re: UFC 133: Tito Ortiz vs Rashad Evans

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A good deal of Dana’s power obviously comes from the extraordinary amount of money he has acquired in the last few years. When you have that much money, everyone wants to be your friend, your pal, your buddy, a member of your entourage. True friends are the ones that were there before the houses, cars, planes, fancy trips, and extravagant parties. True friends are the ones who would share a peanut butter sandwich with you when your refrigerator was empty and so were your pockets.

As early as when the UFC had just begun to turn around and the company was making a profit, I could see changes in Dana that bothered me. I would always tell him, “Keep your feet on the ground. Remember who you are and where you came from. Don’t let your head get so big you can’t fit through a doorway.”

He always responded the same way: “You do not have to ever worry about that.”

These negative changes in Dana became more and more noticeable. I kept hoping Dana would recognize that he was becoming a different person, that there seemed to be a correlation between his increasing wealth and his increasing unkindness to those around him. I thought he would take a step back and look at what it was he was doing to friends and family. As his mom, if anyone could or should say something, I felt it would be me. Indeed, most people take advice from their moms as constructive, at least as well intended. In an e-mail, I told my son that I wanted my old Dana back. I felt like aliens had abducted my Dana and replaced him with this other person I really did not know. I assumed he would at least think about what I had said and about what it was, he was doing, but his response was the furthest thing from stepping back and thinking about what I had just told him.

Dana immediately e-mailed me back: “Who the frick do you think you are, talking to me like that? No one talks to me that way.”

Of course, after the initial shock faded, I shot back, “I am your mother, that is who I am, and don’t you ever forget that. I am not one of your fighters or employees!” That was exactly my point in my initial email to him, that he was treating people as if they were less than deserving of common courtesy and respect.

His next response was not what I had expected either. It was a good thing for him I was on the east coast and he was in Las Vegas. I was so angered by his replies. My blood pressure had to be at stroke level. We did not speak for an extended period after that. This was the upshot of the changes in my son, and it seems to me partly due to a mythology that grew up around him and that he did nothing to correct. In fact, he seems to have helped spread these tales. It is time to set the record straight about who Dana White was and who he has become.

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It really sucks we have to wait over a month between cards. August 6th is still a long ways away.....

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