Dana White: savvy businessman or huge prick?

The other day Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke called Philadelphia Flyers defenceman Chris Pronger a “big mean bastard”. Everyone who knows hockey – including Pronger – took this as the ultimate compliment.

Dana White may not be big, but he can be a mean bastard. His detractors have other things to say about him and I think White would take them all as a compliment.

Not many people can get away with the things Dana White says. He lets his mouth go, almost unfiltered. Music manager Bruce Allen is the only other person I can think of who has been successful while being totally, brutally honest. And, of course, the aforementioned Brian Burke.

Actually, Dana White reminds me of a more friendly, jovial Brian Burke. Burke is surly and cantankerous and hates the media. White is friendly and affable and loves the media. Both of them will fuck you up if you get on their wrong side.

Like Burke, White stands up for his guys when it’s required. Unlike Burke though, White will also throw them off the train when he’s had enough of their bullshit. Well, Burke does the same thing, but he doesn’t do so publicly.

A while back White made the controversial decision to not re-sign middleweight veteran and former Pride champion Dan Henderson, coming off a three-fight win streak. Henderson then went to Strikeforce, where he was immediately given a title fight against Jake Shields. Shields annihilated him, making White’s decision to not re-sign Henderson seem all the more prescient.

After that fight, rumours began circulating that Shields’ contract was up and he would likely go to the UFC. Coupled with the appearance that Strikeforce was trying to replace him with Henderson, it’s not such an unlikely scenario. At the UFC Fan Expo on May 29, Dana White confirmed this. “I’m waitin’ for his contract to be up and then he’s mine,” adding “He doesn’t want to fight there…. Why would you want to fight there – period? Now they’ve already disrespected him … of course he’s comin’ to the UFC.”

White recently called out his middleweight champ Anderson Silva for putting on repeatedly boring fights. And he was also very quick on the trigger to release Kimbo Slice, a fighter he signed solely for the purpose of raising the ratings. The ratings may have gone up, but Slice was not a well-rounded fighter and did not improve, as other fighters who came in to the UFC with him had. He was let go because, despite the ratings boost, his fights were awful. Which shows a bit of integrity on White’s part in that he will admit Slice was there to boost the ratings, but not at any cost. He’d rather have low ratings and good fights than high ratings and bad fights.

One might wonder if you confronted the president of an mma organization and accused him of putting on fixed fights, would he get angry. Especially someone of Dana White’s temperament. Instead, he laughed. “If you think UFC fights are fixed, you have to be the biggest moron on planet Earth. Do you see what those guys look like when they get out of there? You gotta be outta your mind if you think UFC fights are fixed.”

MMAviewers.com is split right down the middle in our opinion of Dana White. Half of us love the guy and half of us absolutely hate the guy. What are the odds that the things we love about him are the same things we hate about him? For instance, I love that he is not afraid to speak his mind about anything. Some here would say he should just shut the fuck up. I guess I just respect someone who can get things done without cowtowing to a lot of bullshit and politics – not to mention political correctness, which is a gripe for another day….