Since 2001, Dana White has overseen MMA’s top promotion, the UFC in various capacities, as its president from 2001 to 2023 before moving into his current position as the promotion’s CEO. No matter what title this man holds, one certainty is there:
When Dana White talks, people are going to listen to him, no matter how outrageous or controversial his statements happen to be. In so doing, he’s made any number of crazy claims over the years.
These statements have made White the most outspoken head of any sports organization in the United States, as well as the world over. It may have been a daunting task to whittle down his wildest soundbites to a list of five, but today, this is what we’ll do in a countdown. There’s no time like the present, so let’s get going.
Dana White’s Nuttiest Soundbites: No. 5: White on Craig Jackson After UFC 151 Cancellation
To begin, we’ll turn the clock back to the summer of 2012. In August of that year, White and his UFC staff were busy readying for UFC 151. Had the card taken place as scheduled, UFC 151 was to have happened inside Mandalay Bay Events Center (currently known as Michelob Ultra Arena) from Las Vegas.
The Sept. 1, 2012 show would have been capped off by a main attraction for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship between Jon Jones (28-1, 1 NC MMA, 22-1, 1 NC UFC) and Dan Henderson (32-15 MMA, 9-9 UFC). The card was massive and the betting money coming in was enormous. Sites normally handle an incredible amount of action on UFC fights, and UFC 151 was no exception.
Less than two weeks before the show, the promotion announced that UFC 151 would be canceled after the main event was scrubbed amid Henderson’s injury and Jones declining to fight Chael Sonnen in place of Henderson. All other fights originally scheduled for the show were rebooked for then-future cards.
This was the first time that the UFC had been forced to cancel a show under Dana White’s watch. In the immediate aftermath of the cancellation, he went scorched earth on Greg Jackson.
“Greg Jackson told Jones there’s no way you take the Chael Sonnen fight on eight days’ notice,” Dana White began. “[He] said it would be the biggest mistake of his career. Greg Jackson is a (redacted) sport killer. I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.”
Later on in a conference call, White doubled down on his remarks, mentioning “I’m very confused by his whole business plan. I don’t give a (censored) what Greg Jackson thinks. Guy’s a weirdo, man. Greg Jackson should never be interviewed by anybody ever again, except for a psychiatrist.”
Even more than a decade removed from that conference call, the UFC CEO has never backed down from his comments.
Dana White’s Nuttiest Soundbites: No. 4: “I’ve Got an Island”
During the crazy year known as 2020, COVID-19 took hold on all aspects of life, sporting events included. While the UFC pressed on with a March 14, 2020 Fight Night in Brasilia without paid spectators in the arena or credentialed media on press row, every other sports league or promotion in-season at the time had to take a pause.
Dana White’s promotion wasn’t spared after the initial reprieve, with roughly two months’ worth of shows getting canceled and fights being rebooked for later dates. While other leagues were figuring out how to safely restart competition in the face of the pandemic, White had a plan, what would eventually become Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.
“I also secured an island,” White told Brett Okamoto at the time. “I’ve got an island. The infrastructure is being built right now. We’re going to do all of our international fights on this island. So when we do this fight April 18, international and the United States, we’re going to start cranking.”
“We’re going to get the fighters somewhere, and we’re going to bring them to this location. They won’t know where they’re headed to.”@danawhite explains the logistics of how fighters will be transported to the site of #UFC249, as well as the soon-to-be-secured private island. pic.twitter.com/KMPGZ0qc9Q
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) April 7, 2020
Although it worked out for Dana White in the end, retrospectively speaking, the notion of Fight Island drew the ire of the press and public alike at the time, as well as the Association of Ringside Physicians, who advocated for a ban on combat sporting events in the wake of the pandemic.
Dana White’s Nuttiest Soundbites: No. 3: White Goes Unhinged on Fallon Fox
In 2013, Fallon Fox (5-1 MMA) made history in the sport by being the first MMA fighter to compete while openly transgender. Given Dana White’s outspoken nature, he made some questionable comments regarding Fox, referring to her in the wrong gender pronoun.
“All this other hype about Fallon Fox fighting in the UFC or whatever, understand this first and foremost: Everyone that Fallon Fox has fought has a losing record,” he began in an interview. “So before you even think about fighting in the UFC or whatever, he was a man and now he’s a woman, he’s fighting girls who have losing records. Before you get too crazy about him being in the UFC, he’s so far from being in the UFC that it’s not even funny.”
Given the increased acceptance of transgender people in our society in recent years, these comments have only aged like milk as time has progressed.
Dana White’s Nuttiest Soundbites: No. 2: UFC Refuses to Go “Woke”
Ever since the sports shutdown of 2020, tier-one sports organizations have taken stances against police brutality in the aftermath of several high-profile shootings involving police officers and unarmed African American citizens. Notably speaking, the NFL has had the messages “It Takes All Of Us” and “End Racism” displayed prominently in the back of the end zones at stadiums on gamedays.
While most leagues have distanced themselves from politicians on the right side of the aisle for the better part of the last decade, Dana White and the UFC are the reverse, where they’ll openly welcome Donald Trump (we promise this is the only mention of him in this article) to pay-per-view events.
Speaking on FOX News Channel in 2023, he told of how the COVID era helped the UFC grow.
“I think obviously, the fact that we figured out how to get through COVID [helped us],” he said. “We were first to fill our stadiums when all the COVID bans were being lifted. It grew our business like 70 percent or something like that because we were the only thing to watch, and we don’t do anything ‘woke’ over here at all.”
While most people who align to the right politically have stopped watching some sports leagues due to their increased social activism, White’s comments could have been seen as a powder keg for the other side.
Dana White’s Nuttiest Soundbites: No. 1: White Defends Freedom of Speech After Mitchell’s Abhorrent Comments
Finally, in early 2025, UFC featherweight Bryce Mitchell made headlines when, in an episode of his podcast, ArkanSanity, he made comments in support of Adolf Hitler. While Dana White was quick to condemn Bryce Mitchell’s remarks during a Power Slap post-fight press conference, he’d decline to show him the pink slip, owing to freedom of speech.
“What I said was what he said was disgusting,” White said during a Piers Morgan interview. “You have to be an absolute moron to think that Adolf Hitler was a good guy. You look at World War II and how many people were killed, how many civilians were killed because of Adolf Hitler. The fact that he tried to annihilate an entire group of people is disgusting for anybody to speak remotely good about Hitler, but I do believe in free speech, and even though what he said makes me sick, free speech is real, it exists and we have to protect free speech.”
Let’s be perfectly clear as we wrap this piece up: What Bryce Mitchell said on that day is by no means freedom of speech. The fact that Dana White chose to defend free speech in this particular instance is outrageous.
