Dana White: The mob changed my life

and so you wanted to be a boxer but I think it was around 20 years old or a fighter and I think it was around 20 years old you realized this just wasn't going to be your career path so you end up teaching boxercise classes in boston to some of the locals up until the crew of notorious fame mobster Whitey Bulger pay you a visit tell me about how that was kind of a turning point for you well the way that it worked was what happened was yes I got involved with boxing and there's a guy named Peter Welsh in Boston that I was partners with a local fighter there and what we did was we started this get kids off the street program basically it was called the Muni which was the municipal courthouse in Southie and Peter and I did a deal with the city where we got the space underneath the courthouse which was all this this whole concrete area we put a ring in there there were bags and everything else and what we used to do was we used to bring kids in off the streets and Boston is very segregated especially back then you're talking you know back in the late 80s and we used to bring kids in from all the different areas to come in in box and we wanted these kids to to sort of get to meet each other and respect each other through boxing well it's great and it's a you know it's a great thing to do for the kids but you don't make much money doing it was you know it was a charity thing that we had done so to pay the bills we used to bring in businessmen housewives whoever it was and train them to box and it was basically we were like personal trainers but you did boxing and then through that we started going out into the health clubs and teaching in the health clubs and our classes became huge all throughout Boston and while we were doing this some people realized that I was actually teaching in I can't remember what it was called but it's in the Boston Athletic Club and the Boston Athletic Club which is in South Boston and one day I'm actually in there teaching class and these guys literally walk right into the middle of the class so we need to talk to like I'm teaching a classic we need to talk to I'm thinking these guys own the club or something so I leave the class I'd go out and start talking them and they start asking me if I know who they are and I don't so it's not whitey but it was Kevin I'm sure you've heard of Kevin weeks it was Kevin weeks and that was that man they wanted some money and they walked away that day I was thinking man these I don't even want to know these guys so and you were somebody who was willing to pick a fight with somebody if need be but this was kind of old knot you'd have to be brain-dead to pick a fight with these guys you know that back in those days when I lived in Southie I mean the whole whitey bulger thing was huge but it was like I lived in Southie and you know a lot of people I'm sure that dealt with whitey and all that kind of stuff I wasn't one of those people I lived there I never saw any of that stuff you heard about stuff but I had never seen any of that this was the first time that any of this had ever been anywhere close to me what'd he do I ignored I didn't do anything you know I wasn't going out of my way to try to bump into him again or or to do anything else and then one day I was sitting in my apartment and I got a phone call and they basically told me we want the money and I said I don't have the money it was $2,500 which was like 25,000 to me in those days you know what I mean right and they said well get it from your girlfriend she doesn't have it well get it from somebody like yeah well you got till tomorrow you got till tomorrow which was a Sunday the next day was going to be a Sunday you got till tomorrow one o'clock to give us the money what do you think was going to happen no it's not nothing good nothing good was going to happen at 1:00 o'clock so I literally that day I bought a plane ticket and came back to Vegas

Channel: Graham Bensinger

Views: 3,071,064

Keywords: Dana White mob, Dana White Whitey Bulger, In Depth With Graham Bensinger, Dana White profile, Graham Bensinger, whitey bulger mob, whitey bulger, Dana White interview, Dana White, MMA interview, MMA profile, Dana White boxing, Dana White feature, UFC interview, james whitey bulger, whitey bulger boston, whitey bulger boston mob

Id: BBQXc_xvX7Y

Length: 4min 26sec (266 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2016