On Friday, Plaintiffs in the Zuffa Antitrust Lawsuit filed their Opposition Brief to the company’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Of the multitude of exhibits filed in support of the brief are three exhibits with excerpts from the deposition of Dana White.
White’s deposition took place in August 2017 in Las Vegas.
Deposition of Dana White – V 1 by on Scribd
Deposition of Dana White – V 2 by on Scribd
Deposition of Dana White – V 3 by on Scribd
Some of the deposition excerpts came highlighted which correlates with some of the points made in the brief.
As one might imagine, a lot of ground was covered during White’s deposition. In the excerpts of the deposition that the public can view, the questions look at acquisitions of other organizations, his role as a fight promoter, contracts and other issues. The fighter attorneys played videos during White’s videotaped deposition in which they played excerpts of interviews where is being interviewed. The attorneys asked about the answers in the videos.
The deposition took place just a couple weeks prior to The Money Fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather there was some discussion about him being a boxing promoter in light of the matchup.
Some interesting tidbits:
There was some interesting testimony for White where he agrees with a 2013 interview where he said that other promotions were AAA (i.e., minor leagues) to the UFC. He affirmed this interview testimony as of 2017 (and likely today).
He gave a round-about answer to whether he was being truthful as a promoter. The inference was that there is puffery when promoting fights although he did not want to make it sound that he was outright lying. In this excerpt, he throws some shade at Bellator.
Dana White stated that he believed OneFC to be a grassroots promotion but has grown into a big-time organization. He testified that he gets question when in Asia whether the UFC is like OneFC. Perhaps with the news that Eddie Alvarez may be heading to OneFC, he might be correct.
Dana White is not a fan of Bloody Elbow. When asked about the web site, he asked if it was the web site that doesn’t interview people. He does not believe them to be credible.
When asked about distributions at the end of 2009, he did not really know the owners’ payout, of which he would receive a piece. He thought it was $305,000 but he was corrected by the attorney as he was informed it was $305 million. When he realized this, he stated, “Oh Awesome.”
When asked about how the company was paying for the contributions for which he was receiving millions, he stated he is the “fight genius” and the “promotion genius” but he did not know about the distributions.
Payout Perspective:
Certainly some of the more interesting subjects was likely redacted. White was prepared for the deposition and did not waver when pushed on some questions. In the testimony that we can see, he was careful on what he said and how he said it. Perhaps the “genius” comments may have been over the top but also may have related to something earlier in testimony.
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