Dana White, King of MMA

we were all living in Boston, I went out to the Brimfield Fair, and while rummaging
through all the vendors items I came across a half dozen really great, old newspaper
articles about old time boxers, boxing matches, and an old magazine featuring a
boxer on the cover. I bought them and took them to an art store and had them all
matted and framed. I then placed them in a large box that had once contained a floor
lamp, one of those cheap, ugly black floor lamps. Dana came to my apartment
Christmas morning, and sees this big box with his name on it under the tree. I could
tell he had no clue what it could be. He always liked to guess what was in the boxes,
and he was usually good at it, but not this time. So not being able to figure out what
it was he couldn’t wait to open the present. He ripped open the wrapping paper,
excited about what it was he had gotten, and then he saw the picture on the side of
the box that showed the ugly floor lamp. The look on his face changed in a hurry. It
went from excitement to disappointment. Dana looked at me and said, “What the hell
is this?”
I told him, “I thought you needed a lamp in the living room in your apartment.
Don’t you want it?”
He realized he was being a bit of a jerk and said, “Oh no, this is fine.” The look
on his face had not changed. I told him to open the box and see how the lamp looked,
and I said that the lamp needed to be put together. Begrudgingly, he opened the box,
and at first he looked a little confused. Then he pulled out one of the framed
pictures. Now the look on his face changed once again, he was so excited when he
realized what it was: first, that his gift was about boxing, and second, that it was not
a floor lamp for his apartment. After that, Dana looked for boxing pictures and
magazines wherever he went, and so did I. Dana has developed quite a collection
now. Ali is Dana’s favorite fighter and a few years ago, Lorenzo gave Dana four
unbelievably beautiful, framed pictures of Ali.
Dana became good friends with Peter Welch, another Southie boy and the boxing
coach on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. Peter was a boxer in Southie and
had been a member of the Board of Directors of the McDonough Boxing Training
Center at the courthouse building on East Broadway. The local Southie paper did an
article on the gym and the work people had done to help save it: “The gym, which