MMAnytts amerikanske reporter Derek Bergey är just nu på plats i Boston för att ge er de senaste uppdateringarna kring UFC Fight Night 59 som går av stapeln senare inatt. Mediedagarna före en sån pass stor gala kan vara riktigt krävande, så här har Derek satt sig ner och funderat kring promotorn från Boston som lämnade hemstaden och sprang ut i öknen. Låter det luddigt? Kanske! Men det bjuds på lite trevlig söndagsläsning för er läsare i alla fall.
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Sometimes you can’t go home. When that happens, you simply become the President of a company of world-class terminators and then you can.
There has to be countless songs written about going home, it’s a topic that spans different languages, religions and time itself. Everyone who is far away and has been gone for some time, dreams of that place they all call home. Rarely, if ever are there times you can’t go back. Times where you broke that girls heart and her brother promised to break your jaw, times that you quit that job and they can’t wait to sue you. Times where that place you used to call home you burned that bridge and in the process you can never return. People don’t write songs about that, but when you are Dana White, he not only burned that bridge, he pissed on the fire. And he pissed gasoline.
Dana White comes from a Boston background. He was promoting fights before people knew that fights needed to be promoted. Most of us see a fight and run towards it to watch, but back before he was the curse word laced quick-witted genius that runs the UFC. He was a boy from the streets of Boston that still had hair and spoke with a Boston accent that was so thick the average person wouldn’t have been able to decipher what he was saying. If there were subtitles while he spoke they’d appear as, “Yeahhhhhh ???????????????? tough ????? bleep-bleep boxing.” In a stroke of horrible luck and good fortunate Dana White left Boston behind years ago, but not on his own terms.
Dana was promoting fights in Boston when a couple of people approached him about this guy or that guy not winning their next fight. This is a situation that people hear about but say, ”that doesn’t happen, the mob doesn’t exist”. I can tell you all with an absolute promise, the mob exist, it always has and it always will. If I were in the mood to get shot I could point them out in Los Angeles or Chicago. Unlike me, Dana wasn’t afraid of getting shot and so he didn’t throw that fight. Perhaps they let him slide with it once, but when Dana betrayed the mob again that night he got a message, whether it was a call or a letter stuck to a door with a bloody knife going through it I don’t know, but word around the small campfire of fighting is Dana got a message that said, “You fucked up. We are going to kill you.”
The following day, Dana emptied his office and drove towards the desert and away from the best clam chowder pronounced “chowda” a human can eat. The desert wind lured him away from home and the idea of staying alive kept him from coming back. He lost his accent and started managing small time fighters like Tito Ortiz who then became the big time fighter named The Huntington Beach Bad Boy, That set of balls mixed with meeting the Fertitta’s who bought the soon to be obsolete UFC changed everything. Dana and the Lorenzo started working out more and more and got chiseled out what have to be the largest arms in company CEO history then used those strong arms to strong arm an industry and take over in such a complete and effective manner that to this day business students around the world should be studying how they did it. But no matter how much you do and how far into the desert you run there are people still out there, still waiting for you to make it easier for them to get to you.
So Dana came home, but when he came home he didn’t come back to visit his old friends and eat lobster under the cover of darkness wearing a those glasses with a fake nose and mustache. Dana came back larger than life, with one of the most marketable fighters there is, that draws loyal Irish (some drunk) fans that will punch the first guy in a business suit/track jump suit they see. The group of people that are here to support McGregor love Dana for his discovery from Dublin. It brings them a long since feeling of pride that they forgot they had. Also, coming back to a city with a mob that wants you dead, it doesn’t hurt to have the protection of some of the greatest athlete’s in the world to go along with those crowds of loyal fans. If that weren’t enough, the bullet proof SUV and armed security guards made traveling a lot easier. It takes a certain set of balls to return home to a place where people threated to kill you. But balls are what make Dana, Dana. The brash talking, fast thinking Boston boy came home, and he returned as the king no longer afraid of what the people say there going to do, he came back as the king that allows them to stay alive.
Sometimes you can go home.
Written by Derek Bergey
