Watch: When Dana White vowed to give fans "the Superbowl of mixed martial arts" in his first public interview as UFC president

Dana White first became the president of the UFC in 2001. With White at the helm, the UFC became the premier MMA promotion we all know and love today.

In an interview with James Werme, during his first show as president at UFC 30, a young Dana White said that he planned to make the Ultimate Fighting Championship the Super Bowl of mixed martial arts:

"We have got a sell-out crowd here of five thousand people revved and ready to go... Basically what we want to do is we want to make this [UFC] the Super Bowl of mixed martial arts. We want to make it more fan-friendly, we want to get the crowd involved in it and we want to bring back the best fighters in the world."

According to a report by yahoo!sports, the live attendance of the event was estimated to be 3000 and the total paid gate racked up around $110,000.

The main event on the fight card was a light heavyweight title bout between Tito Ortiz and Evan Tanner. Ortiz retained his title via first-round knockout.

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How did Dana White become the president of the UFC?

As per a report by The Manual, Dana White became the president of the UFC after his friends, casino moguls Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, via Zuffa LLC, bought the UFC from Semaphore Entertainment in 2001 for $2 million.

During the Fertitta regimen, White reportedly owned 9% of the stakes in the MMA organization.

In a 2020 interview with SPORTSNET, White narrated the incidents that led to the Fertittas buying out the UFC. The 53-year-old stated that the MMA promotion was on the brink of bankruptcy when the trade happened:

"I was negotiating a deal at the time for Tito [Ortiz] and [Bob] Meyrowitz snapped in the middle of the negotiation and basically said, 'Listen, there’s no more money left. There is no money, there is no pay-per-view. I don't even know if there is going to be another show'... So I called Lorenzo and Frank, they were in Miami at the time and I said 'The UFC is in trouble, I think we can buy them and I think we should.' So that started the negotiations and couple months later we ended up owning the company."

Watch Dana White speak about the 2001 UFC acquisition below:

In 2016, Zuffa was bought out by a consortium of investors led by Endeavor Group (previously known as WME-IMG). Dana White was retained as the president of the promotion.