Steven Bartlett’s reputation as one of the podcast world’s most meticulous interviewers took a hit this week after his sit-down with UFC CEO Dana White produced a moment that fellow combat sports commentator Ariel Helwani says went too far.
The flashpoint came during Bartlett’s ‘Diary of a CEO’ conversation with White, when the host reached for a prop that few expected to see on set: “Through a Mother’s Eyes, The Dana White Story,” the unauthorized 2011 biography written by White’s late mother, June White.
Bartlett handed the book directly to White on camera, prompting the UFC boss to admit he had never actually seen it in person before that moment.
Sports journalist Ariel Helwani did not think the gesture belonged in the interview at all. Breaking it down on his show, he described the setup Bartlett used to introduce the segment before delivering his verdict.
“He’s on today, Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO. ‘See Dana White, like you’ve never seen him before. All the same stories that we’ve heard,'” Helwani said. “And to be honest, can I just say this? While people say that, I’m not fair; I thought it was a pretty [ ] move to give him a copy of the book his mom wrote about him some 15 years ago. Dana’s well aware of the book. I felt like that was a classless move. Here’s the book. What do you have to say?”
June White’s book was never a flattering portrait. It cast her son as a “vindictive tyrant” and wandered into intimate territory, touching on his marriage, claims of infidelity, and the toll that fame and money took on him over the years.
White told Bartlett that, despite knowing the broad strokes thanks to his lawyers combing through it at the time of publication, he had genuinely never sat down and read the thing himself, let alone held a copy.
What bothered Helwani was not the material itself but the method. He argued that White’s relationship with his mother was fair game for a conversation, but physically presenting him with her book crossed into stagecraft that put a grieving family dynamic on display for effect.
“That’s it. At the end of the day, that’s his mom. That’s his mom,” Helwani said. “And I don’t know. I did not like that. I did not like that for him to sit there and look through it and say, Man, it’s the first time I touched the book or see it. Was that necessary? Just ask him the question if you wanted to ask him. Did not love that.”
Whatever discomfort the moment caused, it did open the door to White talking more candidly than usual about how things fell apart with his mother long before her passing in 2023. He traced the breaking point back to a roughly two-week trip to London, during which he barely checked his email. What greeted him on his return was a string of messages that grew sharper by the day.
“I was on a trip one time. I didn’t have emails and all that [ ] on the road,” White said. “We were in London for like two weeks, and when I got back, I checked my emails, and I had like a bunch of emails from her threatening me. ‘You have two options: you can give me this all upfront, or you can pay me in payments over the next [ ], whatever. I’m looking to buy a bar or whatever it was.’ And then she wasn’t getting responses because I was in London, and then the emails started getting nastier and nastier and nastier by the end, and I just blew up.”
That exchange, White said, marked the beginning of the end of their relationship. “That was the beginning of the end with me and her. Listen, sometimes family is the worst,” he said.
The UFC boss went on to share his philosophy on parenting and where he believes he came up short, or where others did, framing it in stark terms.
“We all fail at certain things in life. In my opinion, if you fail as a parent, it’s the ultimate failure,” White said.
He and his mother never spoke again before she passed in 2023, a silence that extended to his sister as well. “My mom passed away without me or my sister talking to her,” he said.
White was careful to note that forgiving her was not the same as rewriting history or pretending the relationship had been repaired. When Bartlett pressed on whether he had moved past it emotionally, White kept his answer measured, insisting he had no interest in using the platform to tear his mother down.
“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. But that’s one of the grossest, most disgusting things that you couldn’t even imagine possible until it happens to you.”
Much of his lingering frustration with the book he explained, had little to do with how it portrayed him personally. His bigger issue was with the people around him who got pulled into the narrative without having any real stake in the family’s dispute.
“It happened. You know, it is what it is. The thing that’s bad about that, and what she did, is a lot of other people, I think, she hurt in that book,” White said. “She didn’t hurt me, but other people. A lot of things that aren’t true, and a lot of people that didn’t do anything to her in that book.”
He also took issue with the inclusion of private photographs in the biography, a decision he felt his mother was never entitled to make unilaterally. “And then the, you know, the personal private pictures that she just threw out there that she really didn’t have the right to do,” White added. “It’s one of those things that when you become successful, this type of [ ] happens to you.”
