Dana White on getting through the incident with his wife in Mexico with his family

Dana White

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Dana White talks about the physical altercation he had with his wife on New Year’s Eve 2022 and how it most affected his children.

At the time, the UFC CEO was caught on video punching a woman in the face (he later confirmed it was his wife, Anne White) during a heated argument at a bar in Mexico. After the incident made headlines, he released a statement saying there were no excuses for his behavior, adding, “There is never an excuse for a man to touch a woman.”

More than a year later, White appeared in a recent episode of Club Shay Shay Podcast, where host Shannon Sharpe asked him how he got through the incident because “that has to be the hardest time you’ve ever been through in your life.”

He quickly replied, “It wasn’t that. That was COVID. Yes, COVID was much harder than that.”

“It wasn’t about making it public. It was about going through it personally with my kids,” White continued. “My wife and I are fine. … The kids had never seen this before. It happened on the world stage, we embarrassed them, you know. And no kid wants to see that crap with their parents.”

He explained that the situation had nothing to do with anyone except his family and that the people around him know his true character.

“Everyone else can go fuck themselves, OK. It had nothing to do with them. It was about my family. That’s what matters,” White said. “The people that know me and know her (his wife), know us and we’re OK. They were my kids. This was personal between me and my family.”

“People still talk about it and I would have an opinion on it too. I would have an opinion on it if I saw that, you know what I mean,” the businessman added. “If that had happened there on New Year’s Eve, basically on stage in a club in Mexico, that probably wouldn’t be the first rodeo, you know what I mean. I would say the same thing, but I know exactly who I am, my kids know who I am, my circle of people that I care about know who I am and that’s what was important to me.”

In his statement after the altercation, White noted that “a lot of alcohol” was involved in the incident and that something like this had “never happened before.”