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▲ tudelo 2 hours ago

Dana White turned a failing company into billions of dollars. Really, I think you are underestimating his ability.

▲toasty228 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not sure that this was the deciding factor

▲lobf 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There’s some weirdness with the UFC’s struggle at the time.

The Fertitta brothers are who actually bought it. Before owning the UFC, Lorenzo Fertitta was on (maybe the head?) of the Nevada State Athletic Commission- the very body who were refusing to sanction UFC events at the time, and the most important governing body in the combat sports world.

Obviously the UFC was hurting bad at that time since they couldn’t be sanctioned, were getting booted from arenas they booked, and were getting dropped by Pay Per View carriers. This decimated their value and the Fertittas scooped up the company for a song.

All of a sudden, now that they owned it, the sanctioning bodies agreed on a set of unified MMA rules, the UFC was re-sanctioned, and they started selling PPVs again.

It was actually quite a success from the very beginning. Their troubles were likely imposed on them by their prospective buyers in order to get the sale done, and all they and Dana White did really were take their foot off the company’s neck.

▲dgellow 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m pretty sure it’s more about his close connection to Trump

▲nailer an hour ago | parent [-]

That was part of it, back in the early 2000s when people considered MMA "human cockfighting" (but bizarrely, boxing was OK) Trump let the events go on at his venues, however Dana is a pretty formidable businessman regardless of the connection to Trump.

▲Traster an hour ago | parent [-]

No one has actually said that Dana White is a bad business man. It's just very difficult to believe that's the reason he was appointed to the board of a social media company on the same day that Donald Trump was inaugurated. If he was so consequential why wasn't he named to the board on Jan 7th 2021? I think we know why.