Q+A: Lorenzo Fertitta & Dana White

By Ron Kantowski

Saturday, April 21, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

Feature stories in Sports Illustrated, Time, The New York Times and USA Today. A piece (mostly positive) on "60 Minutes." Coverage on SportsCenter. A budding relationship with HBO.

If the Ultimate Fighting Championship goes any more mainstream, it s next card is going to be held in Branson, Mo.

Well, maybe not. Although there are 21 states that now sanction mixed martial arts fighting, Missouri isn't one of them.

Maybe that's because the Fertitta brothers of Las Vegas have bigger fish to fry, or at least grapple with.

It was just six years ago that Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta bought the much-maligned UFC, moved it to Las Vegas and began transforming a sport once vilified as "human cockfighting" into a lucrative industry that is rapidly gaining global acceptance. UFC officials won't say how lucrative, being fiercely protective of all figures relating to the private company.

Tonight, the UFC will hold its first live card overseas at the sold-out MEN Arena in Manchester, England.

"You gotta see this," said Lorenzo Fertitta, looking buff and tan in a pullover and blue jeans after he and UFC President Dana White wrapped up a 45-minute interview before setting out to conquer the land of James Bond and David Beckham.

"This" was a photo that somebody had e-mailed to the UFC office on West Sahara Avenue during our interview. It shows the queen of England, on official royal family business, walking past a pillar adorned by a giant UFC poster trumpeting tonight's fight.

The queen may not be an ultimate fight fan just yet. But Fertitta says he'll set aside an octagon-side ticket tonight, just in case.

Q. You guys recently purchased Pride, one of your mixed martial arts rivals based in Japan. To paraphrase U2's song by the same name, why in the name of love did you pay a reported $65 million to acquire another ultimate fighting-type series when you already have one?

Lorenzo Fertitta: The reason for acquiring Pride is that while there are a lot of other (mixed martial arts companies) out there at the end of the day, the ones that matter are UFC and Pride. Pride has some fighters under contract that our fan base wants to see fight against some of our champions and by acquiring Pride, that gives us the flexibility to put on some of these megabouts.

Wow, that's a novel concept, the top guys actually fighting each other. That happens so rarely in boxing these days.

LF: Part of the reason for the success we've had is the fights we put on are competitive. We don't pad guys' records. A lot of boxing guys complain "How can this guy be any good? He's 14-5." But that's because the guys in the Top 10 are fighting each other (in the UFC).

Dana White: Boxing is a road map of what not to do. The greedy promoters basically killed the sport by taking it off free TV. When we were growing up, we used to see Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis, Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr. � on Wide World of Sports and USA's Tuesday Night Fights. Then those were the guys who became the pay-per-view stars of the '90s. In our era - I'm 37, Lorenzo's 37 - we grew up watching these fighters on (free) television. This younger generation didn't. The (boxing) pay-per-viewership is (minimal) compared to what it could be on a bigger platform.

Some in the mainstream media are now calling ultimate fighting the new boxing. That's got to get under the skin of boxing people. I read where Bob Arum wants to produce his own fights, copying the UFC blueprint. But wasn't he once a vocal critic of ultimate fighting?

LF: When we made the acquisition of UFC in 2001, there were tons of naysayers. No one thought we were going to be successful. There was a quote from Bob Arum in your newspaper that said the Fertittas are losing oodles and oodles of money and this will never work. Well, fast forward to 2007. We were the largest pay-per-view provider in the world in 2006, we generated more tax revenue for the state of Nevada than any boxing promoter, had a bigger economic impact on the state of Nevada than any boxing promoter and now we are expanding globally.

Right. Tonight England, tomorrow the rest of the world?

LF: We are doing this fight in the U.K. and then we're going to do a fight in Ireland and from there we'll be expanding into Spain, Italy and Germany. The whole idea is that you move the show around. Las Vegas will still be the hot spot, where most of the big fights take place. But beyond that, the challenge is to grow globally.

DW: We have decided we are at a level where we can take this thing out on the road. We went to Columbus, Ohio, where you would never think of taking Mike Tyson, even when he was sanctioned to fight. And we broke every record in the state for the highest live gate. No. 1 is the UFC. No. 2 is the Rolling Stones.

So you can get satisfaction promoting UFC fights outside of Las Vegas. Do you also pat yourselves on the back for creating such a monster that you paid $65 million to acquire Pride, whereas it only cost $2 million to purchase the UFC in 2001?

DW: We'll pat ourselves on the back when we figure this thing out. This could be the World Cup of fighting.

Wait a minute. You actually believe ultimate fighting can be as big as soccer on a global scale?

LF: What we have in mixed martial arts crosses all cultural boundaries, ethnicities and languages. You put two guys in the octagon using any type of martial arts to fight, everybody around the world gets it. The NFL probably couldn't get any bigger in the U.S. It's huge. But it's 99.9-percent penetrated. I think if they tried to sell their product to Asia, to Europe, to Mexico, people couldn't care less. Same with NASCAR. NASCAR is huge, but it doesn't translate to Europe and some of the other countries.

How vital was "The Ultimate Fighter" reality series in growing the sport?

