The direct approach
"I like to swear," White says.
And he does.
"He comes off like a drunk sailor," says UFC lightweight fighter Antonio McKee.
White's language is as raw as his personality.
"If I don't like you, I'll let you know I don't like you," White says.
"Maybe, yeah, I'm a little different than what the sports world is used to seeing, but when it comes down to what I do for a living and dealing with the networks and sponsors and everything else … I think anyone who has ever dealt with me in business is happy to be in business with me."
He has made mistakes.
A 2009 profanity-laced tirade against MMA journalist Loretta Hunt drew backlash from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which demanded an apology for his use of a derogatory ****sexual term.
But White says he doesn't regret any misstep.
"There's not one thing that I would change," he says. "I think all the things that have happened to us got us to where we are today."
To many, White's bluntness is refreshing.
"I don't always agree with him, but I always know what he's thinking," says UFC legend Liddell. "And I much rather prefer that, someone who says something to my face rather than saying it behind my back."
Said Ed Soares, manager of several prominent UFC fighters, including middleweight champion Anderson Silva: "You never ask him a question you don't want to know the answer to, because he has no problem telling you how he feels."
Another thing that hasn't changed is his work ethic. White has attended nearly 1,600 consecutive fights, he says, not missing one since he became UFC president.
Between fights, he's constantly promoting the UFC, traveling to seven cities, three countries and two continents in the last few weeks alone.
He'll return from a short vacation to promote UFC 141, which takes place Friday in Las Vegas and features a heavyweight bout between Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem.
When White is home in Las Vegas, he spends his free time with his wife of 17 years, Anne, whom he met in eighth grade, and his sons Dana, 10, and Aidan, 9, and daughter Savannah, 5. He sleeps just four hours a night, he says, and often sneaks out to play high-stakes blackjack.
But five days a week, for three hours each morning, White works out with Skipper Kelp, a former pro welterweight boxer with a 24-1-1 record.
White runs the treadmill and shadowboxes. Then Kelp slips on boxing mitts and White boxes, as he did when he was young, for a few rounds. "He's a crispy boxer," Kelp says.
So boxing is never far from White's mind, even as UFC and MMA have begun to pass it by.
He watches every match he can, even on UFC fight nights, and a huge photo of his favorite boxer, Mike Tyson, hangs in his office. Like Tyson in his heyday, White is a dominating force in his realm, bulling over almost anyone in his path.
And, with a wise-guy grin, a sharp tongue and a sharper wit, the barrel-chested Baldfather will make no apologies along the way.
After all, in his eyes, it's only business, not personal.
baxter.holmes@latimes.com
twitter.com/baxterholmes
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