UFC president Dana White has been involved in the fight game for the best part of 40 years.
The veteran promoter’s journey in combat sports began at the age of 17 when he took up boxing after befriending former Golden Gloves champion Peter Welch.
UFC president Dana White has been involved in fighting for over 30 yearsGETTY
GettyWhite was installed as the president of mixed martial arts top promotion in 2001[/caption]
BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUSThe 53-year-old had his fair share of fights as a young kid[/caption]
White, however, opted against pursuing the Sweet Science as a career after seeing a punch-drunk boxer and turned his hand to management and eventually fight promotion.
The UFC supremo’s decision not to take punches to the face for a living ultimately proved to be a wise one as it put him on a path to becoming one of the greatest fight promoters in the history of combat sports.
But like most boys growing up, White – who was born in Manchester, Connecticut and spent many of his early years in Ware, Massachusetts – found himself in his fair share of scrapes as a young kid.
When asked about his first-ever fight, the 53-year-old recalled to with SunSport: “God, I was probably [young when I had my first-ever fight].”
White’s consumption of god knows how many fights over the years, in conjunction with those he had as a kid, prompted a request for clarity.
He asked: “[Are] you talking street fighting or you talking fighting, fighting?
“Organised fighting?”
It didn’t take long, however, for him to recall what many would deem to be a harrowing incident with his neighbors when he was a child.
UFC president Dana White was hit in the face with a shovel in his first-ever fight
And it’s forever ingrained as one of his earliest memories of fighting in general.
The Powerslap founder said: “I was really young [when I got into my first fight]
“I got in my first fight with these two twins who lived next door to me.
“And one of them hit me in the face with a snow shovel.”
Under White’s stewardship, the UFC has become a household name across the globe – so much so that the promotion is often mistaken for the sport of mixed martial arts itself.
The once-struggling fight league was sold for a whopping $4BILLION in the summer of 2016 and has continued to go from strength to strength.
It was revealed in April that the UFC generated a staggering $1billion in revenue in 2023.
And mixed martial arts’ premier promotion was recently valued at a jaw-dropping $12.1billion – a figure White could never have imagined when he became president all the way back in 2001.