Dana White is bringing the UFC to the White House.
The news first broke courtesy of Donald Trump on July 3, who announced during a speech in Iowa that the U.S. will celebrate its 250th birthday with a fight card at the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800.
“We’d been texting about it all day, but none of us knew the president was going to mention it at the event in Iowa,” said White, who is UFC CEO. “Every Fourth of July, I go to my house up in Maine. So I was out there, and the moment President Trump said that, my phone started blowing up.”
White said he is meeting with Trump on Aug. 28 to begin officially planning the event.
“I’m laying out all the plans for the president,” said White. “We’ll see what he likes, what he doesn’t like, what he wants to add, what he wants to subtract. And people can doubt this all they want, but it’s coming. I love people telling me that what I’m doing is impossible. That’s what gets me up in the morning.”
Long before the UFC was a highly successful global enterprise, White began his career learning the fundamentals of the fight business in Boston.
“I went to go work for [boxing legend] Peter Welch in Southie,” said White. “I told him I wanted to learn everything about the fight business. When I said that I’d even work for free, his wife thought I was a fed. That’s how it all started.”
A quarter of a century ago, not many people shared White’s view that mixed martial arts could be a phenomenon, or even profitable. But with its new media rights deal – Paramount is spending $7.7 billion over the next seven years to become the exclusive home of the UFC in the United States – its future is secure. So it is only fitting that White now embarks on another new challenge: reconfiguring the complicated world of boxing.
Along with Saudi Arabia’s Turki Al-Sheikh, White is co-promoting the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford bout set to air on Netflix on Sept. 13. It is a perplexing endeavor, as pro boxing isn’t known for welcoming new competition.
“I’m excited about it,” said White, whose Zuffa Boxing plans to promote 12 events per year over the next five years. “This first one is so fun because it’s such a big fight – I keep calling it a once-in-a-lifetime fight. I like both guys, I love this fight, and I’m so lucky to do this.”
There are plenty of reasons to cast doubt over White’s boxing ambitions. The space is already too crowded, and it is built around a model that does not always incentivize fighters to put forward the best possible fight.
But White relishes a challenge. That has been a constant for decades ever since he left his job working as a bellhop at the Boston Harbor Hotel. There were many who thought leaving Boston for Las Vegas was a ridiculous notion. That would not be the first time White’s vision wasn’t embraced. In fact, it has been a common occurrence throughout his career.
Yet others’ opinions never crippled White’s confidence. On the contrary, it only served to embolden it.
“The UFC, we were the red-headed stepchild of sports,” said White. “Me and [former owners] the Fertittas, when we got into this thing, we believed it could be big everywhere all over the world. Thank God we were right.”
A long way removed from his first UFC office in a converted janitor’s closet, White is now the architect of the largest combat sports operation in the world. And he believes he is going to strike gold – again – with Zuffa Boxing.
“When we started, not a lot of people were big believers in the UFC,” said White. “Boxing had been king. We wanted to be bigger. That looked impossible. But nothing is impossible.”
A night after selling out UFC 319 in Chicago’s United Center, the UFC is now headed to Shanghai, Paris, and Perth for three of its next four events. White is excited to expand the UFC brand across the globe, and he is also eager to bring an event back to his hometown for the first time since 2023.
“We’ll definitely be back to Boston in ’26,” said White. “I love this city, and I’ll always love this city. I just went to dinner with [Celtics coach Joe] Mazzulla. I’m a Celtics fan, I’m a Patriots fan, I’m a Red Sox fan, I’m a Bruins fan – Boston will be my city to the day I die.”
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