0:02
I was telling you, dude, I watch your press conferences.
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0:05
I was having dinner with a founder of a 150 billion-dollar company a couple of days ago, and they're like, "Hey, can you help us hire or find somebody to be a Chief Storyteller?"
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It's like, "No, that's the founder's job."
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And they asked, "Do you have any good examples?"
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I go, "Watch Dana White's press conferences after the fights." - Mm-hmm.
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- It's a perfect example.
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It's like, he's the biggest fan of his own product.
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Is that how you would describe the way you approach the company you've built? 100%.
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And I grew up in the '70s and '80s, where I used to see CEOs reading canned statements from lawyers and things like that, and just fake, phony bullshit that I was never into.
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So, yeah, I've been pretty.
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And I'm a huge fan, huge fan still today, not only of the UFC, but now I've been a boxing fan my whole life too.
1:00
And now, I actually get to make the fights that I want to see.
1:04
The UFC was close to bankruptcy.
1:05
You bought it for two million dollars with your partners.
1:07
I want to talk about the fact that you guys went...
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Everybody's like, "Oh, a 2 million dollar company into maybe a 20 billion-dollar company."
1:13
It's like, yeah, you missed the part where they went in the hole by tens of millions.
1:15
So, I want to go talk about that.
1:15
But you brought up something like, We bought it.
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We had never done live events. We didn't do production. We didn't do anything.
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And then I heard you say, But we were just fans.
1:25
We were just trying to build the fights that we want to see in the way that we want to see them. - Exactly right. We were huge fans.
1:33
We bought the company, and I can't remember, ballpark we had two and a half, three weeks to put on an event.
1:39
And never knew anything about production, but knew what I wanted to see.
1:45
And the production people that were in place, I didn't get along well with.
1:51
So, I ended up wiping them all out and bringing in a whole new crew and just started building. And you learn as you go.
2:01
- Talk about the first few events, because how many events do you guys put on a year now?
2:04
- We do, like, 43, 44 events a year.
2:08
When we bought the company, we were doing five. - Yeah.
2:10
- Which seemed like a lot.
2:12
- The fact that you were doing less means that you were learning slower, too?
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Or there was just no way you could do more than five? - Oh, yeah, yeah.
2:18
We needed those gaps in between, especially after our first event, to really start to dial it in. And we made a lot of... It's trial and error.
2:27
We made a lot of mistakes.
2:29
We did some goofy WWE shit for a minute there, and fireworks and pyro and all that stuff.
2:36
And then we ended up finding that perfect sweet spot, which is where we are now.
2:42
Now it's all about technology.
2:44
When new technology comes out, we always try to be first or one of the first to use it.
2:48
But the show is dialed now.
2:51
- So, one of my favorite maxims from the history of entrepreneurship is that "Excellence is the capacity to take pain."
2:56
I want to talk about, after you bought the UFC, but before, I think it takes you, what, five six years before you guys get back in the black, and you're actually making money. - Right.
3:06
- Take us through that trough.
3:06
- We bought the company for two million.
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We're doing five events a year.
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You know, in the beginning, the events are way more expensive.
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We don't have all the proper equipment.
3:20
We don't know what the hell we're doing.
3:21
So, events are costing us upward of two million bucks a pop, times five, times five years. It gets expensive.
3:30
And we started building the roster of fighters, signing more guys, paying them more money.
3:34
It got to the point where one night I was driving home, and Lorenzo says, "I can't keep doing this.
3:40
I can't keep putting this kind of money in, me and my brother."
3:43
- So, they put up the two million? - Yeah.
3:45
- I think you got 10% or 20% of the company, and then your job is to run it, right? - Right.
3:48
- Now, it sounds like they're investing a couple more million every year.
3:51
Well, this is four years in, I would say.
3:54
He says, - What's the revenue back?
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- Get out there and see what you can sell it for.
3:57
- Was it making 10 million a year in revenue?
3:59
You guys would spend - Yeah.
4:01
- Ten, like - Yeah, that's fair. - Yeah. - Okay. Yeah, in that ballpark.
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And but just the, you know, the other thing was And the other thing was we didn't own the rights to the merchandise, the library, the video games, DVDs, which were big at that time.
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So, all we bought when we bought the company was those three letters, UFC, an old wooden octagon, and some contracts that we had obligations to.
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And maybe it was eight or nine.
4:32
That's it, eight or nine contracts.
4:33
We have almost 1,000 guys under contract now.
4:36
All the ancillary stuff was sold off to Lionsgate because the old owner was trying to stay alive.
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So, to show you, people can't wrap their head around this now, how much people didn't believe in the UFC, we went back to Lionsgate, and we bought the rights back for, like...
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I don't remember what it was, but it was like two and a half, three million bucks.
4:58
We bought all those rights back.
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- So, anything you could put a UFC logo on? - Right.
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And we talk about it now, me and Lorenzo, and we're thinking those guys were probably laughing at us when we left.
5:12
- Lionsgate's probably like, "These idiots just gave us a couple million dollars for nothing."
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- You got these finance guys that are like, "This will look good on the books over the next two, three years."
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And we got all our rights back and, you know.
5:25
Imagine if Lionsgate still owned all those rights. It's crazy.
5:27
I'm friends with Shannon Lee, right? Bruce Lee's daughter. - Mm-hmm.
5:32
- She's been trying to buy the rights back to the Bruce Lee films and all.
5:36
They would never sell, you know?
5:38
Even though Bruce Lee died in the early '70s, - He's still interesting, - his movies are still relevant, and people will watch them, and people care, and they're great movies.
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But they sold us all the rights back. Cheap, too.
5:51
-What do you think happened overnight from Lorenzo calls you, he's like, "Man, I'm burning.
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We're just dumping all this money.
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Try to see if you can find a buyer."
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Calls you back the next day.
5:58
- Well, I called him back and said, "I think we can sell it six, seven, maybe eight million, in that ballpark."
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He says, "All right, I'll call you tomorrow."
6:07
I'm literally driving to work the next day, and he calls me, and I'm like, "Huh, here we go." He's like, "F*** it.
6:11
That's exactly what he said, "F*** it. Let's keep going."
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And he always says it's pretty amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you. You know what I mean? So, they hung in there.
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Our goal is to get on TV.
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And again, for people that don't understand, because several generations have grown up with the UFC, and it's normal now, but at that time, it wasn't allowed on pay-per-view.
6:39
You, as a grown adult, didn't have the right to purchase it on pay-per-view.
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Porn was on pay-per-view. Okay?
6:47
But the UFC was not allowed on pay-per-view. Think about that. - Yeah.
6:51
- And our goal was to get it on free television, which everybody thought was impossible.
6:56
Right around 2004 or '05, reality shows started becoming big.
7:01
So, we came up with the concept for a reality show where this was, basically, you know, everybody in Hollywood are a bunch of pussies.
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Nobody has any original ideas.
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They're doing remakes and stuff.
7:15
They always play it safe, and nobody wanted these fights live on TV.
7:20
So, this was sort of our Trojan horse.
7:23
You're watching UFC, but it's in a reality format, and the fights are taped.
7:29
So, they felt like if anything was bad or, I don't know what they were thinking was possible, but they were taped, so we could take it out.
7:40
But my big thing was right around the same time, "The Contender" had come out.
7:45
It was like the most expensive reality show ever.
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- Mark Burnett's the guy that did "Survivor," right? - Which was boxing. Yeah, he did - Okay. - Survivor.
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Mark Burnett's done everything. - Yeah. - He did Trump's show. - "The Apprentice"? - Yeah. - Okay.
7:58
- So, "The Contender" comes out, and it's the most expensive show ever.
8:04
But what they did wrong and where they fu**** up was they were editing the fights. So they would...
8:10
If they had a fight and you know they got back at each other.
8:14
"This is boring," or whatever.
8:16
But that's the difference between being a hardcore fan and not.
8:20
I'm like, "Man, you don't ever edit a fight."
8:24
You let the fight play out. - Mm-hmm.
8:26
- And the fans determine whether the fight is good or bad, and you can't control that.
8:32
I call it the bells and whistles.
8:32
We do all the bells and whistles.
8:36
Then the fighters, we hand the torch off to them, they go in and they have to deliver.
8:41
- Let me pause you there.
