Dana White was in court testifying before Judge Richard Boulware in the Misha Cirkunov antitrust lawsuit against Zuffa. White spent several hours testifying on the whereabouts of his cell phone.
While the morning was mundane with exhaustive questioning about how many phones White had during the time of the lawsuit, the protocol for handing over his phone to legal and an assortment of other questions which did not provide much substance. White stated that he no longer negotiates fight contracts. Rather, a trio of Sean Shelby, Mick Maynard and Hunter Campbell handle the matchmaking and fight negotiations. White also testified that he does not look over contractual language in fight agreements. He leaves it to the lawyers so when asked about the arbitration clauses and class action waivers in the contracts, he stated that he has nothing to do with it.
Overall, the impression is that White has handed over most of the business duties to others during the relevant time in this lawsuit and is merely the “face” of the organization.
The purpose of the hearing today (and it continues tomorrow) is to determine if Zuffa has withheld or destroyed information that should have been turned over to the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Plaintiffs claim that Zuffa has documents (in the form of texts or social media accounts) that it has destroyed or deleted which were relevant to the lawsuit. Zuffa claims that they do not have any.
White testified (on redirect I believe) that in February 2025 they fired a “runner” (i.e., gopher) for stealing things. White did not remember his first name but his last name was Emmanuel. Yes, it is the son of Ari Emmanuel. White told the story that he sponsors a little league team in the midwest. The team won a tournament and sent White the ring they had won. The ring never showed up to White’s office. It turns out that Emmanuel stole the ring. Security looked into it more and discovered Emmanuel had stolen more items at the Zuffa offices. The relevancy of this story is that one of the issues is the disappearance of an iPhone 11 that White used. The inference from the story is that it could have been Emmanuel that took the phone although there is no solid evidence.
The hearing continues into Thursday with Tracy Long, who handled administration of the contracts, testifying.
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