Dana White, head of the Las Vegas Octagon
Dana White, the president of the UFC, is an important personality of this city, because Las Vegas is recognized in recent years as the birthplace and development of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), in addition to organizing boxing galas for world titles in various versions. His contribution to the development of the city is huge.
Short biography
Dana Frederick White Jr. is the full name of this personality. He was born in 1969 in Manchester, Connecticut (USA) and has been married since 1996 to Anne Stella and has 3 children.
He and his sister, Kelly, were raised by their mother and family for most of their childhood. At the age of 17 he started boxing, starting to love the sport. He graduated from Hermon High School in Maine in 1987 and twice tried to attend college but each time dropped out in the first semester. Then White started working as a boxing coach.
After spending time in Ware, Massachusetts, he left for Las Vegas, after being threatened by some mobsters to whom he owed money. Once here, White continued to have a boxing business for a while.
Dana White
The birth and development of the UFC
White began his career as a manager when he agreed to deal with the fates of two fighters – Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. He heard that Bob Meyrowitz wanted to sell the UFC and contacted Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, two of his childhood friends, who bought it. They installed White as chairman after the transaction. The business cost $ 2 million, and the UFC became a subsidiary of Zuffa. With revenues amounting to around $ 600 million in 2015, a year later this company was sold to a group of investors for an amount exceeding $ 4 billion, but White remained CEO and president of the organization and received shares in the new company.
With White as president, the UFC has dominated the world of mixed martial arts and reached 175 countries and through the pay-per-view cable system has reached over 1 billion homes, continuing to have a strong presence in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, White became the president of the Ultimate Fighter reality show, and acquired the PRIDE wrestling championships and the mixed martial arts women’s wrestling.
White’s fortune is now at $ 500 million.
In recent years, Dana White has been involved in boxing, being one of the promoters of the fight. Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor while McGregor was under contract with the UFC.
In the spring of 2019, he signed a new 7-year contract to remain head of the UFC.
Read also “When the difference brings the win before the end of the match”.
What is UFC
In its 28 years of existence, the UFC is the most well-known mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company in the world, with 8 weight categories for men and 4 for women. During this time, more than 500 events took place in which thousands of athletes fought. The initial goal of the Ultimate Fighting Championship was to identify the most effective martial arts in a contest with minimal rules and no weight classes between competitors from different combat disciplines. In later events, wrestlers began to adopt effective techniques from more than one discipline, which today indirectly contributed to the creation of a separate fighting style known as Mixed Martial Arts. At the moment, the UFC’s mainstream television coverage is almost complete, with competition being seen outside the United States in Asia, Australia and Europe. The last contract signed with ESPN is worth $ 1.5 billion over 5 years.
The octagon used in MFC fights in the UFC has a diameter of 9 meters, the floor height is 1 meter, the floor thickness is 3 cm, the height of the fence is 1.8 meters.
Dana White, convinced Republican and supporter of Donald Trump
Dana White has never hidden her political sympathies for Republicans and especially for Donald Trump, whom she supported during her 2016 presidential campaign. White said Trump helped the UFC in its infancy by allowing him to host his first Zuffa-owned event (UFC 30) at the Trump Taj Mahal, when other locations refused to host him. White reiterated his support for Trump in the 2020 election and donated $ 1 million to America First Action, a political support action committee to re-elect Trump. In April 2020, Dana White joined a select group of business people to help the United States rebuild its economy affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Dana White is certainly a prominent figure in Vegas for the last 25-30 years because he took over a bankrupt company and ran it to the heights of success, now worth billions. The UFC has revolutionized the contact sports industry, taking the forefront in recent years. Its contribution to increasing the number of jobs, the occupancy rate of event halls and the growth of tourism in the city are immense. Not to mention the growing demand for promotion, advertising, occupancy of accommodation and restaurants, plus other businesses to which the UFC has contributed in recent years.
Surse: wikipedia.org, wealthygorilla.com, the manual.com