8:42
- This is why I tell founders of tech companies to watch your press conferences, though.
8:46
Because the authenticity, I think this is why you have this cult-like following, and the people who like you, and really try to root for you, right?
8:53
And it's like you'll say at the end of it, "That fight sucked.
8:56
We thought it was going to be X, and it turned out to be Y."
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It's like, yeah, I have eyes.
8:59
I'm not going to lie to you. - Right. - That fight sucks.
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Just like for founders, like, Yeah, we fu***ed that up.
9:05
That was a bad experience.
9:07
I wouldn't like that to happen either.
9:09
Don't try to lie or paper over it.
9:10
- I saw that, too, growing up with promoters that would tell you, you just saw a great fight, when you know you didn't just see a great fight.
9:18
But as a fan, if the fight is good, boring...
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You know, different people like different things.
9:25
You could take half of the fan base who thinks a fight is boring, and the other half will think it's great because they like grappling more than the striking, or whatever it may be.
9:33
But you don't judge that.
9:36
You let the fans judge whether the fight is good or bad.
9:39
We'll build a card, and people start talking online, "This fight sucks." Shut the f*** up.
9:46
You don't know if the fight sucks until it happens, right?
9:49
You might not like the two people that are fighting. - Yeah.
9:52
- But you can't judge a fight until the fight is over. - Yeah.
9:54
- If it's over, and it sucks, then we'll both probably agree that it sucked.
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10:53
- How many different networks did you have to pitch until you got one to say "Yes" to the show?
10:58
And how did you get them to say "Yes"?
10:59
- Well, we were pitching everybody.
11:01
And at the time I mean, everything in life is about timing.
11:06
Well, I think it was The Nashville Network had switched over to Spike TV, which was labeling itself as the network for men.
11:15
And we're like, Man, if we don't fit here, where do we fit? Right?
11:17
So, we go in, we pitch these guys.
11:18
They're not really interested, you know, what it's going to cost them.
11:23
So, we said, "Well, we'll pay for the whole thing. We'll pay for it.
11:26
You just put it on your air."
11:29
They liked that idea better.
11:30
So, they said, "No, or not interested," and then you come back and say, "We're going to pay for production." - Yep.
11:35
- So, at that point they're just distribution. What's their 100%.
11:37
There's no downside for them.
11:39
You took the risk away from them. Yeah.
11:40
They had spent a shitload of money on a bunch of content that didn't work.
11:44
But that means you own the show, right? - Okay.
11:48
- So, at the time, it's the last 10 million dollar investment we're going to make in the UFC. - Whoa. - Yes.
11:55
- So, if it didn't work out. That's it. It's a wrap.
11:58
If "The Ultimate Fighter" didn't work, it's over.
12:01
So, the last 10 million dollar investment, which sucks at the time.
12:04
We're investing another 10 million.
12:08
But what doesn't suck is exactly what you just said.
12:11
The thing is a runaway hit.
12:13
The numbers just keep going like this.
12:16
And then the finale, when we were at the finale, when Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin fought, when the fight was over, and everybody in the place was stomping their feet saying, "One more round," and we go up, we give them both contracts, I was like, "I don't give a shit what happens.
12:31
This is going to end up somewhere."
12:34
And Spike TV execs took us out in the alley of the arena, and we did a deal on a napkin. - That's insane. - Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy.
12:41
- So, the fight ends, you go out in the alley, and they're like, "No, no we want to renew with you guys."
12:45
- We want to get a deal done now.
12:46
We want to shake hands on a.
12:46
We didn't fill out a contract. - Of course.
12:50
- Here's some bullet points for the deal.
12:50
We all agreed and shook hands, and there we were.
12:57
But if they would have paid for it, we wouldn't have been in the position that we were in, where we own 100% of everything.
13:06
So, while it sucked at the time to put up the next 10 million, it ended up being the greatest thing to ever happen to us.
13:12
- When you had this fight with Forrest Griffin, what venue were you in?
13:16
- So, the Thomas & Mack is UNLV's stadium.
13:21
We were at the small venue right next door to it.
13:25
It was called the Cox Pavilion.
13:25
- A couple of hundred people?
13:28
- 3,500, 4,000, something like that. - Okay. - 3,000 to 5,000. - But still, compared.
13:32
Think about the growth in your company from that to now 100% paying, you play the best.
13:36
- Our first fight that we did when we bought the company was at the Trump Taj Mahal.
13:40
We sold 3,500 tickets, and with comps, we had 5,000 people there. - That's incredible. Okay.
13:46
So, you do this deal with Spike TV. We're in early 2000s. There's barely any.
13:52
There's almost no iPhones, right? There's no social media. - Right.
13:57
You've done a really good job of, in my opinion, when I studied the history of UFC, it's like riding these technological waves.
14:04
You adopt them early, and then you use them as these giant tailwinds. You don't really resist.
14:08
It's like you see something working.
14:11
- Technology's been great to us.
14:12
- I remember you telling the story of Joe Rogan asking you to be on his podcast, and then he described it as, "It's kind of like the radio, but we put it online." And you said.
14:22
- I go, Yeah, that sounds huge.
14:23
That sounds like that's going to be real fu***** big. Good for you.
14:26
- And now, but then you've embraced them. - Yeah.
14:29
- So, was the TV the vast majority of the revenue of the business when you did this deal with Spike? - Yeah.
14:36
So, television was huge, and "The Ultimate Fighter" literally did everything that we hoped it would do.
14:45
It built a larger fan base.
14:49
It introduced a lot of people not only to the sport and the brand, but to the fighters.
14:54
I mean, coming off that show, Forrest Griffin became a massive pay-per-view star for us.
14:59
Chuck Liddell, who was one of the coaches.
15:01
And it did what it was designed to do.
15:04
When I launch businesses, like I launched "Power Slap," I did the same thing.
15:08
I launched "UFC BJJ," and did the same thing.
15:12
So, "Power Slap" reality show is at 50 million views on YouTube, so it's still a home run.
15:22
The format is incredible.
15:24
- You guys start telling the stories really, really early.
15:28
So, it's like, before these people are competing on the reality show, you get to know who they are, or what's important to them.
15:33
They have more varied backgrounds than boxing.
15:35
Boxing tried to do that, but.
15:36
I love what you said, it's like, When has there ever been trillions of dollars made, and nothing's there at the end? - Right. - Like in boxing.
15:43
- Trillions of dollars in revenue. - Yeah.
15:45
- And nothing exists at the end of the day.
15:48
- You guys start telling the story on the show, even before they're signed, and then, once they get to the UFC, then they're on the prelims, you keep telling the story over and over again - Yeah. - over many, many years. - Exactly.
15:56
And then now, I just started Season 34 of "The Ultimate Fighter."
16:05
Tomorrow's the first fight on the show, and I don't know if there's ever been more viewership than now, - Yeah.
16:12
- with this new deal that we have.
16:13
- And then is this with Paramount too? - Yeah. - They get everything. - They get everything.
16:17
- Well, for the for like eight bill.
16:17
- Everything UFC is now at Paramount. - Yeah. - It's like. - And boxing too.
16:23
I heard you say one time that, there was almost like no revenue coming in and you had stumbled onto like, you had all these DVDs, you just decided to put these fights on DVDs and then you did these compilations, which I thought was a genius idea.
16:36
It's like, okay, yeah, I could, I could buy a DVD of a fight or I could see the best knockouts from this year - Right.
16:41
- or the best submissions.
16:42
- When did you have that idea? -Right.
16:43
So, when the DVD business blew up, we started doing ultimate knockouts, ultimate submissions, and those things sold like crazy back then.
16:53
The DVD business, at the time the DVDs exploded, that's really when we started making some real money.
17:01
- This is before Spike though?
17:02
- It was around the same time. - Okay.
17:04
- Yeah, it was around the same time.
17:06
And I think we could've capitalized on the DVD business better than we did.
17:11
But like I said, we were young and new to the whole production world.
17:17
If I could go back now, with what I know now, With what I know now, I would've fu***** murdered the DVD.
17:23
We did really well, but I would've murdered the DVD era. I would have killed it. - Say more about that.
17:28
- I would have created more compilations.
17:30
I would have taken that part of the business way more serious than I did, and I did take it pretty serious then, because when those checks started rolling in from DVDs, it was like, "Holy shit."
