TLDR
In a new Time profile, UFC chief Dana White defends his loyalty to Donald Trump, promotes a hard-edged view of masculinity, and gushes over Mark Zuckerberg, even as an old nightclub video still shadows his image.
On the cover of Time, Dana White is not selling a fight card. He is selling a worldview. The longtime UFC president opens up about politics, power, and what he calls “unapologetically masculine” values, with his legacy now tied to some of the most polarizing men in America.
White tells Time he ignored intense pressure from his own circle when Donald Trump asked him to speak at the Republican National Convention in 2016. The two men go back to the early 2000s, when Trump hosted a fledgling UFC event at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. According to White, friends begged him to walk away from the RNC spotlight.
“Everybody said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” he recalls. Advisors warned him it was not just about avoiding politics. White says the message was that Trump would never win. He went anyway. “Whether he wins or not, the guy’s been a good friend to me.”
That loyalty now extends to a planned UFC event at the White House, something few could have imagined when mixed martial arts was still fighting for mainstream respect. For White, lining the UFC brand up with the presidency and with Trump himself reinforces an image he has been building for decades, one that mixes business bravado, political edge, and personal allegiance.
The profile also dives into how White sees manhood, and it is here that the tone shifts from promotional to combustible. He calls himself “unapologetically masculine” and pushes back hard on open discussions of male mental health. “Talking about it publicly, I just feel like it opens the door to make young men think that it’s OK to just [expletive] go, ‘Oh, I’m having mental [health issues],'” he says. His advice is blunt. “Handle it behind closed doors. Don’t show that weakness to anybody.”
On the phrase “toxic masculinity,” White waves it away. “What is toxic masculinity? Who has it? Who’s too masculine? There’s a difference between being a jerk and being masculine.” He adds, “There’s nothing I hate worse than men that don’t act like men, so if that puts me in the manosphere, then I guess I’m in.”
At the same time, White sits on Meta’s board, where his admiration for Mark Zuckerberg might surprise fans who remember the tech boss as a hoodie-wearing coder. Time reports that White ranks Zuckerberg in the same “alpha” tier as Trump, investor Carl Icahn, and Michael Jordan. “What I didn’t realize about Mark until I got on the board,” White says, “is Zuckerberg might be one of the biggest killers in the history of killers.” It is his highest form of praise, casting the billionaire as a ruthless competitor in a way that mirrors how White wants to be seen himself.
The profile does not ignore the night in Cabo San Lucas when White was filmed slapping his wife, Anne, in a nightclub on New Year’s Eve in 2022. The video showed the couple arguing, Anne striking him first, then White slapping her before bystanders intervened. In the aftermath, he issued a public apology and said there was “no excuse” for what happened.
Looking back on the Time interview, White says, “It is just one of those things where you have to look at yourself, blame nobody but you.” He describes replaying the incident in his mind with a single question: “How did that happen? And how do we make sure that never happens again?”
For a man who says he cannot stand “weakness,” the collision between that nightclub video, his White House ambitions, and his unapologetic rhetoric about men creates a complicated portrait. The Time cover offers White the chance to define his own story. Whether audiences accept it, especially those who saw that footage from Cabo, is another fight entirely.
Do White’s comments on loyalty, masculinity, and power make you see him differently, or do they simply confirm the persona he has projected for years?
