Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Soon after taking charge of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2001, Dana White had a big problem: nobody wanted to host his events. The cage fighting competition was under growing pressure from political heavyweights including the late Arizona senator John McCain, who derided it as \u201chuman cockfighting\u201d as he lobbied state governors to ban it.\u00a0But Donald Trump, who was looking to boost footfall at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, came to the rescue. The venue soon hosted two fight nights and the pair have been close ever since, as UFC began a 20-year journey to become one of the hottest properties in global sport.\u00a0\u201cI consider Donald Trump to be one of my very, very good friends,\u201d White told the Lex Fridman podcast last year. \u201cHe\u2019s the biggest\u2009fucking fight fan on the planet.\u201dThis week White agreed to join forces with another self-confessed fighting fanatic, Mark Zuckerberg, with the 55-year-old UFC boss appointed to the board of Meta as Silicon Valley looks to foster links to the incoming Trump administration.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta\u2019s board,\u201d said White, who once tried to organise a cage match between the Facebook founder and Elon Musk, another close Trump ally. \u201cI am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future.\u201dBorn in Connecticut, White moved to Las Vegas as a child after his mother, a nurse, was offered a job there. He dropped out of college twice, worked as a bouncer and then began training boxers at gyms and leading fitness classes in Boston. After being threatened by notorious local mob boss Whitey Bulger he moved back to Las Vegas, a city that suited his love of gambling (he once lost $3mn in a single night of cards).\u00a0Aged 28, the foul-mouthed and high octane White fell in love with mixed martial arts while learning ju-jitsu. His instructor was a UFC fighter and introduced him to fellow trainees Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. White would go on to manage the pair, who both became UFC champions.\u00a0\u00a0During a contract negotiation for one of his fighters, White realised UFC was running out of money and convinced the Fertita brothers, longtime friends and the wealthy owners of Station Casinos, to buy the struggling business for $2mn. He describes the early days as \u201cthe wild, wild west\u201d, with rival promoters sending him death threats and the global MMA scene riddled with corruption and crime.\u00a0But among the chaos was opportunity. White sees physical combat as an innate part of being human and those who have never been in a fight as divorced from the real world. He describes being pinned to the ground during a sparring bout as \u201cthe most humbling, mind-blowing experience, especially as a man\u201d. If two people start punching each other in the street, he believes, people are naturally drawn to watch, fascinated by raw violence.\u00a0Millions agree with him. Under his leadership, UFC has grown to become one of the most successful businesses in sport with billion-dollar TV deals and sellout shows around the globe. Shunned by the mainstream media during its early days, UFC was forced to be an early mover into streaming, helping it build a large online community. Its YouTube channel now has almost 20mn subscribers, while Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator, is now the world\u2019s top podcaster.\u00a0Along the way UFC has hoovered up rival competitions, expanded internationally and introduced women\u2019s matches.\u00a0The Fertitas sold to entertainment group Endeavor and a group of private equity firms in 2016 for $4bn. In 2023 the company was valued at $12bn when it merged with WWE to form New York-listed TKO. That year UFC reported revenue of $1.3bn.\u00a0Talks are under way over a new bumper TV deal with ESPN. White still runs UFC as president and CEO, and is also the owner of Power Slap, a televised contest in which participants slap each other in the face. \u201cOne simply cannot underestimate the force of Dana White. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it\u201d, TKO president Mark Shapiro told the Financial Times. \u201cTalent of all kinds just gravitate toward him.\u201dAs the UFC\u2019s bombastic frontman, White has cultivated a persona of being straight talking and unapologetic, with the occasional exception. After being filmed in 2023 slapping his wife of almost 30 years during an argument at a nightclub, he said there was \u201cnever any excuse for a guy to put his hands on a woman\u201d, and that \u201cwhatever people say\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. I deserve it\u201d. There have been calls for White to join the new administration in Washington. During his victory speech on election night, Trump personally thanked him for his support, labelling him a \u201ctough guy\u201d. But White has so far rejected the idea of going into \u201cthe dirtiest, scummiest thing on earth\u201d: politics.\u00a0\u00a0Key to UFC\u2019s success has been its structure. The company maintains a tight grip on hundreds of athlete contracts, allowing it to decide who fights who, in stark contrast to the highly fragmented world of boxing. UFC was also one of the first sports to see the importance of storytelling. Three years after the acquisition by the Fertita brothers, the business was still haemorrhaging money. The Ultimate Fighter, a popular reality TV show that followed MMA fighters living together in a house in Las Vegas, helped turn things around. The model of using behind-the-scenes documentaries to create stars and drama has been copied widely, to varying degrees of success, by the likes of Formula One, golf, and tennis.\u00a0When the pandemic shut sport down all over the world, White chose a different path. He opted not to sack a single employee or cut any salaries but instead focused on getting fights back up and running as soon as possible. The result was Fight Island, a venue built at a theme park in Abu Dhabi where UFC produced bouts starting in July 2020, initially behind closed doors.\u00a0During the pandemic White embraced \u201cbiohacking\u201d under the guidance of biologist and podcaster Gary Brecka, who he credits with changing his life by curing long-term ailments including sleep apnoea and leg pain. White, who also adopted a ketogenic diet, has become an evangelist for the \u201csuperhuman protocol\u201d, with a daily routine that includes lying on an electromagnetic mat, cold plunging, oxygen therapy and red light therapy, and has vowed never to see a doctor about his general health again. \u201cI feel like I am 25 years old\u201d, he said on a 2023 video posted to UFC\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Soon after taking charge of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2001, Dana White had a big problem: nobody wanted to host his events. The cage fighting competition was under growing pressure from political heavyweights including the late Arizona senator John McCain, who derided it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-159383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}