17:40
- These are millions of dollars. - Millions of dollars. - Yeah, yeah. - Millions of dollars.
17:43
And I would literally, up the street on our old offices on Sahara, they used to have a Wow Superstore, and they sold records and DVDs and all that shit.
17:54
And right when you walked in, they had this huge display, and it was the top 20 DVDs of the week.
18:02
Literally nobody knew me then.
18:04
So, I'd go there and grab our shit and put it in the front of the fu***** store.
18:09
I used to do that kind of shit.
18:11
Talk about humble beginnings.
18:11
- So, wait a minute, though.
18:15
So, I want to hear more about the ideas.
18:17
Let's go back to this idea, like what you would've done differently.
18:20
Is it just straight more volume, taking it more seriously, better talent?
18:23
You were making a couple million-dollar checks, could've been 10X the size? - Yeah. - Really?
18:27
- Yeah, we could've made a lot more money, I think, on the DVD side if I had focused more on that part of the business at the time.
18:34
And when you're in the moment like that, I mean, you expect DVDs to be forever. - Yeah. - Right?
18:42
Who sees DVDs leaving and not.
18:42
So, we're making great revenue on the DVDs, and you don't expect that to go away.
18:52
You expect that to keep coming, you know?
18:53
If you look at our business in 2001 - Mm-hmm - to today, 25 years.
19:00
How fast technology has gone in just 25 years from streaming, DVD is gone.
19:10
All this stuff is streaming now.
19:13
I remember being in my office, and these guys set up a meeting with me.
19:17
And they brought in a computer, and they're like, "This is the future. Streaming."
19:23
And again, like the Joe Rogan podcast thing, they played it for me.
19:28
Buffering, buffering, buffering. Plays 5, 10 seconds.
19:32
Buffering, buffering, buffering. I'm like, "Oh, yeah.
19:34
Yeah, this is going to be real fun to do and watch."
19:37
But if you look at from that meeting to where we are today, I always did have this dream where, someday, I believe that the world would continue to get smaller, and everybody would be watching the fight at the same time on the same channel around the world.
19:57
Because when I grew up, we had Channel 3, Channel 5, Channel 8, and Channel 13.
20:00
When I was in high school, they got cable, and we had 30 channels then.
20:04
And I believe we'd go back to Channel 3, Channel 5, and Channel 8 and 13, but globally.
20:12
So, who's it going to be? - Paramount? - Netflix. - YouTube. - Yeah. - Amazon. Netflix.
20:16
- I'm shocked Netflix didn't win this bid. - Yeah. Well, they were in it. - Of course they are.
20:25
- We were talking to them the whole time, and what an incredible business they've built and but the Ellisons are aggressive guys, you know? They're aggressive guys.
20:39
Obviously, financially powerful.
20:42
And at literally the half-yard line, they said, "F*** it.
20:48
We want everything," and they went after it.
20:52
- Can you say any more about the negotiation?
20:53
What was that like dealing with them? - It was great.
20:56
It was great dealing with them.
20:59
It was great dealing with Netflix.
20:59
It was all a good experience.
21:03
Better than the experiences we had in the past.
21:06
So, we're on Spike TV, right? And killing it. We're killing it.
21:13
Because the WWE was on there for a certain amount of time while we were, too.
21:16
Other than the WWE, I mean, we were the biggest thing on the network.
21:21
So, I'm a fu***** loyal guy as it is, so listen, we would have been on Spike TV for 100 years, or whatever.
21:28
So, we end up going to lunch, Lorenzo and I, with a guy who was a big executive at the time, with the whole CBS Viacom company.
21:37
His name was Philippe Dauman, okay?
21:41
So, he calls himself Philippe Dauman.
21:43
He's from fu***** Jersey. His name's Phil Dauman.
21:46
But one of the biggest douchebags of all fu***** time.
21:51
We go into this lunch, and we got to listen to how fu***** rich he is for the first 15-20 minutes of the lunch.
22:00
And then he tells us that he built the UFC, and if we don't like the offer he's making, he'll just build another one.
22:09
That's literally what he said.
22:10
And we left that meeting, I was like, "That fu*****... He built the UFC, huh? Okay. Okay, Phil Dauman. We'll see."
22:17
So, we end up leaving Spike TV and going to Fox, and just everything happens for a reason.
22:23
And yeah, that guy ended up being one of the biggest brand killers of all time, old Phil Dauman. MTV, fu*****.
22:31
Think about all the Viacom legendary networks they had that this guy had sucked the life out of and killed.
22:43
- As you know, I'm obsessed with studying and speaking to the most focused and intense founders, living or dead.
22:49
Dana White is a great example of that.
22:50
And if you watch the episode I put out last week with Adam, the founder of AppLovin, you'll see the same kind of intensity and dedication to excellence.
22:57
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24:09
- Your high risk tolerance, though.
24:12
Do you guys do any work with.
24:13
I was asking the team before.
24:15
Do you know who Todd Graves is?
24:15
The founder of Raising Cane's? - Yes.
24:18
- First of all, he should sponsor UFC. - Well, we've met. - Okay. - Yeah, yeah, we've met.
24:22
- He's just like you, because you get off on being told "Dana, you can't do it." - Right. -Right?
24:27
He did this show a few months ago, and he was just like, "They told me..."
24:30
A 23-year-old kid, he starts Raising Cane's.
24:30
His original idea was like, "I'm going to sell fu***** chicken fingers to drunk LSU students." And he couldn't. - And high school kids. My kids. - Oh, no, no, now.
24:41
- Literally, that's all my kids ate when they were in high school. - Yeah.
24:44
And so, now, obviously, it's different, but back then, he was 23 years old, had no money.
24:48
He literally risked his life on a fu***** fishing boat in Alaska, and then maxed out his credit cards.
24:53
That's how he funded the first Raising Cane's, which he built with his own hands.
24:56
We went to the first one in Baton Rouge.
24:58
It's crazy he built this with his own hands, but there's so much similarities between you two.
25:03
Because on the show, he's like, "Entrepreneurs are not taking enough risk.
25:06
They're too scared of risk." - Yeah.
25:08
- "They need to take more risk.
25:09
If you truly believe in it, and you know this.
25:11
"Because he believes that God put him on this earth to be good at chicken fingers. Literally.
25:16
And now he owns over 90% of the company.
25:19
It's worth 20 billion dollars, selling fu***** chicken fingers.
25:23
- It's funny you say that, because Lorenzo Fertitta always used to say to me, "You were put on this earth to do this."
25:28
- There's nobody else in the world that loves it.
25:30
We were just talking that we have a mutual friend in Jared.
25:33
You were just on the phone with him before.
25:34
His brother, Josh, has a great quote where he's like, " If you want to pick somebody, if you're going to back somebody, and you could choose the most experienced, the person that has the most money, or the person that wants it the most."
25:46
He's like, "You always pick the person that wants it the most." It's very obvious that.
25:51
You even said, I think when you moved back to Vegas, you're like, "I was a bellman. Guess what?
25:56
I'm going to take a risk, because I could be a bellman at 35, I could be a bellman at 50, but I can only do this and take the risk when I'm young and have nothing to lose." - Dead on. It's so true.
26:08
Everybody that has an idea or a dream, or however you want to look at it, they're all afraid to take that dive off.
26:19
I'm 19 years old, and the problem is some people are cool with just being comfortable, right?
26:27
You're 19, you make cash every day, and you get a paycheck, you got a 501K, dental, medical, you know, check all the boxes there.
26:37
And some people are just comfortable with that, you know?
26:40
And there's other people too that just want, "Hey, listen, I just want to make a good living.
26:44
I want Saturdays and Sundays off, and I want every holiday off, and And then there's guys that are like, "Yeah, fu** this shit.
26:51
I can do more than this."
26:54
And even now, I mean, I'm 56 years old, and I'm dumping more and more and more on my plate because I believe in it and I know we can do it.
27:02
And back in '17, '18, I'm on Instagram, and these guys are slapping the shit out of each other on social media, and it's coming out of Russia and Poland.
27:15
And things with me are by gut.
27:19
Now, I'm watching this stuff, and I'm like, "This is crazy."
27:23
But what I noticed was I would stay until the end to see who won.
27:27
And I'm the most jaded dude in the world when it comes to fighting.
