Dana White Shares the Thing He Won’t Do That Drives His Wife &$%@ing Crazy

Bill Maher welcomed Dana White to Club Random for their second meeting, even though Maher insists it’s their first. “We actually met at an HBO party many years ago,” the Ultimate Fighting Championship president recalls. This prompts a flat-out denial from the podcast host. “And whatever else I did that night—" he quips, [never happened either].

Watch the full Club Random interview here.

Picking up wherever they left off, Maher and White dispense with their political variances in a genial half-minute. For the big man behind UFC, it boils down to this: “I don’t judge anybody by their politics. That’s what this country is all about. I just don’t like douchebags. If you’re a negative sack of shit, you’re gone.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as saying I won’t judge people by their politics,” Maher adds, “because sometimes politics is an extension of morality.”

Political nuance aside, Maher is far more interested in how White went from being a latchkey kid in Vegas raised by a single mom who worked long hours as a nurse to a mega-successful MMA maestro. “When you were young, what did you think you were gonna be doing?” he asks.

“Exactly what I’m doing now,” White claims.

“When you were a kid??”

“When I was 19, I knew what I wanted to do,” says White. “I knew I wanted to be in the fight business. Because it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, or what language you speak. We all get fighting—and we like it.”

Regardless of what you want to do in life, White adds, the real fight is just to get it figured it out and then zero in on your passion—preferably before getting lost in a morass of college courses. This, of course, is an openhanded invitation for Maher to slug out his well-expressed feelings about how utterly pointless college is for most knowledge-challenged, future debt-riddled undergrads these days.

Speaking of feelings, White doesn’t want to talk about his. Like, ever. Not with friends. Not with interviewers—like Piers Morgan, who once sucker-punched him with unscripted questions about his buried feelings from childhood. Not with his spouse, who has tried.

“It drives her fucking crazy,” says White, who explains why manhood and the open expression of one's feelings are like Superman and kryptonite, at least if you're tending to the wellness of the octagon (see excerpt).

“There’s a dearth of men who act like men,” Maher sort-of agrees. “But that’s going too far. You may not want to talk about your feelings, but we talked about a lot of things tonight. I’m sure your feelings were injected into all of them, as they should be."

Nope, White tells Maher. That's not happening. Feelings bad. Being a man good.

“You’d like my friend a lot,” he tells Maher. “I should introduce you two—you're a lot alike.”

No, thanks, says Maher, explaining that this is precisely why they should never meet and probably would not get along well at all.

Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one-on-one, hour-long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t just about politics and Bill Maher and his guests talk about all of it.

Random Moment: "Just Be a Man"

Dana White: When you’re young, you never think about any of this shit. You change so much from 30 to 50.

Bill Maher: Don’t you wish you could go back and talk to that idiot—

White: Well…

Maher: Look, I smoked for 20 years. Don’t you think I’d like to go back to when I was 20 and tell myself, “I know you think this is making you cool right now…”

White: A hundred percent. I completely understand that one.

Maher: Did you smoke?

White: No. I never smoked, I never did drugs, and I drank moderately.

Maher: It’s not too late. I promise I won’t turn you into one of those ayahuasca boys asking about your feelings. I don’t give a fuck about your feelings.

White: Perfect. You and I can hang out a lot then, because I don’t ever wanna talk about my feelings with another dude.

Maher: You don’t mean that. That’s going too far.

White: No, it’s not. I’m that guy. It drives my wife fucking crazy. I do not wanna talk about my feelings.

Maher: You may not want to, but we talked about a lot of things tonight. I’m sure your feelings were injected into all of them, as they should be.

White: My feelings as far as what?? [laughter] I was doing an interview with whatsisname, and he starts diving into the whole relationship with my parents, right? “How did it feel to know that you never had the love of your parents like everyone else who grew up in a family?”—and all that shit.

Maher: Who said that?

White: He goes, “How does that make you feel?” I said, “Jesus, you sound like my fuckin’ wife.” She’d always say, “Do you wanna talk about your parents?” No, thanks. I’m good. I’m just one of those old-school guys that’s like, just do what you gotta fucking do. I have a family. I get up every day and go to work, and do what I have to do. No, I don’t give a shit about my feelings.

Maher: I’m basically on the same page.

White: Okay, good.

Maher: Just in the sense of women always wanting more out of you than you could ever give. I don’t say that in a snarky way. It’s just generally the way they are—thinking that there’s more to you, that you’re not quite giving it up, when it’s like, “Honey, I swear, we’re at the bottom of the barrel here. I wish there was more. I wish I was deeper. But we’re in the basement—and below that is public parking, and we don’t wanna go down there." That’s just our nature, although that certainly is changing with the younger generations.

White: It was Piers Morgan, by the way.

Maher: Oh, I love Piers.

White: He’s a good guy. But, yeah, you’ll see these dudes on social media, just talking about their bad day. And this happened and that happened—just shut the fuck up. Get up, go to work, do what you gotta do, be a fucking man. Just be a man.

Maher: There is such a dearth of men who act like men.

White: I try not to judge people on things, but I have a really hard time with that—with men who don’t act like men. That’s a big one for me. Handle your fucking business, make your family feel safe, and take care of them.

Maher: Well, I think we have our answer as to why I never had a wife and children.

[laughter]

White: No, we don't. We didn’t get to the bottom of that. You bobbed and weaved that one like [Joe] Frazier. There’s something deep inside of you, some reason why you don’t wanna get married and have kids. But that’s a deeper dive.