Dana White famously declared many years ago that women would never fight in the UFC. Today the joke is that White's announcements usually mean the opposite of what he says. Ronda Rousey can confirm that this statement wasn't true.

Dana White recently spoke about it with Ronda Rousey on her new show. She famously made him change his mind on women fighting in the UFC.

“Everything in life is about timing,” UFC President White told Rousey on an episode of her ESPN+ series Rowdy’s Places. “When I was saying we’ll never have women in the UFC, I was having a hard enough time getting men fighting in a cage accepted let alone women. You approached me, and we had like a 45-minute conversation, and halfway through it I started going, ‘Oh my God, I think I’m gonna do this. And she’s definitely the one to do this with.”

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The UFC President quickly realized he had a future star in front of him. Dana White eventually went for it in 2013 and he had no regrets.

“There’s this thing that people have, you can’t put your finger on,” UFC President White told Rousey. “They just have it. And you had it.

“I’ll see somebody like you, and I’ll say she has the potential to be huge, but you have to actually go out and do the work and become that. You know. You’ve been through the process. And you were probably the best ever at the process.

“You think about when we first met, and you walked around these things, and nobody knew you, to you couldn’t walk anywhere. You were so big, and it happened like that. We know the formula, and we know when we’ve got the person, but you have to have somebody that’s willing to become that person.”