The Tucker Carlson Show - December 12, 2023


Dana White

Topics
Abu Dhabi experiences
Hosted by
Tucker Carlson
Mentioned
Bud Light Sheldon Silver Dana White Shel Silverstein Gary Brecka Jared Leto Abu Dhabi Trump
Kid Rock John Daly

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

174.43

Word count

1,607

Sentence count

184

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dana White: "I'm happy to be an American. I love this country. I don't care what people say, I know what I stand for" UFC has been sanctioned in New York for seven years . UFC is now number one, number two, and number three all time at Madison Square Garden .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Backstage, Madison Square Garden, New York City, before the fights on the 30th anniversary of UFC with the man who runs it, Dana White.
00:00:17.860 Happy anniversary.
00:00:18.720 Thank you.
00:00:19.140 30 years?
00:00:19.780 Yep, 30 years tonight.
00:00:20.880 How many years in New York?
00:00:22.080 So we've been in New York, funny saying that, six years ago, 2016, seven years ago, we just got sanctioned in New York.
00:00:30.000 We couldn't get into New York for a long time, and it had nothing to do with the UFC.
00:00:33.600 It was about the culinary union, if you can believe that.
00:00:36.040 I can believe it.
00:00:36.700 Yeah.
00:00:37.080 The Fertittas were my partners in this back then, and the culinary union from Las Vegas was keeping us out of New York.
00:00:45.140 Remember that criminal, Sheldon Silver?
00:00:47.400 Very well.
00:00:47.940 Is it Shelly Silver?
00:00:48.420 Sheldon Silver?
00:00:48.820 Yeah, yeah. 0.99
00:00:49.660 He was blocking us from coming to New York, and apparently, I was the only guy in the world that knew this guy was a crook and a criminal. 0.51
00:00:56.520 Nobody here knew, but they ended up finding out.
00:00:58.920 Anyway, we get into New York, and tonight, as we sit here tonight, we're going to do a $12.2 million gate.
00:01:06.880 We are number one, number two, and number three all time at Madison Square Garden in just seven years.
00:01:13.260 That's unbelievable.
00:01:14.500 It's awesome.
00:01:15.020 So, I'm just going to ask you right off the top.
00:01:17.980 Bud Light, you were in partnership with them, then you went to Modelo.
00:01:21.380 Now, you're back in partnership with Bud Light.
00:01:23.340 That suggests to me that Bud Light is improving?
00:01:25.760 Yeah, listen, Bud Light, you know, I'm getting to this point in my life and in my career where I want to be with people and sponsors that I am aligned with, which makes sense in this crazy world that we live in these days.
00:01:40.280 And, let me tell you what, if you consider yourself a patriot, right, you're a patriot, you should be drinking gallons of Bud Light.
00:01:48.480 Believe me when I tell you.
00:01:49.760 Wait, wait, wait.
00:01:50.420 I should be boycotting Bud Light.
00:01:53.440 Gallons of Bud Light.
00:01:54.640 You should have Bud Light drums stacked up in your garage and drinking it right out of the keg.
00:02:00.120 They are way more aligned with you than most of these other beer companies are.
00:02:04.480 That I guarantee you.
00:02:05.620 Take it from somebody who's in the know, who does business with beer companies.
00:02:10.380 You are way more aligned with Bud Light than you are with any other beer company.
00:02:14.020 So, I'm assuming, I mean, they didn't come into partnership with you by accident.
00:02:16.540 No.
00:02:17.260 Obviously.
00:02:17.800 We had multiple bidders on the table.
00:02:19.360 Did they seek you out?
00:02:20.740 We had multiple bidders on the table.
00:02:22.520 They were one of them.
00:02:23.280 And, as I, you know, history has shown me with relationships that I've had with other beer companies, I, who lean more this way, I, who consider myself a patriot, I don't go crazy over the whole patriot thing, but I consider myself a proud American.
