Dana White Doubles Down on UFC Bud Light Deal As Boycott Calls Grow

After Ultimate Fighting Championship was slammed for its partnership with Bud Light, UFC president and CEO Dana White has doubled down on his company's decision.

On Tuesday, Bud Light's parent company Anheuser-Busch, and the UFC, an American mixed martial arts organization, announced a new "multi-year marketing partnership."

The arrangement will start January 1 and will see Anheuser-Busch become the exclusive "official beer partner of UFC," which will make Bud Light the official beer for the championship in the U.S.

A source previously told CNBC the deal is the largest in the MMA promotions history and is "well into nine figures."

News of the deal ignited a firestorm of criticism on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Many fans said they would boycott the UFC because of the brand partnership due to the beer company previously collaborating with transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney for a brief promotion in April.

Social media users took aim at the beer brand for co-sponsoring an LGBTQ+ Pride event in Arizona over the weekend.

However, White isn't letting the criticism impact his decision, as he appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show on October 26 to push back at conservative critics calling him a sellout. He said he admired the company's core values, which he said align with his own.

"It's this unbelievable, powerful, American-built business, a lot of their core values align with mine," he said on the show.

"I'm a big supporter of military and law enforcement [and] I love their thing that they do, Folds of Honor, where they have spent something like $44 million over the last however many years for scholarships for fallen heroes, whether it's military or first responders.

"I could go on and on for days about how much I am aligned with Anheuser-Busch. Whenever there's a big natural disaster in the United States, they turn the plant into a water bottling factory and they've done like 100 million bottles of water for people in need during natural disasters. So, as we got down to it, we started to talk and I met with the CEO of Anheuser-Busch and it was a no-brainer for me."

Newsweek reached out to Anheuser-Busch and a White representative for comment via email on Friday.

This isn't the first time that White has addressed the controversy as he spoke about UFC's Bud Light deal when he made an appearance on Fox News' Hannity on Tuesday night.

"They were the first beer company that we really did business with," he told host Sean Hannity of Bud Light. "They were our first real big sponsor when we were getting started, and now we're back with them."