White continued in his role as president, and was given a stake in the new business. White owned 9% of the company at the time of the sale. In July 2016, Zuffa was sold to a consortium of investors led by WME-IMG for $4.025 billion. Over time, with White as president, the UFC developed into a highly successful business, and its gross revenue was $600 million in 2015. The previous owners had stripped the company's assets to avoid bankruptcy, so much so that the UFC.com website had been sold to a company named "User Friendly Computers". White said that when he and the Fertittas acquired the UFC, all they received was the brand name "UFC" and an old octagon. White was installed as the company's president. In January 2001, Lorenzo and his older brother Frank acquired the UFC for $2 million, which subsequently became a subsidiary of Zuffa. When White learned that Meyrowitz was looking to sell the UFC, he contacted childhood friend Lorenzo Fertitta, an executive and co-founder of Station Casinos, and former commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, to ask if he would be interested in acquiring the company. While working as a manager for Ortiz and Liddell, White met Bob Meyrowitz, the owner of Semaphore Entertainment Group, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It was in Lewis' practises, where he met Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell and ultimately became their manager. In Las Vegas, White continued running boxercise business and also began training ground game with Fertitta brothers under John Lewis. I literally hung up the phone, picked up the phone and called Delta and bought a ticket to Vegas." This went on for a while and one day I was at my place and I got a call and they said, 'You owe us the money tomorrow by 1 o'clock'. I'm sure he's very prominent in the movie, but yeah basically said I owed him some money, and I didn't pay him. It was like $2,500, which was like $25,000 to me back then, and said, 'You owe us money.' It was actually a guy named Kevin Weeks … he's Whitey's right-hand man. He claims he left Boston for Las Vegas after being threatened by mobster Whitey Bulger and his associate Kevin Weeks.
White spent many of his early years residing in Ware, Massachusetts. He started college twice, once at Quincy College and once at UMass Boston, but dropped out during his first semester each time. He began boxing at age 17, and graduated from Hermon High School in Maine in 1987. He and his sister, Kelly, were raised by their mother and her family for the majority of their childhoods. White was born in Manchester, Connecticut, to June and Dana White.
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