00:02:39.620 I'm happy to be an American.
00:02:40.660 I love this country.
00:02:41.880 And, you are way more aligned with Anheuser-Busch than you are with other beer companies.
00:02:47.200 That I guarantee you. 0.99
00:02:48.220 Have you taken any crap for it? 0.96
00:02:50.400 Listen, people are going to say what they're going to say. 0.93
00:02:52.100 I don't ever, I don't care what people, I know who I am, I know what I stand for, I know what I believe in, and the people who are close to me know, and I'm on the right side of this.
00:03:03.880 Believe me when I tell you.
00:03:05.380 Interesting.
00:03:06.740 The flags in the octagon, where are you on that and why?
00:03:10.720 I'm back.
00:03:11.380 I mean, we brought them back.
00:03:12.660 The problem is, is what you don't want to have.
00:03:14.380 So, this is the fighters bringing their national flags into the arena.
00:03:17.020 We're a global business.
00:03:18.140 Yeah.
00:03:18.360 Okay?
00:03:18.820 And, I try to respect everybody's freedom of speech, freedom of choice, etc., etc.
00:03:28.720 When you walk in, you should be proud of the country you live in.
00:03:32.300 Everybody who lives in America should walk in with an American flag.
00:03:34.700 Yeah.
00:03:34.960 Should love your country, should be proud of your country.
00:03:36.640 The sad part is, most of these people from other countries are the people who are most proud of where they're from, and not us here.
00:03:43.520 So, it became an issue with some of the guys.
00:03:46.240 They want to come in and they want to bring their flags, like Mexicans. 0.99
00:03:49.020 Who are more proud to be Mexican than Mexicans, you know what I mean?
00:03:52.040 They carry their flags, you know, their people support their people, the UK.
00:03:56.200 Their people support their people like Mexicans support their people.
00:03:59.280 And, you should be able to walk in with your country's flag.
00:04:03.100 So, I brought it back.
00:04:04.580 Were you under pressure not to allow it?
00:04:06.940 There's always, you know, when you deal with, you know, you know.
00:04:11.140 When you deal with some of these woke lunatics that are out there, you know, people have problems with some people's flags.
00:04:21.000 And, I don't, so. 0.89
00:04:22.820 You don't care?
00:04:23.480 I don't care.
00:04:24.080 Doesn't matter what the flag is?
00:04:25.200 I don't care.
00:04:26.460 As long as you're from there, you get your flag. 0.97
00:04:27.760 If you're from there, you should be able to support where you're from, 100%.
00:04:31.220 What's wrong with that?
00:04:32.480 No matter what other people's feelings are.
00:04:34.900 It's the same thing that I went through with Russia. 0.88
00:04:37.980 We have lots of Russians who fight here.
00:04:40.080 Yeah.
00:04:40.240 We're not.
00:04:40.640 They fight well, too.
00:04:41.640 They are a part of this company.
00:04:45.920 You know, we have signed them.
00:04:47.880 I'm not going to not let them compete, not let them fight because they're from Russia. 1.00
00:04:51.660 Of course they can compete.
00:04:52.460 Absolutely.
00:04:53.920 They can come here, fight, and support their families.
00:04:57.820 Yeah.
00:04:58.180 Yeah.
00:04:58.580 So they're not responsible for the foreign policy of the government they live under.
00:05:02.000 Well said.
00:05:02.900 Yeah.
00:05:03.200 And we're not either.
00:05:04.760 Exactly.
00:05:05.800 100%.
00:05:06.400 So you've talked up Abu Dhabi, this tiny little emirate in the Persian Gulf, for a long time.
00:05:14.680 Why Abu Dhabi?
00:05:16.360 I love everything about it.
00:05:18.340 These guys are forward thinkers, open-minded.
00:05:23.220 The infrastructure that they have built in that incredible city.
00:05:27.340 And I tell people all the time, if you have never been to a fight in Abu Dhabi, you have to come experience this place.