27:30
So, I was like, "Shit, if I'm interested in this and I'm staying, and what if I did this the right way?"
27:37
And the same shit we'd said about the UFC.
27:40
So, I called the Fertitta brothers, and I said, "Hey, have you seen this slapping stuff? I'm into it."
27:45
And then they said, "How much money do you want?"
27:47
I said, "I need a million dollars from both of you.
27:49
- A million, - that's it? - Yeah. Three million.
27:51
- Don't you gamble that more in a night?
27:52
We put up three million, yeah.
27:54
We put up three million bucks, and it's killing it. Michael Rubin told me.
27:58
After we launched "Power Slap" and it started killing it, Michael Rubin said to me, "Whatever you do next, I'm in for 10 million.
28:06
You don't even have to tell me what it is." - Now you're launching.
28:09
You have a ton more experience and resources.
28:12
The knowledge you have of building these live events, probably better than anybody else in the world, in fighting, right?
28:19
How fast do you turn that business profitable?
28:22
Because we're not even done with the fu***** story. - First event.
28:25
- It's been profitable since the first event? - First event. - Okay.
28:27
Explain what you did differently.
28:30
- Well, I knew everything to do.
28:32
First of all, the reason the UFC became as big as it did as fast as it did, two reasons.
28:38
We traveled the thing all around the United States and the world, and we built a live event that when you come to the live event.
28:46
Very few people get really good live event experiences.
28:50
I mean, even as big as the NFL is, and the NFL is just fu***** massive, right?
28:56
And there's nothing better than football season, right?
28:59
When football season starts, every Sunday you're on the couch, and you watch.
29:03
But I don't like the live experience. - Mm.
29:05
- I'm not a big fan of the NFL's live experience. Now, the NBA, right?
29:11
Sit home and try to watch a full NBA game on TV.
29:14
All you got to watch is the last five minutes. Go to an NBA game live.
29:17
It's way better live than it is on TV.
29:22
The UFC is an incredible television product, and it's even better live.
29:27
So, you get a great experience with both.
29:30
- Everybody complains, I've heard this so much from people online, they're like, "Dana has the best seats in the house.
29:35
Why is he looking at it on a little tiny screen?" Can you explain why? - 100%.
29:39
So, to finish what I was just saying, again, nobody walks out of a live UFC event and goes, "Yeah, I don't ever want to come to one of these again."
29:49
So, not only do you become a bigger fan when you see it live, then you bring in five, six, seven, eight, ten people, and you make them fans too, meaning the people who left.
30:00
And then people always do say that, "He's got the best seat."
30:03
I'm not sitting there to watch the fu***** fights.
30:07
I'm making sure that I can't control what's happening in the octagon, but I can control what you're seeing on television.
30:14
And I have a phone there that goes directly to the truck.
30:16
So, what I care about is the live in-house experience.
30:20
- Tailored to what you want, you as a single individual. - Yeah.
30:24
- You're not running this through a committee.
30:26
You're not like, "Oh, let's talk about 'Should we change these graphics or anything?'" It's your taste.
30:29
- There is no committee here. There is no whatever. This is a dictatorship. 100% a dictatorship.
30:36
And I'm listening to how loud the music is, if it's loud enough, if it's not, and things that are happening in-house, and I'm watching what's happening on TV.
30:45
All of that I can control.
30:47
I can't control the fight and what's going on in there.
30:49
- What happens when you see something you don't like? - I pick up the phone.
30:52
There's a phone that goes right to the truck, and I say, "What the fu*** was that?
30:56
Let's never do that again. Let's do this."
30:58
And I am so connected with my team.
31:02
They know what I want, they know what I expect.
31:05
But my guy, Zach, who's the producer, he'll throw some shit around, try some new stuff, and I'll pick up the phone and say, "That was cool. That wasn't cool. Let's keep that.
31:13
Let's never do that again."
31:16
- You have this in common with all of history's greatest entrepreneurs, because they're always.
31:19
You hear from business school, they're like, "Oh, you should build up a team."
31:21
Yeah, you're going to have to have a good team.
31:22
And then you just delegate.
31:23
I heard this story of you kicking through a fu***** door. What was that? - The production team. - Yeah, explain this.
31:28
- Those were the guys that I told you at the beginning of the interview that I fired them all.
31:32
- Okay, so explain what happened.
31:33
- So, we had just bought the company, and Phil Baroni, who's a maniac, was fighting.
31:42
F***, who was he fighting? Anyway.
31:44
And Phil Baroni snapped in the middle of the interview, like started freaking out on the fu***** interviewer.
31:50
And I told the guys, I said, "I want this.
31:52
I want this to be the interview when he fu***** snaps."
31:56
And they're like, "You can't do that," you know.
31:59
And these guys all worked for "Showtime" at the time. - Mm.
32:03
- And I fu***** thought that "Showtime" was the most dog shit production ever in boxing.
32:10
And I used to say it publicly all the time.
32:13
Well, these guys were all "Showtime" guys who were working on the side on the UFC.
32:17
So, I told them, "This is how I want this interview played out."
32:20
So, we're sitting in the arena, and Lorenzo.
32:24
I said, "Watch this fu***** interview." And they didn't do it.
32:28
They did what they wanted to fu***** do.
32:31
I literally got up from my seat and went back there and kicked the fu***** truck door open.
32:35
I said, "You motherfu*****, if you ever fu***** do that again, I'll fire every fu***** one of you."
32:39
And this whole thing, which I ended up firing all of them.
32:42
- So, how long does it take you to get your because now you essentially have a team that thinks very similar to you, where you have to make very few changes.
32:48
They understand and have adapted to your taste.
32:50
How long does that process take to go from "You guys don't know what the hell you're doing," to "I almost have like a bunch of clones of myself."
32:55
MrBeast calls it cloning himself.
32:58
And his editors, his thumbnail designers.
33:01
He used to do all that stuff, and then he works with them for so long, they kind of can read his mind.
33:05
- That's my whole production team right now. - Yeah.
33:06
- Literally my whole production team.
33:08
So, now we'll go into we have a screening room over here, and they'll set up meetings with me.
33:15
We got to go through screening stuff.
33:18
Very rarely do I have to change one fu***** thing.
33:21
My guys are so talented and so good and so on point with everything that they do.
33:27
It's just once you build this trust, confidence, whatever you want to call it, with your team, and you have to have a bunch of sick animals that are just wired the way you are, and incredibly talented.
33:43
And I literally have a whole campus full of those kind of people right now, from the art department, to the production team, to PR, to I mean, you name it.
33:52
That's an animal over there. Seriously. Fu***** animal. Animal.
33:58
- Yeah, I've heard you shout her out on a few of your podcasts too.
34:00
Oh, she's a fu***** animal. - Yeah.
34:02
How many years did it take you to do that?
34:03
How many people did you have to turn over?
34:06
What was that process like? - Hmm.
34:08
I don't know the exact answer to that, but not a lot of turnover on my production side.
34:16
These guys have been with me forever, including the rockstar head of production, Craig Borsari.
34:25
But there's been like one guy that I absolutely loved, that was on our production team, and he left to go.
34:33
You know, what we talked about.
34:36
You know, go make it on his own. - Right.
34:40
- And he actually came to me about a year ago and said, "Listen, I have this whole concept.
34:45
I think this could be big," and everything else. And we helped him do it.
34:49
We helped him build this thing, and he's doing it right now.
34:54
So, I've always had great relationships with my team, and there hasn't been much turnover.
35:03
Not in the key positions anyway. - Yeah.
35:04
- The positions that work directly with me, not a lot of turnover.
35:08
- So, when I listen to all your stuff, one thing I'm curious about, and I want to ask you selfishly, is without a doubt, you're one of the biggest fight fans in the world. - Mm-hmm. - You love fighting. But I almost feel...
35:18
I've watched over 10,000 fights in the last 25 years, not including fights that I've watched that weren't mine. That's incredible. - Yeah.
35:26
I almost feel like you're starting to, or maybe you have a love.
35:28
I almost feel like you love entrepreneurship as much, and maybe even slightly more than you love fighting.
35:35
- Yeah, there's no doubt about it. - Really? - Yeah.
35:37
If you look at what I'm doing, right?
35:40
First of all, what I've done has never been done.
35:43
And lots of people have tried to do it.