DW: Obviously, that was the platform that got us where we are in the United States. Basically what we were able to do is get this show that wasn't even allowed on pay-per-view a couple of years before on free TV. And you know, it showed the sport wasn't the evil (human) cockfighting that everybody thought it was.

Ah, glad you brought that up. With the rules changes you have instituted, ultimate fighting isn't the no-holds-barred blood sport that people in high places such as Sen. John McCain condemned. Yet, that's what outsiders always want to hammer you on, isn't it?

LF: The stigma we inherited was almost to the point where we couldn't overcome it. Guys like you, guys like everyone, would hear "ultimate fighting" and automatically have a negative connotation. So it took us a good two to three to four years to reposition it and change the reaction of the U.S. consumer.

DW: I don't think John McCain is against us. John McCain was against the old ownership. What John McCain was saying is that this needs to be sanctioned by an athletic commission.

And the statistics reveal that ultimate fighting and mixed martial arts are much safer than boxing, don't they?

DW: Not only has there never been a death, there has never been a serious injury in the UFC. The one death that everybody talks about was in Russia several years ago. I wouldn't even consider that mixed martial arts.

So you are saying that whereas to the neophyte observer, ultimate fighting, a sport in which choke holds are permitted, may appear more violent than boxing, it really isn't. Is it the 31 fouls that are against the rules that make it safer? Allowing fighters to submit to their opponent when they've had enough?

DW: If you and I are in the boxing ring, the goal is for me is to hit you so hard that I knock you unconscious or I hit you in the head more times than you hit me in the head. It's the continuous blows to the head (that cause serious injuries). In mixed martial arts, I can beat you without ever hitting you in the head.

Maybe so, but I've seen UFC fights where guys get in wrestling holds and do hit each other in the head that get pretty bloody.

DW: They do sometimes. But even then, you don't have the same leverage that you have when you're standing up and putting all of your body weight into a punch. You say it's a little more violent (than boxing). It's a little more exciting, is what it is. I can punch, kick, knee, elbow slam, go to the ground. The mystique about mixed martial arts comes from the movies, where you killed a guy by breaking his neck or chopping him on the side of the neck and he goes out. That's the movies. That's not reality. Let me ask you, what's more violent than the NFL? Guys who are 265 pounds and run like track stars running directly into each other.

Yeah, I've been on the sidelines where almost every play sounds like two Buicks colliding.

DW: Lorenzo was the captain of the football team at Bishop Gorman. He's had like nine shoulder surgeries. He's got scars that wrap around his shoulder from playing football. Chuck Liddell is 37, he's been fighting in mixed martial arts forever and he doesn't have a scar on him.

But guys do get hurt.

DW: People die in horseback riding, too. It's a contact sport and anything could happen. It could happen in the UFC and I don't know how we would deal with it. But we go overboard as far as safety is concerned. That's why we brought (former Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director) Marc Ratner on board. Marc's talking to these other states. We may never put on a fight in the state of Idaho (because of safety concerns). But somebody is.

And a lot of somebodies are watching the UFC, based on the TV ratings. I saw where one of your pay-per-view fights outdrew the World Series for male viewers in the coveted 18-34 age demographic. That's amazing. How did you pull it off?

LF: We're boxing fans, but we feel like boxing has forgotten its fans. We used to go to Tyson fights and go crazy. But if I spend $1,000 for a ringside ticket, $500 for a ringside ticket, I'm gonna show up early. And it was boring. There was nothing going on. So for 500 bucks I get to watch one fight. And maybe it's good and maybe it's not. That's why when people show up at 5 o'clock for a UFC fight, we're three-quarters filled. We've got competitive (undercard) fights and we're feeding them video. I used to sit at a fight and wonder what fighters are they talking about on HBO, what matchups. When you come to our fights, we pipe all of that into the arena.

And UFC fans have access to the fighters, don't they?

LF: I would say NASCAR is the only other (sport) that is similar to what we do. The athletes are accessible. When you come to Las Vegas, you're going to get Chuck Liddell's autograph, Tito Ortiz, you're gonna meet Matt Hughes and he's gonna talk to you for a few minutes. If you go see a Lakers game, you are not going to meet Kobe Bryant. And if you go to a boxing event, you are not going to meet Oscar De La Hoya.

Good point.

LF: One of the things we've tried to do is think about this in a different way than boxing. For decades, boxing was all about one fight. Let me make this one fight and as much money as I can and we'll worry about the other stuff later. There was no long-term planning or long-term thinking. So we felt it was very important to build a brand that would eventually enhance the matchups of the fights and make them bigger. The live gate, the pay-per-view broadcast, merchandise sales, DVD sales, Internet � it all works together.

It seems to be working great. But then so was hockey 10 years ago when it was the sports flavor of the month. Are your worried about ultimate fighting's shelf life?

DW: There's a shift going on in sports right now. More kids are skateboarding these days than are playing baseball. That's a fact. The reason you watch baseball is because you grew up playing it. But if you don't play it, you won't watch it. In 15 years, baseball is gonna be in trouble.

And ultimate fighting won't be?

DW: You know what (boxing analyst) Max Kellerman says ? He says that if you take four street corners, and on one they are playing baseball, on another they are playing basketball and on the other, street hockey. On the fourth corner, a fight breaks out. Where does the crowd go?

They all go to the fight.