Dana White learned the hard way why drinking and gambling are a bad combination.
The UFC CEO has spoken plenty about his big wins at the high-stakes tables across Las Vegas, but on occasion, White has been known to take a pretty hard hit. In August, he reportedly lost $600,000 on a game of blackjack. For most, that would be a life-changing sum of money. But for White, it doesn’t even come close to his biggest loss.
“I would call this the biggest loss for many different reasons.” Dana White said during an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast. “You live and you learn in life, and you figure things out as you go along. So one night, I’m over at the Rio, and they got these big suites over there. So I go over there with some buddies and we’ve got one of those suites and we have dinner and start drinking. It starts to ramp up, I’m having a good time and I make my way down to the high-limit room and we start gambling.
“I’m continuing to drink, and having a blast. I end up leaving and going home that night, and I lost like $80,000. So I wake up the next morning, ‘F*ck those motherf*ckers got me for $80,000 last night’. So I’m at work the next day, and the host over there calls me… I told him, ‘Don’t get too comfortable with my $80,000, I’m coming back for it’. Dead f*cking silence on the other end of the phone. He’s like, ‘Dana, you lost three million dollars last night.’
“Like, what the f*ck are you talking about? I only have a million and a half credit line. He goes ‘You made us call the GM of the hotel and you started calling him a f*cking p*ssy.’ I went, ‘Yeah, that does sound like something I would do.’”
Dana White reveals his biggest gambling loss in 1 night pic.twitter.com/dHUmAp7MBh
— Best MMA Moments (@XcellentMMA) March 25, 2024
Dana White Learned a Very Expensive Lesson
White learned his lesson that night, vowing to never drink while gambling again.
“There’s been a lot of cases where people are in Vegas and they’re like, ‘Oh, I lost all this money, and they were giving me free drinks, and I drank too much, and I was taken advantage of.’ No, you stupid motherf*cker. Man up,” White said.
“You got f*cking drunk. The alcohol is free, but you don’t have to f*cking drink it. And, you know, this was a huge learning lesson for me. I never drank again when I was playing cards after that night.”
Of course, with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars, we suspect Dana White will be just fine.
Watch the full podcast episode below:
