Dana White vs Vince McMahon: Who’s the better promoter?

#4 Building stars

Creating new stars is vital for the success of both UFC and WWE.

One big commonality between Vince McMahon’s take on professional wrestling and how Dana White handles mixed martial arts is recognizing the need to build, sustain, and more generally push individual stars. These approaches to promotion aren’t necessarily unique to combat sports as professional basketball has built up individual megastars like Michael Jordan and LeBron James to push the sport on the whole, and movies and TV shows traditionally build around one or two top tier box office draws to drive viewers. In terms of thinking about traditional sports enterprises, though, it’s this interest in individual celebrities that separates any old figurehead leader from a true blue promoter.

McMahon built his promoter career on the back of Hulk Hogan as the face of his company and has since furthered his legacy with icons like Steve Austin and John Cena at the fore.

Dana White has done the unlikely in building his own megastars within the context of legitimate sport, via marketing savvy and careful protection of his most valuable properties. Names like Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor have transcended their sports in unique ways and helped make MMA more accessible to people who might otherwise not be interested.

In terms of building huge stars, particularly relative to the history of the sport, White gets the edge here in recent years.