimed it was out of character for Dana, and nothing of that sort had ever happened before.
At the end of the day, it appeared to be a marital dispute, which, unfortunately, spilled into a physical altercation. But White appears to be regretful about the incident, even though he avoided facing any consequences for it.
