Dana White came under fire in early 2023 after he was caught on camera slapping his wife during an altercation at a Cabo San Lucas nightclub.
TMZ first released footage of the infamous incident which occurred during a New Year’s Eve party as 2022 came to an end and 2023 began. The short video of White assaulting his wife of 30+ years — Anne White — immediately sparked outrage among fighters and fans with many of them calling for him to be released from the promotion.
However, White faced little consequence for his actions as the UFC’s parent company, Endeavor, sought to sweep the whole thing under the rug as quickly as possible.
Dana White slapping his wife in a drunken altercation right before the launch of Dana White's Power Slap League
Here’s the video of Dana White and his wife trading slaps.
linkhttps://t.co/BrX0j1BAvj#ufc #mma pic.twitter.com/p7z1Krubww
— Britni Durham (@britni_durham) January 3, 2023
Looking back on the incident during an appearance on former ESPN anchor Sage Steele’s podcast, Dana White spoke about the impact that the video had on his children and how that in and of itself, was the biggest form of punishment he could endure.
“If you’re a racist, your kids know you’re a racist,” White told former ESPN anchor Sage Steele on her podcast. “If you do things like that to your wife, your kids know. The list goes on and on, nobody knows you better than your kids do. They lived it. They live in the house for 18 to 20 years and they see what they see. My kids know who I am. My kids know what I’m about. That’s the only f*cking thing that matters to me. When that situation happened, we had to deal with our kids. F*cking media, you think I give a sh*t what they f*cking think? They can all kiss my ass.
“My kids were the focus and the priority during that situation. Dana, my oldest, didn’t talk to us for like four days. We got through it with them, but at the end of the day, your kids know who you are.”
“That was the most important part of it,” White continued. “That was the only thing that mattered to me and my wife. Nobody wants to see their dumb, drunk parents slapping each other on TMZ, you know what I mean? It is what it is. It was bad, but it happened and it needed to be dealt with. When I was going out and talking about it publicly and you’ve got the media asking you about apologies, we apologized. We apologized to the people that we needed to apologize to — to our kids. That’s what we did” (h/t MMA Mania).
Zero Tolerance is a thing of the past in Dana White’s UFC
Once upon a time, the UFC used to have a zero-tolerance policy toward domestic violence with Thiago Silva and Will Chope being prime examples. White was even quoted as saying, “You don’t bounce back from putting your hands on a woman” in 2014 shortly after Silva’s release for allegedly threatening his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
Unfortunately, the days of there being zero tolerance for anything in the UFC are seemingly long gone.
“I made some decisions in my life that I could guarantee that would never happen again,” White said. “I made some decisions in my life and things I needed to fix with myself to make sure that never happens again. That will never happen again, no matter what. Me and my wife have known each other since eighth grade, we’ve been friends since eighth grade and we’ve been married for almost 30 years.
“It’s weird and I think about it all the time, that that situation would play out on New Year’s Eve, basically on stage, in front of however many people all with phones aimed right at me, and boom, here we are. It was crystal clear how and why it happened. I had to take a look at myself and say we need to fix this and this can never happen again.”