00:05:34.260 And when COVID hit, these guys were light years ahead of everyone else when it came to COVID.
00:05:39.680 Testing, the whole thing.
00:05:41.000 And that's where we created Fight Island and where we ran through COVID was with them.
00:05:45.900 And because they're so progressive and brilliant.
00:05:50.300 They're brilliant.
00:05:50.880 You're calling a theocracy progressive.
00:05:54.560 It's a monarchy, right?
00:05:56.260 Very progressive.
00:05:57.400 You don't feel that way when you go there.
00:05:59.700 It's not.
00:06:00.760 What's funny is because of the things that we hear about the Middle East here in America and have our whole lives, people are afraid to go there.
00:06:08.160 People are scared.
00:06:10.460 Never felt safer anywhere than I felt when I'm in Abu Dhabi.
00:06:14.420 They don't have a crime problem in Abu Dhabi?
00:06:15.480 No, they do not have a crime problem.
00:06:17.320 They don't have a crime problem.
00:06:18.560 They deal with crime the way crime should be dealt with.
00:06:21.300 Yeah.
00:06:21.700 Crime isn't a problem over there.
00:06:22.940 Slift and certain.
00:06:23.820 And the royal family over there are some of the most humble, brilliant, amazing human beings you could possibly meet.
00:06:33.460 I love those people.
00:06:35.160 I consider them all very, very close friends of mine.
00:06:38.820 I agree with that, for the record.
00:06:40.860 They are humble and they're forward thinking.
00:06:43.860 They're not just thinking about next elections.
00:06:45.760 100%.
00:06:46.120 They're incredible.
00:06:47.640 But, you know, when you were 23, did you ever think we'd get to a place where you felt freer in Abu Dhabi than in other places?
00:06:56.360 No.
00:06:57.380 Well, I was 23.
00:06:58.400 That was the last thing I was thinking about anyway.
00:07:00.500 But, yeah, no.
00:07:02.480 It's been a cool experience for me to create the relationship that I've created over there.
00:07:08.200 And I value it very much.
00:07:11.740 These people will be my close friends until the day I die.
00:07:17.160 And I will do business with them until the day I die.
00:07:19.620 We just did an extension on our deal over there.
00:07:21.900 We might as well have done the extension for the next 40 years because I'm never not going to do business with Abu Dhabi. 0.98
00:07:29.300 Ever.
00:07:30.560 So it feels like the future to you.
00:07:32.140 When you – oh, it's definitely the future.
00:07:34.280 And the other thing is I'm one of these guys that I'm a very loyal person.
00:07:37.960 And once we've done things together and you've been good to me, I will pay you back, you know, 20 times.
00:07:44.540 So what Abu Dhabi has done for me, my business, especially through COVID, I'll never forget.
00:07:52.220 And I will be with them until the day I die.
00:07:55.500 Who's coming tonight?
00:07:57.700 We got President Trump will be here tonight.
00:08:02.060 We have – you're coming.
00:08:04.460 You're sticking around for the fight tonight.
00:08:07.100 Bongino will be here tonight.
00:08:09.400 Gary Breka, my guy who I'm going to introduce you to, who's going to change your life, will be here tonight.
00:08:14.540 We have – Jared Leto will be here tonight.
00:08:19.280 Kid Rock is coming tonight.
00:08:21.880 And many, many more.
00:08:23.640 Amazing.
00:08:24.220 Dana White, congratulations on 30 years.
00:08:25.920 Thanks.
00:08:26.280 It's great to see you.
00:08:26.840 Thanks for coming.
00:08:27.520 Thank you.
00:08:28.080 I'm psyched.
00:08:28.820 Me too.
00:08:29.120 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:32.680 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:35.320 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:39.440 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:40.440 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:42.440 I'm a man, you better.
00:08:44.540 I'm a man, you better.
00:09:12.200 I'm a man, you better.