Coker: Dana White is the ‘Don King’ of MMA
“Dana is kind of like the Don King. He’s out there and he’s out promoting his brand as well as…
“Dana is kind of like the Don King. He’s out there and he’s out promoting his brand as well as the company brand and the fighter brand. I’m more of a very direct business man,” Coker said in an exclusive interview with Bloody Elbow. “The guy I really liked wasn’t Don King. To me, it’s okay being the Bob Arum. In a lot of Bob’s early fights, you didn’t even know who promoted the fights. The fights were amazing, they were great, and they were focused on the athlete. That’s been my philosophy too. The stars of the show are in the cage.”
White, who helped propel mixed martial arts forward in America, has plenty in common with King. Both are outgoing media hounds who put themselves front and center for every fight they promote, often making media appearances in the place of the fighters. And both play up a streetwise tough guy persona, emphasizing to the fighters they promote that they too come from similar circumstances. King and White also rely heavily on undisclosed bonuses (King’s often paid in cash in a brief case or attache case) or expensive gifts to keep fighters happy.
Coker prefers to remain in the shadows. In a perfect world, he thinks fans would never even ponder who the money men behind the fights are. They’d be too busy enjoying the action in the cage. But the world White has created leaves little room for a quiet professional, part of the reason Coker seems to spend so much time being criticized for the crime of not being Dana White.
“Dana is Dana. He does a great job at doing what he does. It’s okay to be the Bob Arum and put on these great fights, to put on these mega events,” Coker said. “I think we’ve accomplished so much in these last 18 months. A lot of fans have to remember – Strikeforce on a national scale has been around since April10, 2009. And the fights that we put on are right up there with any other league. We’ve done some big arena shows, we’ve done some million dollar gates. Outside of the UFC, I don’t think anyone is doing that.”
