Robin Peers

Dana White made $360 million because he refused to pay the Boston mob $2,500. Whitey Bulger’s crew gave him until 1 o’clock the next day. He didn’t have the money, so he did something else. In the video below, he tells the story himself. Early 1990s, South Boston. Dana is in his early 20s, teaching boxing classes to businessmen and housewives to pay the bills. One day two men walk into the middle of his class and say, “We need to talk to you.” He thinks they own the gym. They ask if he knows who they are. He doesn’t. He says one of them was Kevin Weeks, Whitey Bulger’s right-hand man. A few days later the call comes. $2,500 was like $25,000 to him back then, and he didn’t have it. That same day he bought a plane ticket to Las Vegas. In Vegas he teamed up with Lorenzo Fertitta, a guy he knew from high school. In 2001 the Fertittas bought a dying fight league for $2 million and made Dana president. The league was the UFC. In 2016 it sold for $4 billion, and Dana’s 9% was worth about $360 million. If he’d had $2,500 that night, he might still be teaching boxing in Boston. Would you have paid, or bought the ticket?