35:47
Really wealthy people, really smart entrepreneurs in other spaces, have all tried to do this.
35:53
Now, built this incredible business.
35:59
Then we just went public with TKO.
36:01
Now I'm going to try to rebuild boxing, right?
36:05
And we just launched a jiu jitsu league, and we launched Slap.
36:11
So, every way that you can kick somebody's ass, you know, I am in that business.
36:19
We're going to build the biggest combat sports company to ever exist, and that will probably ever exist.
36:27
That's my goal in the next 10 years.
36:30
- It's not just that you're going to build the biggest combat organization.
36:32
You already have, but it's going to be much bigger, right?
36:34
But people don't understand that entrepreneurs come and seek out your advice.
36:37
You're on the fu***** board of Meta, for God's sake.
36:40
- So, right here, normally you guys rip my f****** room apart here, - but well, tell them what you see, because this is not a normal podcast.
36:46
- So yeah, I said, "This looks like f****** CBS or Fox or something."
36:49
So, when you come in, my office is connected right here. This is my bar.
36:53
So, this is where I have most of my meetings.
36:55
Usually, there's four chairs here.
36:57
Every day, multiple times a day, entrepreneurs come in here and pitch me something like, f****** "Shark Tank," and I give lots of people advice.
37:06
I connect people with other people that I think they could do business with, or I get involved myself.
37:13
- Why do you like talking to entrepreneurs so much?
37:16
- I love hearing different people's ideas.
37:22
I love young people that are willing to take a shot, and aren't afraid to do it.
37:28
And literally, I mean, I should have my assistant figure out how many of these I do a year, but it's multiple times a day, every f****** day, and even on Saturdays and Sundays.
37:41
So, I sit in this room and listen to people's pitches all the time about the businesses that they want to build and their ideas.
37:50
And usually, you have these guys that will connect people to people, and they want to be paid or a piece.
37:57
I've connected more f****** people that have done things together and been successful, not looking for anything other than I hope they all win.
38:07
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38:11
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38:20
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38:28
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38:37
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38:42
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38:49
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38:53
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39:08
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39:12
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39:20
- I'm curious the difference in quality of entrepreneur when you started.
39:25
Because I've heard you say, on a few other podcasts, that some of these people are just so soft.
39:30
Like, some of these younger entrepreneurs don't understand how hard and difficult. You literally had to.
39:35
Like, the UFC would have died if it wasn't for you.
39:39
Can you say a little bit about the difference in the mentality that you see?
39:43
- The greatest line of all time is, "You know, I want to start my own thing, because I want to set my own hours, and I want to take days off, and I want to." Oh, Jesus Christ.
39:52
You should just stay where you're at and keep working for somebody else, because that is not how it works.
39:55
I've been doing this shit forever.
39:59
I could've retired 10 years ago.
40:03
Every day, when you get up, and you're an entrepreneur, you go to war, literally, every day.
40:09
Somebody's trying to f*** you.
40:09
Somebody's trying to take what you have.
40:15
Somebody's trying to tear down your business literally every day.
40:18
Then you have the problems that pop up, especially, and I know this sounds insensitive, but it is what it is.
40:28
When your product is human beings, and you have almost a thousand of them, not even including your employees.
40:33
They have personal problems. They have injuries.
40:37
They have things going on.
40:39
There's always something wrong, and always something that needs to be fixed every minute of every day.
40:47
- Especially the people you have, they're fighters.
40:51
- That's what I'm saying.
40:52
-They choose to get into essentially their underwear in front of millions of people and fight, you know, beat the shit out of each other.
40:58
You think you can control them?
40:59
They are the most unique human beings on planet Earth.
41:02
They re not like all of us.
41:04
They are wired differently, which is what makes them special.
41:09
- You have this unique combination of almost like.
41:12
And I don't mean this in a derogatory way, like micromanager, but also, like, give a lot of freedom to the people. - Yes.
41:18
- So, you don't even try to.
41:19
There's two things that come to mind, right?
41:21
Where it's like, "Oh, Jon Jones is in the club in Vegas.
41:25
What are you going to do?"
41:26
And you're like, "He's a fighter. - Mm.
41:27
- There's nothing I can do about it."
41:29
But also, what I thought you were really smart on, and ties to what we were talking about earlier, is like you always adopt new technology early.
41:35
You understood the power of like these TikTokers, these YouTubers, some podcasters, and you essentially just I've heard from them, "Dana just gives us access to the events, and no..."
41:45
You know how to build an audience.
41:47
You know how to make content.
41:48
What the hell am I going to tell you?
41:48
You just say, "Come to the events as much as you want, and then make whatever you want."
41:53
- If you think about this.
41:55
I have UFC, Power Slap, boxing, Jiu-Jitsu, the WWE, PBR, plus me and the Fertittas own Slap, SLS Skate League, and Nitro Circus.
42:14
- I don't know what any of those are.
42:15
Look, I want to hear about that in a minute.
42:17
- Well, there are nine brands right there that if you're an influencer.
42:20
Now, if you're an influencer, when I started to notice this, I told Lenee, I don't know, five, six years ago.
42:29
The media does not have the influence anymore. They're gone. Nobody trusts them.
42:36
They're all full of shit.
42:36
They're always lying, and they don't have the trust of the people the way that they used to.
42:44
These young kids are the influencers.
42:44
They actually have the influence.
42:48
And when you think about it, they have to get up every day and create content.
42:54
You're a content creator.
42:56
It is not easy to do, and you have to go viral.
43:01
And you're competing with shitloads of other young people that are doing the same thing.
43:06
You show up to any of my events, I give you full access.
43:11
Film what you want, create what you want.
43:14
The other thing is, most people that deal with content creators, they try to tell them, "You have to do this, this, this."
43:22
What the f*** do you know about creating content, right?
43:25
Let these young, talented people, who are unbelievably creative, do what they do when they want to f****** do it. How hard is that?
43:34
- No, it's like a simple genius. - Mm.
43:38
- It reminds me of, you mentioned the Ellisons earlier, and just how aggressive they are, and obviously, well capitalized.
43:42
And I saw this clip recently on X, where Larry Ellison was talking.
43:45
Larry Ellison mentored Elon Musk, So Elon says he's one of the smartest people, one of the few people that Elon goes to for advice.
43:53
And Larry Ellison is in this conversation with this reporter for a newspaper, and the reporter's trying to tell Larry that Elon is dumb, and he's like, "Have you ever landed a rocket, much less a rocket on a boat?
44:05
Like, show me what you have done."
44:07
And I just thought that was beautiful.
44:08
It's like, "That guy's stupid? He's landing rockets."
44:10
- I say that all the time.
44:12
My biggest problem with the media: who the f*** are you, and what the f*** have you ever done? Nothing.
44:19
You're nobody, and you've never done anything ever.
44:24
Nobody's ever depended on you for a paycheck.
44:28
Who are you to criticize anybody?
44:31
I was just saying at the press conference in Winnipeg on Saturday, you have all these people on the internet talking about what we should be doing with our business.
44:42
I said, "Holy shit, you guys are f****** brilliant."
44:45
PFL, Bellator, ONE FC, many, many other failing companies, why don't they just f****** hire you guys?
44:54
You guys have the answers for everything, right?
44:56
It just I can't even read this shit because it's so dumb, and I realize these guys know nothing about this business, yet these are the people that are covering it.
45:11
It's fascinating to me that anybody listens to any of these people.
45:14
- I heard you say one time that you always laugh when people start talking about the business of UFC, - Mm.
45:19
- because they don't know anything about it. - Mm-hmm.
45:20
- Can you say more about that?
45:22
- First of all, everything that we've done over the last 25 years has never been done before, and we continue to do things that have never been done before.
45:31
There's a vision for this business, and literally none of them know it. They have no idea.
45:37
They can look at, oh, this company, and these guys did this, and somebody did this in the past.
45:43
We're doing none of that shit.
45:43
We're doing the exact opposite.
45:46
So, for you to criticize.
45:48
I guess everybody can criticize and say, "Oh, this won't work."
45:51
What have we done in the last 25 years that hasn't worked?
45:57
Now, f****** Lorenzo's done. He's out.
46:03
He doesn't want to do this anymore, so he puts the business up for sale. We sell for 4. 025. - This is 2016. - Yeah. - Okay. - We sell for 4. 025 billion, right? No TV deal.
