Dana White is opening up up about his contentious relationship with his mother.
In 2011, White’s mother June published a book titled Dana White, King of MMA, which was billed as an unauthorized biography about the UFC boss. June’s account included multiple personal attacks on White, who has rarely spoken about his mother; however, speaking to The Diary Of A CEO, White shared some of the backstory behind the family feud and the fallout from June’s words.
“I was on a trip one time, you know this was before—You know, I didn’t have e-mails and all that shit on the road, and I was with Lorenzo Fertitta, my partner, and we were in London for, like, two weeks,” White said. “And when I got back, I checked my e-mails, and I have a bunch of e-mails from [June] threatening me.
“‘You’re going to send me this much money. You have two options: You can give me this all upfront or you can pay me payments over the next f*cking whatever, I’m looking to buy a bar or whatever it was.’ She wasn’t getting responses because I was in London. Then the e-mails started getting nastier and nastier and nastier by the end and I just f*cking blew up and that was the beginning of the end with me and her.”
June raised White and his sister Kelly as a single mother due to White’s father Dana White Sr. being mostly absent from his children’s lives. Both June and Dana Sr. passed sometime in the past few years, White revealed in a 2023 interview with Piers Morgan.
Though White prefers not to dwell on the past, he admits that the accusations in his mother’s book affected him in the moment.
“I don’t go on shows to speak negatively about my mother,” White said. “I was telling you earlier, I wouldn’t change anything. People say, ‘Do you think you are who you are today because of your parents?’ Absolutely, 100 percent. You know, good, bad, whatever, however you want to look at it. My parents pass away, I don’t want to tell bad stories about my parents, but that’s one of the grossest, most disgusting things that you couldn’t even imagine possible until it happens to you. What are you going to do? You’re going to f*cking cry about it? ‘Oh, you don’t understand, my f*cking…’
“The thing that’s bad about that and what she did is a lot of other people, I think she hurt in that book. She didn’t hurt me, but other people that, you know, a lot of things that aren’t true and a lot of people that didn’t do anything to her in that book. I’ve never read it, but I’ve had lawyers tell me about it, shit like that, the personal private pictures that she just threw out there that she didn’t really have the right to do, it’s one of those things that when you become successful, this type of shit happens to you.”
White credits other friends and family for helping to shape him, though he made sure to praise June for everything she did for him and Kelly.
“Me and my sister will talk about my mom and we’ll be like, ‘How the f*ck did she do it?’” White said. “She was a single mom. My dad was what he was. Single mom, worked her ass off, did all this stuff, and she did it. She raised two kids. No matter all the bad things or whatever that happened, the book and all that, she raised two kids by herself and moved across country from Boston to Vegas with two kids and a dog and a car. We drove cross-country.
“I remember we were going through the midwest and there were tornadoes coming and shit, all the stuff that we did and we went through, she did it. She did it. By herself. My sister and I, even though we didn’t talk to her for years, we credit her and respect what she did.”
