After buying the UFC for $2 million, Dana White discovered a tape of Joe Rogan passionately discussing MMA fighters while cleaning out the old offices, leading him to hire Rogan as the lead color commentator for the UFC.
Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, and Frank Fertitta took a leap of faith when they bought the UFC for $2 million. The product was failing, and they had a mountain of work to do. This included revamping the production for future broadcasts.
The sale closed in 2001. Dana White stepped up as the new UFC president, tasked with breathing life back into the promotion. He had to rebuild everything from scratch. His first task? Shutting down the old New York offices and moving the UFC to Las Vegas. This meant sifting through everything left by the previous owners.
Funny enough, this clean-up operation led to a significant hire. Joe Rogan joined the broadcast team as the lead color commentator. White shared this story on the Games with Names podcast. He said, “I jumped on a plane and flew out to New York and started cleaning out the old offices.”
White had to sort through boxes and boxes of stuff. He sent anything he thought was worth keeping to Vegas. “They had a VCR because they had f****** tapes for days. I must have watched 250, 300 tapes just to make sure it wasn’t anything [we needed].”
One of these tapes had The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show on it. Joe Rogan was a guest. White knew Rogan from Fear Factor. On the show, Rogan was talking about how tough UFC fighters were. He compared them to karate guys in movies. White thought, “This guy knows what he’s talking about. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s articulate.”
Before the company changed hands, Rogan had worked for the UFC. He was a backstage interviewer. White didn’t know this when he saw the video tape of Rogan. But once he did, he knew Rogan was the right fit for the broadcast team.
White reached out to Rogan. “At that time I think it was on the internet, I reached out to him and we started talking and I asked if he would like to work for us and be a commentator.”
The early years of the UFC under new ownership were tough. The organization was losing money like crazy. The Fertitta brothers kept pouring cash into the promotion, but the UFC was barely staying afloat.
It wasn’t until 2005, with the debut of The Ultimate Fighter, that things started to look up. But until then, everyone had to pitch in to keep the UFC alive. That included Rogan.
White remembers, “So if you look at where the UFC was at that time, we were losing money like crazy. We bought it for $2 million, which sounds like a great story now, we ended up being almost $40 million in the hole before we turned it around.”
Rogan did the first 12 or 13 shows for free. He was happy to do it and get the best seats in the house. Since then, Rogan has been a constant presence on UFC broadcasts. He’s still the lead color commentator on every major pay-per-view broadcast in the U.S.
White and Rogan have remained close friends. “I would do anything for Joe Rogan,” White said.