46:17
We're coming up to the end of our Fox deal. We have no TV deal. Nothing.
46:23
Every-f******-body out there, "They overpaid. The UFC has peaked. The UFC is this. The UFC is that."
46:33
All the same f****** guys that are talking shit right now, that's what they said, okay?
46:40
Spike, 35 million dollars deal.
46:45
Fox, 100 million dollars deal.
46:45
ESPN, 3 billion dollars deal. And now, here we are, 7. 7 for seven years. Everybody. They f***** Paramount. Paramount overpaid.
47:01
Just all the same f****** shit from the same f****** losers. It's crazy.
47:08
It's just like you have to block all this noise out.
47:11
These people are f****** zeros.
47:13
Everybody that talks about this business and has an opinion on it are zeros.
47:20
They've never done anything in their f****** life except talk, and it's always the same shit, because these are all people that have no vision, no clue, no whatever.
47:35
They were all talking this shit in 2016, and look where we are 10 years later.
47:42
Wait and see where we are in 10 more f****** years.
47:45
-Yeah, I was going to say, the numbers are only going to keep going up. Look at the streaming.
47:48
It's just streaming services are just going to all be sports.
47:51
The subscriber count has scaled so high, the demand is going to be insatiable for things essentially that you make.
47:59
- I was surprised that it took Netflix so long to get into sports.
48:02
I was saying it way before they did.
48:05
The thing is that streaming's great. Right now, I'm like.
48:08
I don't watch a lot of TV. - Yeah.
48:12
Well, you seem to be a little busy. - Almost none. - Yeah. - Right?
48:17
Something's really got to get me to.
48:19
And I was saying this before the Paramount deal. - Yeah. - Way before.
48:21
So much so that people are like, "Paramount did the deal with him just because of how much he talks about 'Landman,' and 'MobLand.'"
48:29
"Landman" is one of the greatest television - Yeah. - shows that I love it. I've ever watched, ever.
48:35
And "MobLand," you know, classic Guy Ritchie. Unbelievable. - Mm.
48:40
-So, when you think about those two shows, I can go watch the whole season tonight, or I can watch it three years from now.
48:45
It's always going to be there.
48:49
Sports, live sports is a destination. You have to watch it... - Now. - Yep, exactly. - Now.
48:55
- So, it always made sense for streaming platforms to go after the sports.
49:01
-And as they continue to scale and they're global, exactly what you said, the numbers are going to keep going up. - 100%.
49:05
And I'm so glad that you and I are having this conversation, that this all ended up happening.
49:12
Remember everything that was said today on this podcast, and let's talk again in five years.
49:18
I'm talking about all these literally losers, that talk about this sport and absolutely know nothing about what they're talking about.
49:31
And if you check the temperature right here today, Paramount overpaid, same shit that they said 10 years ago about WME overpaying for the sport. It's peaked. It's this, it's that.
49:46
They don't have the talent, they don't have the stars, they don't have the this, they don't have the that.
49:51
It's fascinating to me that any of these people that have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the business, because this isn't like some other the hotel business where it's all the same shit.
50:05
Everything we're doing has never been done before, and over the next five to 10 years, everything we do has never been done before either, and watch what we do in the next five to 10 years.
50:18
- The reason this will never stop, this is true today, it was true 100 years ago, it'll be true 100 years from now.
50:22
If it's working, the numbers always get bigger than the people involved could possibly imagine. - Very true. I love it. - Yeah, it's crazy.
50:30
- So love that we're having this conversation.
50:31
- You just got shit the other day because I guess you guys used some AI video in one of your promos. - Yep.
50:39
- What was your response to the people that criticized you?
50:41
- Well, the response was I did a whole commercial in AI, after that for the White House.
50:44
My response is, "Why don't you just shut the f*** up and watch the fights?"
50:53
F*** do you care what we're doing technology-wise?
50:56
And what's the difference between we were using green screens before that, too, right?
51:01
And people, we still have to hire people to do this stuff.
51:05
Let me tell you, I'm not downstairs doing the f****** AI shit.
51:08
We have people that are doing it. But it's the future. It's coming.
51:13
Is it going to be as big as everybody thinks? Is it going to last? I don't know.
51:15
- You don't have to know.
51:17
- But right here, right now, we're in.
51:17
- But do you see how rare that is?
51:21
You've been running the UFC for 26 years, something like that? - Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
51:25
It's like you stay on top of it over and over again.
51:28
If you just analyze what you do, you're just like, "What is the most valuable medium to use for the product that I have to make the product that I have spread to more people?"
51:35
That answer's going to change.
51:36
You thought DVDs were going to be, not just you, but everyone.
51:39
DVDs are going to be around forever.
51:40
Cable TV's going to be around forever. - Right.
51:41
- You couldn't have f****** predicted streaming in 2005. - 100%. 100%.
51:43
And we did a commercial, I don't know, over 10 years ago, for the Conor McGregor, José Aldo fight. It was incredible.
51:51
It was on the strip, and they end up meeting out in front of MGM, and all these Brazilians and all.
51:58
Do they think that we really had all those f****** people out there, and that we really did that?
52:01
No, that isn't the way it worked, and that was way before AI.
52:07
Whatever the new technology is, we're on it.
52:10
- I want to go back to the fact that you love entrepreneurship as much as fighting or maybe even more.
52:15
One thing, the reason that we started the show, people are a little confused what we're doing, is just like this is a love letter to capitalism.
52:20
I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant.
52:21
My dad was literally born in Cuba.
52:21
My grandfather fled Castro.
52:25
That one decision changed the trajectory of my entire life, just him deciding not to stay in this f***** up place, and come to America, and then me being born 30 years later, or whatever the case was.
52:33
I've heard you a few times, and I think you called them dummies, about these young kids that seem to be attracted to hating billionaires or being anti-capitalistic.
52:42
Can you talk a little bit about that? - Yeah.
52:44
It's funny because if you look at the situation that California's in right now, right, and all these billionaires are trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there, billionaires are very important to the eco-system of the United States, you know what I mean?
52:59
The amount of money these guys pay in taxes, how do you think everything stays afloat?
53:03
How do you think the state comes up with the money to fix the roads and build the highways and infrastructure in every city in America?
53:13
Comes from billionaires, millionaires, the middle class, and people who work their asses off and pay their taxes.
53:21
That's where all the money comes from.
53:22
I was just doing an interview, I won't say who, but two days ago, and they were walking around looking at my office and looking at the gym, and the woman was like, "You know, there's hard times right now.
53:36
Some people are going through it, and don't you think if they're going to see this and be like..."
53:41
Well, if they're going to see this and be like, "Oh, this is terrible that this guy had..."
53:47
You're not it, and you're never going to be it.
53:50
You got the victim mentality, and you're never going to be that person.
53:56
What you should look at what I have and say is, "That guy barely graduated high school, right?
54:01
And believed in something, did all the right things.
54:06
If that guy can do it, I can do it."
54:06
That's how you should think.
54:10
And I know that there are many different types of people out there.
54:15
Like I said, there's the 9:00 to 5:00 guy, and there's nothing wrong with it.
54:20
You want to work 9:00 to 5:00, you want Saturday, Sunday off, and every holiday because that's the life you want to live, good for you.
54:26
And then, you have the guy who's going to come in and grind in the business, and run a department, and do very well for himself, and is a part of building something like this.
54:41
And then you got the guy that's like, "Yeah, I'm not working for anybody.
54:44
"I'm going to go out and I'm going to make it happen for myself.
54:47
And if you look at somebody I've looked at many people, and never ever have I looked at somebody who's had incredible wealth, built unbelievable businesses, and said, "Yeah, f*** that guy."
55:02
I've always said, "Wow," you know?
55:04
And you can learn lots of different things from lots of different people in different industries, and what they built and how they built it, and you can look at other guys and say, "I don't ever want to make that mistake."
55:19
I don't think that's right.
55:20
- Give me some examples of people that you thought of as cautionary tales.
55:24
- That don't value their employees.
55:27
People that don't value their employees. I've seen a lot of that.
55:30
- I don't think people understand what you were willing to do during COVID, how wrong you thought it was that everybody was laying everybody off. - Yeah.
