Dana White Headed into Surgery as Soon as He Returns from UFC 153 in Brazil
UFC president Dana White doesn’t like to lose, but it looks like he’s on the losing end of a battle with his Meniere’s disease… at least temporarily. It looks like the UFC boss will soon be headed into surgery to cope with the chronic condition.
“Saw the Dr today about my menieres and I'm getn the surgery when I get home from Brazil!” White tweeted as he prepared to take off to Brazil for UFC 153.
White missed his first UFC event ever since Zuffa purchased the company in January 2001 when his Meniere’s struck just before UFC on Fuel TV 3 in May of this year.
Menier’s disease, according to the Mayo Clinic, is “a disorder of the inner ear that causes spontaneous episodes of vertigo — a sensation of a spinning motion — along with fluctuating hearing loss, ringing in the ear (tinnitus), and sometimes a feeling of fullness or pressure in your ear.”
“I didn’t miss a fight for 11 years. I’ve had the flu, I’ve had food poisoning, I’ve had everything,” said White in describing his bout with Meniere’s. “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life and I don’t ever want to experience that again.”
He has been dealing with the condition with medication for several months, trying to avoid any down time for surgery, but it looks like there is finally a window of opportunity.
Notoriously, one of the busiest men on the planet when it comes to his job, White has been unwilling to be sidelined for the month or so that surgery, recovery, and rehabilitation is purported to take.
The surgery, according to White, involves cutting a nerve, and then undergoing rehabilitation that includes relearning to walk, picking up objects as simple as a water bottle, and the like.
It appears that a slight blip in the UFC schedule, and another recent Meniere’s flare-up, will finally force White into having the surgery. Once he returns from Brazil, the nearest UFC event on the radar is UFC on Fuel TV 6 on Nov. 10 in China.
It’s unclear if White will be able to recover in time for that event, but he’s surely got Nov. 17 as a must-be-ready date with the return of Georges St-Pierre slated for UFC 154 in Montreal. And just like anything Dana White related, doctor’s prognostications or not, he’s got his own timetable in mind.
“They say that in like a month, you can start getting your stuff back together,” said White when discussing recovery time. “So I’ll do it in two weeks. I don’t have a month.”
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