Dana White, King of MMA

On page two of the Boston Sunday Globe on April 26, 2006 in “Personality
Parade,” which is an opportunity for people to send in questions about movie stars
and sports icons, a reader asked, “What is your opinion of the Ultimate Fighting
Championship bouts that are becoming the favorite blood sport in Las Vegas and on
TV?” The answer to the question was, “We agree with Sen. John McCain, who called
that type of sport ‘a human cockfight.’ It should be banned.” After five years of
attempting to change people’s perception, Dana, the UFC, and the fighters are still
viewed by many as part of a brutal, uncivilized sport.
When the UFC began selling DVDs of their fights, the UFC was still struggling.
Dana called and asked me to do him a favor. He asked me to make the rounds of the
different stores that sell DVDs in Boston and note whether they were carrying the
UFC’s fight DVDs. If the stores carried them, he wanted me to make sure they were
somewhere in the front of the store where everyone would see them. The next day I
went to six stores in Boston, my first stop at the Copley Place Mall. Initially, I could
not find the DVD, but after about five minutes of searching, I found one UFC DVD in
the sports section buried behind about ten other sports DVDs. I took the DVD to the
front of the store where they had a rack with new releases, and acted like I was
interested in buying something in the rack, I placed the UFC DVD in the front where it
could be seen. Of the six stores I went to, only one did not have the DVD, and at
every store I found it in, I moved them to the new release rack at the front of the
store.
Dana called that night, and I told him that only one out of the six stores did not
have the DVD. He said he would look into that store, and he asked me to check the
same stores the next day to see if the DVD was still there or if it was sold. The next
day at the first store, the DVD was not where I had put it; but just to make sure it had
sold, I checked the sports section where I had found it the day before. I found it
there, and once again, I moved the DVD to the new release rack in the front of the
store. I did the same thing in all the other stores.
Dana again asked if the DVDs were still there. I told him they were and what I had
done. Dana asked that I repeat what I had done in a few days, and he asked me to go
to a few new stores as well. A few days later, I did as he asked. The next time we