For years, the image of Dana White as the ultimate hard-nosed dealmaker was part of what made the UFC feel like his personal empire. The idea that every contract, every negotiation, every move at the table had his fingerprints on it was almost mythological. That took a significant hit earlier this year, and now White seems eager to reframe what the courtroom forced him to say out loud.
Back in February, White took the stand at Nevada Federal District Court as the UFC found itself at the center of two ongoing antitrust lawsuits, Johnson v. Zuffa and Cirkunovs v. Zuffa.
According to sources, the cases were filed on behalf of athletes who had been active since July 1, 2017, following an earlier legal settlement in 2024 in which TKO paid out $375 million to athletes active between 2010 and 2017. With the spotlight fully on the organization’s inner workings, White was pressed on the specifics of how he spends his time running the company.
His answer was direct and, for many in the combat sports world, genuinely surprising.
“You won’t find one manager on this planet who will tell you I’ve negotiated a deal in I don’t know how long,” White said from the stand.
Under oath, the face of the UFC confirmed what had quietly been true for some time: the day-to-day business of signing and re-signing athletes has long since passed to others. Chief business officer Hunter Campbell carries the heaviest load, supported by Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard, who together oversee both negotiations and matchmaking.
The day after White’s testimony, Judge Richard Boulware pressed Campbell on the claim, seemingly skeptical that a CEO of White’s profile would be entirely removed from such a central function. Campbell did not back away from it.
“I run the business, and he runs the entire company,” Campbell said, adding that this division of responsibility has been in place since he rejoined the UFC in 2017, with White directing his energy toward company strategy and broadcast production.
For anyone who had watched the 2024 Roku documentary series Inside the UFC, Campbell’s confirmation was less of a revelation and more of a formal acknowledgment. The series gave audiences a rare look behind the curtain, and Campbell appeared repeatedly in scenes handling negotiations directly, including a memorable sequence in which Jon Jones’s championship bout against Stipe Miocic was verbally agreed upon in a parking lot.
What changed, then, is not the reality. What changed is how White is now choosing to talk about it.
By April, White had shifted his tone considerably. Speaking with Kevin Harvick and co-host Buxton on Speed, he offered a version of events that sounded far less like a court admission and far more like a lifestyle upgrade.
Harvick set the stage by sharing a story from his time running a sports agency, recalling that he personally sat in on the Miesha Tate contract renegotiation because of everything he had heard about White’s approach at the table.
“I heard all these horror stories about how hard it was to negotiate with you and how hard it was to deal with you,” Harvick said. “And I told Josh, who was managing the athletes, I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to go with you because I just heard how hard it was to deal with Dana and he could be tough and this and that.’ And we got done and it was probably one of the easiest negotiations and pleasant meetings as far as that setting that I have ever been to.”
Rather than push back on the reputation or clarify the record, White used the moment to explain his departure from that world in a way that made it sound entirely voluntary.
“Obviously it’s grown. I have completely removed myself from the negotiating part of contracts,” White said. “I got to a point where just this isn’t fun anymore, man. I’m lucky that I’m at a point in my life and in my career where I can just deal with the fun stuff that I like to do.”
The “fun stuff,” as White described it, is the personal side of managing athletes, something he says has defined the UFC’s culture from its earliest days as what he called a mom and pop operation.
“When we started this thing, it was like a mom and pop shop,” White said. “We were a small business and as we started to grow, the relationships that I had with like the Chuck Liddells and the Matt Hughes and guys like that from the early days right up to McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Cowboy, the list goes on and on.”
He described those relationships as extending well beyond competition, with athletes calling him directly when life got difficult. He also pointed to his boxing venture as proof that the same approach translates, noting that athletes there have responded enthusiastically to the infrastructure and personal attention.
“These boxers are like, ‘We’ve never been treated like this. We actually feel like real athletes,'” White said. “They’re like, ‘I feel like I play for the New England Patriots or something.’ We have a performance institute where they come in and everything is done for them. They train, the food, the supplements.”