55:35
- You offered to give up all of your compensation. - Yeah. - Why?
55:39
- Yeah, so my thing was this, I was in a situation where I wasn't going to lose any of my money during COVID.
55:47
Yet these people who come in here every f****** day and grind with me, and there were a lot of people that were going to get laid off, and a lot of people whose salaries were going to be cut, bonuses, and all these other things.
55:59
And I said, "Yeah, f*** that shit.
56:00
We're going through COVID."
56:02
I'm not a brick-and-mortar business, right?
56:05
All I got to do is find a place where I can go, put on a fight, and beam it to ESPN. That's all I had to do.
56:15
And my team was all ready to f****** storm the beach with me, man.
56:22
Nobody was saying, "No, we're not going to work during COVID.
56:26
Too dangerous, and we're scared."
56:28
I'm not saying people weren't scared.
56:30
Everybody was willing to go. Men, women, everybody.
56:36
- Brian Halligan founded HubSpot 20 years ago, and he has this line about AI that I keep thinking about.
56:41
He said, "Most companies are using AI to make their teams more productive, but the companies that will thrive make the company itself the intelligence."
56:49
And that is exactly what HubSpot does.
56:50
HubSpot gives you AI that works, AI that actually knows your customers and your business.
56:55
Your AI needs to know what you know, your actual customer conversations, your sales history, what worked last quarter and what didn't.
57:02
HubSpot connects AI to your real customer data, so when it writes an email, it knows this customer asked about pricing three weeks ago, it knows what campaign brought them in, and it knows that they already contacted support twice this month.
57:14
And that's when you start seeing actual results. Visit hubspot. com to learn more. That's hubspot. com.
57:22
- I remember when the NBA canceled their season.
57:25
That was probably an "Oh shit" moment for you.
57:26
How long from that moment until you did the thing with Abu Dhabi?
57:30
How long did it take you to find a place in the world to go? - Couple weeks. So, I'm f****** going.
57:34
We're going no matter what.
57:37
Now, I have the Khabib versus Tony Ferguson fight. Which time, though?
57:43
It's f****** crazy you know that.
57:46
That's crazy you know that. The last time.
57:49
It's at Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Arena.
57:53
And I'm telling these guys, "Don't f****** pull this on me.
57:56
Don't pull this f****** fight. We're going to go.
57:58
I don't care if there's no fans, whatever."
58:01
Brooklyn calls and says, "Yeah, we're not going to do it."
58:05
I said, "I'll never, ever f****** come to your arena again, just so you know that."
58:10
You know, because we were doing MSG and Brooklyn.
58:12
I said, "I will never hold another f****** fight in your arena ever again. Cool?" Cool. They f****** pull it.
58:21
So, I got my f****** lawyer calling every place in America, because once it all started to shut down, it was all going quick.
58:34
So quick that I would be here in the office, we'd get something done.
58:38
I live 20 minutes from here.
58:42
By the time I got home, my lawyer would call me and go, "They just f****** bailed." I'm like, "What?"
58:48
Anyway, so this is my thought process during this time.
58:54
I don't know how f****** long this COVID shit's going to go on, and how long the country's going to be shut down, but here's what I do know.
58:59
At ESPN, which is a sports network, the bean counters are eventually going to sit down, and they're going to go, "Okay, let's see what we got here.
59:11
We got the NFL, we got Major League Baseball, we got the NBA, we got the NHL, we got the UFC, and we got the guys who throw the f****** bean-bags into the f****** holes, okay? Who we cutting first?"
59:26
F****** UFC is going to be the first f****** money that's going to get cut.
59:30
So, I'm going to figure out how to go through COVID.
59:34
All my employees are going to stay intact and all this shit.
59:38
Iger says, "I'll pay you every f****** dime, no matter how much COVID lasts, whether you do no events or you put on all 44." - Oh, wow.
59:49
-That we were getting paid no matter what.
59:49
So, I could have just said, "F*** it.
59:55
Let's all stay home, and see how long COVID f****** lasts."
59:58
But no, we went out, and we pulled killer f****** numbers for ESPN because we were the only.
1:00:03
- You're only game in town. - And our business grew.
1:00:09
It just f****** blew up, and went through the roof.
1:00:11
-How fast do you do a deal with Abu Dhabi?
1:00:11
Because people don't understand Sheikh Tahnoon is also like, these guys are obsessed with Jiu-Jitsu.
1:00:17
He's a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. - Right.
1:00:18
And they've been incredible partners to us since the day we met them.
1:00:24
So yeah, we end up talking to them.
1:00:25
We go to Yas Island, and we built the only real bubble that existed during COVID.
1:00:32
Like, the people who moved into Yas Island from UAE, lived there for months, and never went home and saw their family. So, they were all clean.
1:00:43
We made sure that all of our athletes and everybody that went over to work were tested multiple times.
1:00:48
We chartered our own planes. We flew over there.
1:00:51
It was the only true bubble that existed in sports at that time.
1:00:56
All the other ones were bullshit.
1:00:57
- And then, dealing with them, they can call the shots.
1:01:00
I heard you were on a podcast, and you were saying, like, you were trying to do some deals with these people, and they were like.
1:01:05
You had a meeting, and then they called you a day later, and they mentioned, "Hey, we spoke to our board."
1:01:10
And you're like, "Nope, we're not doing a deal." It doesn't matter.
1:01:13
If you have to go and ask permission to somebody else, we are fundamentally incompatible. - Very f****** true.
1:01:19
So, sponsors during this time, you know, we had great relationships with all of our sponsors.
1:01:29
But like any relationship in life, you don't know who's who until the shit hits the fan.
1:01:36
Friends, girlfriends, husbands, work, all these people, when things are good, everything's good.
1:01:47
But who's around and who's really real in there and a real partner, you don't know that until shit gets really bad.
1:01:59
And we had this partner that was a good partner all through good times.
1:02:05
And then, not only COVID, but that whole crazy woke era that happened when people were getting canceled and all that other shit, we had a company that literally was calling here every f****** five minutes, man.
1:02:22
And it started with, I posted a video supporting Trump on my social media.
1:02:30
And they called and they said, "You need to take that down."
1:02:33
And I said, "Are you out of your f****** mind?
1:02:37
Who the f*** are you to call me, and tell me who to vote for?
1:02:42
It's not coming down, and don't ever f****** call me, and tell me who to vote for again." Then they called again. Then they called again. Then they called again.
1:02:47
And then, basically, when our deal was up, one of the guys who worked there, who was sort of my day-to-day that I would talk to, and I like him still today.
1:03:03
Now, our deal's up, and we're shopping, and he calls me and says, "Hey, I'm in town.
1:03:08
Can I come by and see you?" I'm like, "Yeah."
1:03:11
So, he comes in my office, and he says, "Hey, man, I got to let you know, my board of directors is losing their patience with you."
1:03:18
And I go, "You guys got some f****** balls, man. I'll give you that. Have a seat."
1:03:24
We f****** sit down in my office, and I went through the whole thing.
1:03:27
And he says, "Dana, this is..."
1:03:31
You know, says the number of the deal.
1:03:33
And I said, "No, I understand, and here's what you can do.
1:03:37
Get back on your plane, take that number, roll it up into a tiny little ball, and shove it up your board's a**."
1:03:44
And then coming out of COVID, and that whole woke era, I was like, "I'm only going to be in business with people that I'm aligned with."
1:03:52
So, I didn't end up doing another deal with them.
1:03:54
- One of the keys to, I think, your longevity, and this is some of the best advice I've heard you give other entrepreneurs, is the fact that the first thing you have to do before anything else, you have to know yourself, right? - Yep.
1:04:03
- Figure out who the hell you are.
1:04:05
You clearly know who you are.
1:04:07
The second thing is then you got to know what you actually want to do.
1:04:10
And if you know who you are and what you want to do, then you just wake up, and you just get after that goal every single day.
1:04:17
The perfect example illustration of this is where I think, I don't doubt anything you said, when I heard somebody ask you, "Hey," let's say Lorenzo doesn't call you back after that, and says you are done.
1:04:28
You have to sell the company for seven or eight million.
1:04:30
And your response was like, "I'd get up the next day and figure it out, but I was going to be in this business.
1:04:35
There's no f****** plan B. I'm going to do this."
