Reporting from Las Vegas — In 2001, Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts circuit, was struggling. The bouts were banned from most cable TV outlets and its finances were dismal.
But that did not stop Lorenzo Fertitta, a Las Vegas casino owner, and his brother Frank from making a deal to buy UFC for $2 million. "All of my consultants said I was out of my mind, that this would be a black eye, but I felt the term Ultimate Fighting had relevance because it introduced America to the sport," Lorenzo Fertitta told The Times.
On Saturday, Fertitta, 40, will celebrate the 100th UFC event, which long ago sold out at an 11,000-seat arena at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, with its top tickets priced at $1,000. The pay-per-view telecast is $49.95, and in a sign of UFC's international reach, 51 countries will air UFC 100 live, and another 24 nations will show the event on tape-delay, the company said.
Forbes magazine last year valued UFC at $1.1 billion, ranking both Fertittas among the world's 900 richest people. "It's the most valuable franchise in sports," Lorenzo Fertitta said. "We have a sport that transcends culture and audiences."
The current recession, though, has hit the Fertitta brothers' Station Casinos hard, with the gaming company nearing bankruptcy to deal with its big debt load. Fertitta said the casinos' problems do not "in any way, shape or form affect [UFC]."
There's no question, though, that mixed martial arts is threatening to surpass boxing as the country's most popular combat sport. Seven of the last 10 top live-gate fights in Las Vegas have been UFC events.
Fertitta got his first taste of the sport in the late '90s when he crossed paths with a former high school classmate, Dana White, who managed some fighters for UFC circuit.
Fertitta was introduced to MMA fighters, took lessons at a local gym and quickly became "addicted" to the sport, he said. MMA then was hyped as a "no holds-barred" contest, using boxing skills, jujitsu, wrestling and karate. However, the lightly regulated sport prompted Arizona Sen. John McCain to infamously call it "human cockfighting" after one fighter repeatedly head butted an unconscious foe.
But Fertitta, then a Nevada boxing regulator, was charmed by the toughness and charisma of MMA fighters and turned into a "groupie," he said. "We'd go fly out to some podunk town in Louisiana to see these guys fight."
