Luke Thomas devoted a significant portion of his October 8 live chat to addressing Dana White’s appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast, specifically a question about White’s relationship with his parents and how that history should be viewed today.
Thomas began by recalling that White’s mother gave interviews years ago discussing her son’s character.
“You guys won’t remember this. I remember when his mom did a media cycle when she was still alive. I guess she has since passed, right? But when she was still alive, his mom did interviews with I think with maybe Jerry Millen, who was like a Pride figure. I could be wrong about that but she did interviews where… I think it was that book she was doing and other stuff where like she was on camera talking about how awful Dana was.”
Thomas admitted the situation left him conflicted at the time, in part because of how little outside verification existed for the claims being made.
“I felt very uncomfortable by it to be honest with you, because also in this world it’s like, dude, this is a weird world with weird people. You don’t know. Yeah, maybe he is a bad guy. Maybe she’s a bad guy or a bad person. You just don’t know what’s what. So I didn’t know what to make of it.”
He explained why the lack of corroboration made him hesitant to draw conclusions from her remarks.
“And part of the issue was to me it was like, oh, you know, he’s just a bad person or whatever. And without there being external corroboration for a lot of this stuff, I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Thomas then connected the mother’s described account directly to White’s marriage, noting that her characterization of the relationship as volatile appeared to align with what later became public.
“Like in that book, she talks about how her or she talks about how Dana and his wife, they had a violent relationship. And then sure enough, you see them exchanging. I know he hit her, but there was obviously an exchange, too, on that New Year’s Eve, and you’re like, ‘Holy [ ]. Well that one kind of came to life.'”
Looking back, Thomas described the period as disorienting, pointing to the climate surrounding MMA coverage at the time as a reason his reaction was more measured than alarmed.
“It was a weird time. I didn’t know what to make any of it. There was no independent corroboration and there were so many people trying to tear MMA down at that time. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was certainly alarmed by the allegations but I didn’t have a super strong reaction at the time, in part because of just pure confusion.”
