Former boxing champ Paulie Malignaggi has his opinions on the upcoming Dana White ‘tell all’ documentary on Netflix, and they’re not positive.
That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with Malignaggi, who has for years called MMA a dumb sport, MMA fans the dumbest combat sports fans, and Dana White a big fat Pillsbury Doughboy.
Malignaggi appeared on the mixed martial arts radar back in 2016 when Conor McGregor knocked him around in a sparring session leading up to the McGregor vs. Mayweather
fight. He called the situation a setup and a publicity stunt and has never forgiven anyone from the sport ever since. So he was dubious that the upcoming Netflix documentary on Dana White would be anything but another fake glaze job.
“Tell all about Dana White?” Malignaggi asked on the Ariel Helwani show. “You know, Netflix put out some pretty good bulls–t artist documentaries, but this one might be the best bulls–t artist one of all. Come on, bro. Is there any such thing as a real tell all about Dana White?”
“Let me put a couple of things out there that I’ve heard from the East Coast, okay?” he continued. “He was a Tae Bo instructor, so hopefully they go back in his Tae Bo career before he joined up with the Fertittas and got in the UFC. Busted ass that that he had with a couple of rich friends that got him in.”
“And then, after being a Tae Bo instructor, I heard he got chased out of Boston because he owed a few people money or had done some people wrong, some street people, and he got chased out of Boston and that’s how he wound up in Vegas.”
“They’re gonna do a tell all, I hope they at least go a little bit in-depth on these things,” Malignaggi said. “Because I’m just as curious as anybody else. But somehow, I got a feeling they’re probably not gonna go into those things. That’s why we shouldn’t call it a tell all. It’s bulls–t artist story and Dana White. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“How fast he ran out of Boston to get to Vegas? Was he fearing for his life? How good was his Tae Bo instructor career? You know? I heard he was in-depth with that Tae Bo stuff. Maybe he was on his way to becoming the next Billy Blanks and the Fertittas ended up changing history by bringing him over to Vegas and making him run the UFC.”
“I personally am curious and would love to know that kind of stuff,” Malignaggi concluded. “Like, the truth, not the bulls–t stuff we’re probably gonna get on the documentary. But it’s just me.”
White has spoken regularly about how he ran a gym in Boston and was chased out of the city by associates of gangster Whitey Bulger, who started demanding payments of $3000 to stay in business. Less discussed is just how deep White was into training Tae Bo classes. An old photo of White wearing a sweatband and running some sort of boxercize class is all we have to go on there, and White says it was part of legit classes for business professionals.
White does have skeletons in his closet that are not generally raised, and you could fill a rolodex with the names of people willing to share stories of the UFC president attempting to destroy them over reasons both big and petty. Will the Netflix tell-all really delve into Dana’s darker side? Or will it be another ride-along as White takes Vegas casinos for all they’ve got until they ban him from playing? We’ll have to wait and find out.
