Your guide to Dana White, invasive species

Yesterday’s big news revolved around UFC president Dana White, who’s joined forces with fellow autocrat Turki Alalshikh and WWE president Tony Khan to create a new, heretofore-unnamed boxing league. As someone who spent a decade exposed to unsafe levels of Dana White, a trial for which I have yet to receive restitution from the relevant authorities, I felt it incumbent upon me to introduce our dear readers to key details about combat sports’ baldest man.

Dana White has no principles

The first and most important thing to know about Dana White is that he is full of shit. If what he says is not accompanied by immediate material action, assume it is untrue and act accordingly.

This is not a new phenomenon. Back when I first got invested in people punching and kicking each other for money, White publicly promised that whoever won the rematch between knockout artist Thiago Alves and grinder Jon Fitch would get the next title shot. Fitch, whose attrition style White despised, won handily.

You can guess what happened next.

It does not matter how implausible or easily disproven a statement is; if it benefits him in the short term, he says it. This is a guy who spent years insisting that light heavyweight champion Jon Jones’ desire for a boxing-level payday meant he was scared of heavyweight titlist Francis Ngannou, only to turn around and accuse Ngannou of ducking Jones when “The Predator” walked away from the Octagon in favor of a massively lucrative multi-sport deal with PFL.

Any stances he professes to hold are subject to change whenever it’s convenient to do so. The entire rationale for his dictatorial approach, that it ensures meritocratic matchmaking without regard for red tape, is long dead. Fitch’s heirs are numerous; welterweight grappler Belal Muhammad had to put together a 10-fight unbeaten streak to earn a title shot, while previous challenger Colby Covington received and lost three in the span of five fights by virtue of being a huge asshole whose professed politics aligned with White’s. Featherweight Movsar Evloev is 8-0 in the Octagon and has been reduced to begging for a meaningful fight.

More striking is his approach to fighter conduct. A famous moment in an early season of their reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, saw White dress down a pair of rowdy contestants for lending credence to the “human cockfighting” label the sport was struggling to shed. Later on, heavyweight Matt Mitrione earned himself a suspension for saying horrific things about trans fighter Fallon Fox.

Fast-forward to 2025, when White declined to punish Bryce Mitchell for publicly praising Hitler. Same with Charles Radtke and Manel Kape dropping homophobic slurs on live television.

You can’t even argue that this is just a case of him organically changing his views over time. He can’t honestly portray himself as a free-speech maximalist while refusing to let the aforementioned Muhammad display the Palestinian flag on their website.

Dana White is pathologically exploitative

I’m not sure how aware people are of just how psychotically predatory the UFC’s pay structure is. Where once they made a proactive effort to sign new talent directly, they now funnel the majority through their Contender Series program, which offers one-size-fits-all contracts. Doesn’t matter if you’re a legendary kickboxer or a random can-crusher who lost all three rounds but did a funny dance in the process; your UFC contract promises you $10k to show and $10k to win with incremental rises.

Even putting aside the paltry totals, which only get more egregious as UFC’s revenue rises and fighters’ share remains firmly below 20%, separating myself from MMA has really allowed me to appreciate how messed-up that system is. Make weight but withdraw when your opponent doesn’t even come close to the limit? No show money. Dominate your opponent for two-and-a-half rounds but the ref screws up and causes a no contest? No win money.

Apparently, he needs that cash for gambling, randomly chucking at his buddies, and convincing desperate non-athletes to slap each other unconscious several times in a single evening.

Fighters used to be able to offset that with sponsors on their shorts, but UFC did away with them in favor of personality-free “fight kits,” all while plastering every square inch of the Octagon with ads for “Rizz Pharma” and special necklaces that protect you from evil power line radiation. On top of that, UFC controls fight scheduling and its roster is so bloated that most manage three per year at most.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that White is more tolerant of domestic abusers, people who assault others on the street, and repeat PED offenders than he is of union supporters.

Dana White is a malignant narcissist

Jon Bois’ and Felix Biederman’s Fighting in the Age of Loneliness tracks how the sport’s rise from niche attraction to worldwide phenomenon streamlined much of its character away. It’s almost surreal to see mainstream outlets cover a sport that once thrived on and celebrated its hyper-concentration of weirdos in functionally identical fashion to the baseball/football/basketball triumvirate.

White has done everything in his power to not only further excise the fighters from the ipromotion’s brand but replace them with himself. Few custom shorts, severely restricted pageantry on walkouts, cookie-cutter posters and advertisements. White’s ideal UFC is not a collection of individuals, all of them fascinating in their own ways, but a homogeneous blob with his face on it that produces weekly slop.

Dana White is not the sport’s savior. He is not an outside-the-box thinker unconstrained by boxing’s decades of inertia. He’s an invasive species, and not even one of the cool ones like a lionfish. Dude’s a zebra mussel dumped into a lake. Respond accordingly.