You know the athlete you hate when they’re on another team but love when they play for your team? That’s a pretty apt analogy for how UFC CEO Dana White feels about Vince McMahon.
White and McMahon are now co-workers, of course, since UFC and WWE were merged into one company as TKO by Endeavor. Prior to that, however, they were competitors of a sort; not in the same business but certainly competing for the entertainment dollar.
And as White told Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, during that time, McMahon was “an absolute savage” who would try sticking it to him just to do it. Yet now that they are working toward the common success of TKO, things have changed significantly.
“My history with Vince isn’t a good one,” said White. “He tried to f— me so many times for no reason whatsoever except just to f— me. But that’s in the past. Now that Vince and I are allies, no one’s been a better partner than Vince.”
White added that he’s spoken to McMahon on the phone a number of times since the TKO merger was finalized, and that their talks have been “all added-value” conversations that he feels benefit both UFC and WWE.
Despite the fact that White has been overseeing the biggest promotion in MMA and McMahon has been the unquestioned master of pro wrestling for decades, both men have been working from parts of the same playbook when it comes to event promotion — whether they’d admit it publicly or not.
Both are also the type you’d much rather have on your side (in a business sense, anyway) instead of trying to work to defeat, so it makes sense that they’d find each other valuable teammates. Plus as White probably knows, people backstabbing each other and later becoming allies is a staple of pro wrestling, so perhaps he can chalk this up to a case of life imitating art.