1:04:38
And I think that, knowing who you are, what you want to do, and you just do it every day, that's the key to having the longevity that you've had.
1:04:46
- Yeah, I've never thought about, if something doesn't work out, like, "Oh, no, I'm going to..."
1:04:54
I don't even think like that.
1:04:55
Never even crosses my mind that something's not going to work.
1:05:00
I just keep going until it does work.
1:05:01
- This is what all entrepreneurs think.
1:05:01
There was this viral moment between another podcaster and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, and he was asked a question, and he's like, "That's a loser premise."
1:05:11
Like, "I don't think like that," assuming I'm going to lose this market or not be able to beat these competitors.
1:05:15
Of course, he thinks like that.
1:05:16
He founded a four trillion dollar company that he's been running for 33 years.
1:05:20
You think he wakes up thinking he's going to lose? - No, it's true.
1:05:24
There's this Bruce Lee quote where he talks about, "Never say negative things about yourself or what you're working on or what you're doing, even if you're joking, because your body doesn't know the difference."
1:05:40
It's like this whole thing about...
1:05:43
And I saw Rogan talking about this thing when he was talking to some psychologist about, if you just sit around and talk about your f****** problems all the time, - I saw that clip too. - you never...
1:05:55
- It actually makes it worse. - Yeah. Which makes sense. - Yeah.
1:05:58
- It's like, I never take in any negativity.
1:05:58
I literally block, I call it noise, and I block all that noise out.
1:06:06
We're talking about these guys who report on what we're doing that have no clue what we're doing.
1:06:15
Why would I want to hear anything they would have to say? They're zeroes.
1:06:20
They've literally never done anything in their life, especially in this business.
1:06:27
Why would I listen to anything that they have to say?
1:06:30
- But you said something earlier. It's really important. This is all intuition. This is your gut. This is your instinct.
1:06:36
This is like you're the born entrepreneur.
1:06:37
I just did this episode on my other podcast, where I read...
1:06:41
Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote two autobiographies, wrote one when he was 76. That's interesting.
1:06:46
The more interesting one is the one he published in 1977 when he was 30 years old, okay?
1:06:50
It's called "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder."
1:06:52
But what recently popped to my mind, he literally talked about that.
1:06:55
There was 30 bodybuilders in the entire country when he started to become a body builder in Austria.
1:07:00
His parents think he's a f****** weirdo.
1:07:00
His friends think he's a weirdo.
1:07:02
He says, once you said something negative, he'd cut you out.
1:07:04
He would cut his parents out of his life. That was the negative.
1:07:08
"I don't want to hear any f****** negativity."
1:07:10
Then what he would do, - That's crazy.
1:07:10
he literally would write letters, right?
1:07:13
Say, "Arnold, you're going to be the best bodybuilder in the world."
1:07:17
Positive affirmations, and he'd hang them up everywhere, and he'd brain wash himself into this positive thinking that you were just talking about.
1:07:22
- I cut negative people out of my life so f****** fast, and it don't matter who you are.
1:07:28
- Listen, after this, you got to get connected to Todd Graves and just spend...
1:07:31
First of all, he's sponsoring the UFC.
1:07:32
He's got plenty of money to spend, so he could be a big partner for you, and he's spending money everywhere.
1:07:35
But he started that company, he's 23.
1:07:38
He used to live in a shitty apartment, right, behind the Raising Cane's.
1:07:41
He'd work all day, then go home, try to rest for a little bit, look out the window.
1:07:43
When the drive-through got backed up, he'd run back out.
1:07:45
This is some shit you would do.
1:07:48
When he's rich now, he buys the f****** apartment building, and then he redoes his apartment just exactly the way it was when he was 23 years old, but the entire f****** wall, he had printed out positive affirmations.
1:08:00
And he says stuff like, "A man of passion rides a mad horse."
1:08:03
That f****** sounds like you.
1:08:04
"Nothing ever happens until someone pursues a vision fanatically."
1:08:07
He was literally brainwashing himself.
1:08:09
It's in early 20s, that this will work. This has to work. There is no plan B.
1:08:14
- So, I'll sort of walk you through.
1:08:18
What you're saying, I mean, Lenee, right?
1:08:21
I mean, my office, the gym, the It's all the same shit that you just said as we go this way in the building.
1:08:28
It's exactly what I do, too.
1:08:30
I literally have all this shit on the walls every day that speaks to me and -Dude, thank you very much for doing this.
1:08:35
If you don't mind, I might harass you every six to 12 months if you want to run this back, and really just talk about entrepreneurship, talk about building the business. - Love it.
1:08:44
- You have so much genius I've been following you for a decade.
1:08:46
2016 is when I found the UFC because of Rogan's podcast.
1:08:49
He wouldn't shut up about it.
1:08:50
-Let me just tell you a quick Rogan story, and I've told some of this before, but think about this.
1:08:54
So, we buy the company, the company's based in New York.
1:08:57
I got to fly to New York, go in the offices, and me, alone, go through every f****** document, videotape, and everything in there to figure out what's coming to Vegas, and what I'm going to throw away.
1:09:08
So, the whole walls are f****** covered with tapes.
1:09:13
I have a VHS, and I'm literally popping tape after tape after tape after tape.
1:09:20
And then, Ivory Keenan Wayans had a talk show, and he's got Joe Rogan on.
1:09:26
And Joe Rogan starts talking about UFC and fighting, and at the time, he's doing "Fear Factor," which is a massive show on television, and it just f****** clicked with me.
1:09:37
I go, "This is the f****** guy I need right here.
1:09:39
I need him to do commentary.
1:09:43
He's educated on martial arts.
1:09:44
He's not afraid to talk about controversial shit. This is my guy."
1:09:50
So, I reach out to Rogan, and we hit it off immediately, and in Rogan's rise, he's gone through some shit personally, too.
1:10:02
You know, where I've had people call and say, "Hey," whether it's sponsors or whoever, "You got to do this to Rogan."
1:10:09
And I'm like, "Look, don't ever f****** call me.
1:10:14
Who the f*** are you to call me, and tell me who I'm going to fire or do whatever to?"
1:10:23
First of all, Joe Rogan did the first 12 fights for us for free. - Mm. - Right?
1:10:28
Then when you talk about technology, at the time, I flew all over the country, and I met with every sports editor at every newspaper because when we bought this company, newspaper was the king, and these guys were all 60-65 years old.
1:10:45
Ball and stick sports, and every once in a while, boxing will get a space in the paper.
1:10:50
There wasn't enough room, and these guys didn't get it and never got it, and I'm like, "Well, in the next five or six years, these guys will all be gone, and there'll be younger guys that come in who will get it more."
1:11:01
But what we had to do is radio was still very relevant.
1:11:07
So, you drop into these markets from the East Coast, all the way through the Midwest into the West Coast during drive time, and then do the same thing going home.
1:11:19
So, what we learned really early is that fighters are bad radio, okay?
1:11:23
They don't show up on time.
1:11:26
They sound like they're still f****** sleeping. The list goes on and on.
1:11:30
The only two that were really good at doing radio were me and Joe Rogan, right?
1:11:35
The problem with me is nobody knew who the f*** I was.
1:11:38
So, what we would do is, we would switch. I'd do UFC 30. Rogan would do UFC 31. I'd do UFC 32.
1:11:48
Rogan would do 33, and you'd have to get up at 3:00 in the morning.
1:11:53
We both lived on the West Coast.
1:11:55
We'd have to get up at 3:00 in the morning.
1:11:57
They'd drop us into the markets on the East Coast from 6:00 to whatever, and we would literally go all around the country doing the same interviews over and over and over.
1:12:07
And Rogan and I did this for years.
1:12:09
To actually explain to people how much Rogan has dedicated I mean, you said you heard about it on his podcast.
1:12:17
Has been a key instrumental part of this company and for anybody.
1:12:24
I don't give a f*** how much money you have sponsored or whatever. Yeah, no.
1:12:31
Nothing's happening to Joe Rogan. - Loyalty.
1:12:38
- Yes, which is the most important - Dana, thanks for doing this.
1:12:41
- thing in the world to me. That was awesome, man. Appreciate that. - No, pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, man.
1:12:44
- I hope you enjoyed this episode.
1:12:45
Please remember to subscribe wherever you'relistening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders.
1:12:50
For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work.
1:12:58
Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.