Dana White Gave RustyBrick Coders Free UFC Tickets for UFC 104

A few programmers here at RustyBrick are UFC fans. (For those who don't know, UFC is Ultimate Fighting Championship which features mixed-martial artists fighting in "the octagon".)  I'm sure you've seen our nerdy programming and logging of UFC video game stats? So yeah, you can say we're kind of fanatics. We watch every pay-per-view event and follow every breaking MMA story on the blogs. The President (and "face") of the UFC is a guy named Dana White. Dana White is a businessman with a love for professional fighting and took the failing UFC out of the media gutter and transformed it into a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

Dana White has a history of being very outgoing towards his fans and very hostile towards his enemies in the media. He has the Dana White Twitter @danawhiteufc which he uses to communicate stuff to loyal fans like us. Over the past few months, he's tweeted his current locations and people have been driving out to him for meet-and-greets and score free tickets to fighting events. So, when he tweeted today that he was going to be in New Jersey... Jimmy and I had to go! It was a long, crazy day, but we really lucked out!

Here's our story: (click photos for full res)

Dana White tweeted last night that he was going to be at the CNBC studios today in Englewood Cliffs, NJ filiming a piece for "Power Lunch". He told everyone to meet him there at 1pm. Jimmy and I saw it and today, around noon, we jumped in the car and headed over to Englewood Cliffs. We figured there'd be a mobscene like normal, but hoped to at least catch of glimpse. We pulled into the studios around 12:30ish and drove up to the first security gate. We didn't see anybody... no crowds at least. The security guard at the booth told us "No way man, it's a hoax! There's nothing here, it's cancelled!" We shrug and refresh Twitter on our iPhones... no announcement or anything mentioning this from Dana, so we pull a u-turn and head to the public lot. We park the car and, sure enough, the tweet from this morning was deleted. We figured he still had to come here anyway... so we got out and headed towards the big door all the way in the back. At first we were going to walk right in to the studios, but we decided to hold back in case security came and told us to beat it.

So, we're waiting outside, by the back door in the cold for a little while longer. Jimmy gets his wife on the phone who turns on CNBC and waits for his segment to come up, because if he's live on the air... he's obviously not out here. 1pm comes and goes and we know he's supposed to be on around 1:20. A few more people show up and meet us by the back door. Normally there are crowds waiting for these tickets, but we suppose security scared them all away. 1:20 comes and Dana is on live on CNBC! We missed him! He must've came in from another door!

We all but lose hope when a man in a blue suit runs out the door and flashes a badge. He claims to be "Head of Security" and asks us what we are doing here. We tell him the whole story with Dana White and the Twitter. He tells us that "a) Dana White isn't giving away tickets and b) Dana White isn't even coming to CNBC Studios today" We, of course, know that is a lie because he's ON TV RIGHT NOW. We inform of this; he runs inside to "check this". He then comes back out and says "Dana cannot give out tickets here, it is private property. Please leave the studio and go stand by the street. In fact, I saw Dana out there earlier". This of course is probably another lie because we've been here for an hour and haven't seen anything. He then tell us "Dudes! Do any of you street luge? Because there are some killer hills over here!". Seriously, he said that. We laugh and give him a look like he's crazy.

We go and walk towards the street, losing hope quickly, but that's when we see the front of the building and a big, black Escalade up front. That's gotta be Dana! We walk towards the entrance and are greeted by another security guard in another booth. He's a pretty cool dude. He tells us "Yeah, that's his car, but you can't be here. Walk over there by the exit and I'll tell him you're standing there when he goes through my gate." We thank him and wait by the exit. Through the trees, we can see people step into the Escalade! The car then starts moving and sure enough, drives right over to us!

The car door swings open and Dana White himself jumps out of the car and says "Yo, you guys waiting for UFC tickets?" Jimmy and I are standing there, by ourselves, simply flabbergasted... 10 seconds must've passed before we said "Uhhh... yes?" So, it's Dana White, his entourage, Jimmy and me chilling out and talking. it was surreal. Normally at these things, it's tons of people crowded around. I'm not usually starstruck, but not only am I a huge fan,he's just sitting here talking to us like we've know each other. One of his guys whips out a pad of paper and a pen and Dana says "Yeah, write down your name, address, phone number email and stuff and we'll get you tickets, you can pick them up at the VIP Will-Call in Los Angeles." I wrote down my info and Jimmy and I posed for some pictures. We talked about the event and how "CNBC were being [expetive] [expletives] regarding the whole ticket thing." He tweeted about this and they got all pissed off and told him to retract it and "it was not allowed! How could he do this? They do not want to be affiliated with this!!" etc etc.

Then, Dana shook our hands again, said "See you in Los Angeles!" and drove away. Dana White is a genius. He keeps his fans happy and he's just an overall cool guy! I mean, what kind of celebrity takes time out of his busy day (he was at Time in NYC in the morning and had to go to Bloomberg TV right after CNBC) to sit down and just talk with a few fans sitting outside the studio? It was surreal. We were already huge fans, but now... I'm speechless. Just speechless. An amazing organization run by an amazing individual. So, Jimmy and I are shopping for plane tickets to get our butts out to Los Angeles. Anybody out in cyberspace know of a good place to stay? ;-)