Dana White says the 2011 unauthorized biography his mother wrote about him traces back to a stack of threatening emails and a bar she wanted to buy. Speaking with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast, the UFC CEO said he got home from a roughly two-week trip to London with partner Lorenzo Fertitta and found messages from June White laying out terms: hand over the money in one lump sum or pay it off over time. “I’m looking to buy a bar or whatever it was,” White recalled her writing.
White said he was overseas and not answering, so the emails kept escalating, getting nastier and nastier until he finally blew up at her. “That was the beginning of the end with me and her,” he said.
The book, Dana White: King of MMA, ran 152 pages, according to MMA Mania, and was stuffed with unproven claims. Among them were allegations that White and his wife regularly got physical, that his infidelity put Tiger Woods to shame and that he had slept with his sister-in-law. White said he has never read it and knows what’s in it only because lawyers walked him through it. Bloody Elbow reported that the Bartlett sit-down was the first time he had actually seen a copy, 15 years after it was published. “I’ve actually never seen the book. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the book,” he said.
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White said the damage landed mostly on other people. “She didn’t hurt me, but other people,” he said, adding that the book contained a lot of things that weren’t true about people who had done nothing to her. He also took issue with personal private pictures he said she had no right to publish. His verdict on the whole thing: “That’s one of the grossest, most disgusting things that you couldn’t even imagine possible until it happens to you.”
The estrangement never got patched up. “My mom passed away without me or my sister talking to her,” White said. He revealed in a 2023 interview with Piers Morgan that both June and his father, Dana White Sr., had died sometime in the previous few years, and MMA Mania noted he said at the time, “I’m good with it.” His father was mostly absent, and June raised Dana and his sister Kelly on her own.
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That part he still gives her credit for. White, 57, described June moving the family from Boston to Las Vegas with two kids, a dog and a car, driving through the Midwest with tornadoes rolling in. “Me and my sister will talk about my mom and we’ll be like, ‘How the f*ck did she do it?’” he told Bartlett, per MMA Fighting. He said he and Kelly respect what she did, even after years of not speaking to her. He was also blunt about where the line sits for him: “In my opinion, if you fail as a parent, it’s the ultimate failure.”
The interview hit while White is also fielding complaints about UFC 332. Bloody Elbow reported his response to that criticism: “Not every card is going to be for you.”
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My take: I’ve listened to a lot of fight-world origin stories, and most of them get vaguer the harder you press. This one goes the other direction. The London trip, the two weeks offline, the unanswered emails, the escalation, the blowup. That’s a detailed timeline, and detail is usually what separates a recollection from a bit. The line I can’t shake is the payment plan. Upfront or installments. By White’s telling, even the shakedown came with financing.
