By now, you’ve probably seen the infamous TMZ video of Dana White asserting that he wouldn’t allow women to fight in the UFC.
It was January 11, 2011, and the UFC boss was leaving a restaurant when he was approached by paparazzi. One of them blurted out the question: “When are we gonna see women in the UFC?”
“Never,” White responded, repeating himself before stepping into a black SUV. “Never.”
It was a weird assertion from White, which raised eyebrows for all the wrong reasons and understandably so. At the time, current Bellator president Scott Coker was doing big things with women’s MMA in Strikeforce with big names such as Gina Carano, Cris Cyborg, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, and a host of other female fighters. Why was White so adamant that women had no place in the octagon?
That was a question White answered directly to Rousey, the UFC Hall of Famer and former women’s bantamweight champion, on the latest episode of her ESPN+ series “Rowdy’s Places.”
“Everything in life is about timing,” White said. “When I was saying we’ll never have women in the UFC, I was having a hard enough time getting men fighting in a cage accepted let alone women. You approached me, and we had like a 45-minute conversation, and halfway through it I started going, ‘Oh my God, I think I’m gonna do this. And she’s definitely the one to do this with.”
Two years passed between that infamous TMZ video and Rousey, along with Liz Carmouche, becoming the first women to compete in the octagon on February 23, 2013 at UFC 157 after the promotion purchased Strikeforce and acquired its roster.
Rousey went on to six consecutive title defenses and became one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in UFC history. Suffice to say, White’s glad he changed his mind.
“There’s this thing that people have, you can’t put your finger on,” White told Rousey. “They just have it. And you had it.”
“I’ll see somebody like you, and I’ll say she has the potential to be huge, but you have to actually go out and do the work and become that,” White continued. “You know. You’ve been through the process. And you were probably the best ever at the process.
“You think about when we first met, and you walked around these things, and nobody knew you, to you couldn’t walk anywhere. You were so big, and it happened like that. We know the formula, and we know when we’ve got the person, but you have to have somebody that’s willing to become that person.”
