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Dana White talks about the most pissed off he has ever been in his time with the UFC.
Dana White has been livid about a lot of things during his tenure with the UFC. From screaming at the MMA media, to negotiating with various fighters, to lawsuits, and outside troubles of their biggest stars in Jon Jones and Conor McGregor, White has seen and dealt with a lot of things during that time.
Interestingly enough, according to him, none of that surpassed the hatred he had for Tito Ortiz.
“That’s a tough one. I have to say the most pissed off I’ve ever been — everyone thinks at work I’m some f—king lunatic and I’m running around slapping people around,” White told Barstool Sports. “It was early days.
“You have to look at the time and the place that we were in. We’re burning money, we don’t know if this thing is going to keep going. I believe in this thing, that this thing could work. And I can say that nobody has pissed me off more than Tito Ortiz and the shit that he has pulled while he was here.”
Their issues were public and well documented, and White went on to bring up the planned boxing match with Ortiz in 2007. He reiterated that he would’ve badly beaten Ortiz up if it pushed through.
“I knew (I would win), and so did he. That’s why it didn’t happen,” White said.
“So Tito Ortiz was doing a new deal with us. Tito and I hated each other so bad, that Lorenzo Fertitta did this deal,” he shared. “Tito never had great hands. Tito was training with Fernando Vargas. He started to feel like his hands were getting in a good place. And we hated each other, so he told Lorenzo ‘the last thing I want in his deal is a three round boxing match with Dana. Three three-minute rounds.’ Lorenzo called me and I said ‘yes, tell him sign the deal.’”
White then claimed he had zero hesitation about facing a UFC star in a boxing ring as he sparred with Ortiz many times in the past.
“This wasn’t going to be the first time Tito and I boxed. (We boxed) many times,” he said. “As it started to get closer and I was training — at the time I was sparring with heavyweight pro boxers who were ranked in the top-10 — I was in f—king ridiculous shape and I was ready. I was going to whoop his ass in front of everybody.
“Let me make this very clear. If this was an MMA match, Tito would murder me. It would be the most horrific beating you’ve ever f—kng seen in your life. He would double leg me, smash me against the fence. Tito would literally put his f—king elbows through my skull. Just so we’re clear here.
“In a boxing match, I was going to f—k him up and make him look stupid. He knows that, and that’s why that fight never happened.”
White went on to say that the ship has sailed for him ever stepping inside the ring.
“I’m too f—king old,” he said. “If there’s one thing that we’ve learned over the last several years, there’s nothing fun about old men fighting each other. It doesn’t look good.”
For what it’s worth, Ortiz rematched Chuck Liddell on Golden Boy Promotion’s first — and likely only — venture into MMA, and he did admit that White was “right” about Oscar De La Hoya.