UFC’s ultraviolent bouts gain fans, acceptance

PHILADELPHIA | It is after midnight in the steamy Wachovia Center, and a youthful, raucous crowd of more than 17,000 is on its feet.

Kenny Florian is not.

Florian lies on his back in an eight-sided cage, on the cusp of unconsciousness. Amid a tangled web of limbs, he struggles to break free from the grasp of B.J. Penn, a sturdy Hawaiian whose python right arm is wrapped around Florian’s neck.

Within seconds, Florian’s world goes black. He doesn’t hear the crescendo of spectators, now in a frenzy. A second later, the referee steps in. The fight is over.

This is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the most dominant player in mixed martial arts and one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

Once an underground operation in a sport considered too wild and violent to count as legitimate athletics, UFC now not only is moving into the mainstream but is one of the sports world’s hottest properties.

A sport that had been shunned by parents, banned by states and rejected by broadcast networks and cable operators for its brutality now sets pay-per-view records and is televised live in dozens of countries.

In July, UFC held its first-ever fan expo, drawing 30,000 to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. Last Saturday’s event in Philadelphia — dubbed “UFC 101” because it was the 101st event of its kind — earned a live gate of $3.5 million, the largest ever for a fight in Pennsylvania.

Even in a tough economy, UFC now is so powerful a draw that fans forked over $50 to watch the bouts at Wachovia from the worst seats in the house, with many lower bowl seats selling for $600.

UFC this year is expected to earn more than $300 million just from the hundreds of thousands of fans tuning into events on pay per view nearly every month. Forbes magazine last year valued UFC at more than $1 billion — more than 500 times what it sold for a decade ago.

Fighters like Penn and Florian are nearly as recognizable as athletes from traditional major sports. UFC President Dana White is nearly as powerful and recognizable as other major sports commissioners. And UFC has spawned a cottage industry of apparel and equipment manufacturers and driven an explosion of mixed martial arts training gyms across the country.

Gradual acceptance

While Penn and Florian grappled in the octagon, signs of UFC’s mainstream acceptance showed everywhere.

A large Bud Light logo emblazoned the canvas and one of the octagon’s corners. A Harley-Davidson logo hung above. Advertisements for energy drinks, supplements and clothing manufacturers adorned the fighters’ shorts and signage throughout the arena.

For advertisers, UFC has been a gold mine of access to a desirable demographic of young men drawn to the wide-open action and short, three-round fights that take less time than most other sporting events.

It wasn’t always this way.

Founded by an advertising executive and martial arts enthusiasts from Southern California, UFC staged its first event in 1993 — an eight-man tournament with no weight classes and few rules.

That event drew more than 80,000 pay-per-view buys — and plenty of negative attention.

Sen. John McCain once referred to the sport as “human cockfighting,” and many states placed bans on the so-called “no-holds barred” bouts. Cable providers, meanwhile, stopped offering UFC events altogether.

By the late 1990s, UFC began cooperating with athletic commissions in many states and instituted more rules to protect fighters. By 2001, the organization drew the attention of Las Vegas casino owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who purchased it for about $2 million. The brothers brought in childhood friend Dana White, who had been working as an aerobics instructor, to serve as president of the operation.

In the eight years since, attendance at events in Las Vegas gradually increased and the UFC branched out into new markets as state athletic commissions granted licenses for mixed martial arts.

Now, events practically are guaranteed to draw more than 300,000 viewers on pay per view, with some topping 1 million. UFC stages events nearly every month, mostly in Las Vegas, though the organization has branched out to many major cities. UFC 102 is scheduled for Portland, Ore., later this month followed by UFC 103 in Dallas in September.

“You compare UFC1 to UFC 100, there’s a dramatic difference,” said Kelsey Philpott, lead writer on the Web site MMAPAyout.com, which covers the business of mixed martial arts. “The growth of the sport comes from the changes that they’ve made in terms of legitimizing the safety issues and the new rules. When you combine that with proper marketing, you kind of see growth potential of the sport that’s been realized.”

UFC partnered with cable network Spike in 2005 for a reality show, “The Ultimate Fighter,” that gave the organization a boost in attendance. The show drew more than a million viewers for each episode and more than three million for season finales. Fighters from the show, including Penn and Forrest Griffin, went on to become UFC stars.

Spike officials said UFC is right in the wheelhouse of young fans with little patience for sporting events that last several hours.

“It’s the MTV generation that needs immediacy and doesn’t want to watch 15 rounds of boxing to get a decision,” said Brian Diamond, Spike’s senior vice president of sports and specials.

Unlike boxing, where fights are set up by a handful of sanctioning bodies and promoters with competing interests, UFC operates under a structure designed to guarantee good matchups and clear champions.

Fighters compete under contract with the league rather than as independent athletes. The system often has been criticized for the control it gives UFC over fighters, but the arrangement also has allowed UFC to grow and consistently create well-received fight cards.

Much of the credit for UFC’s growth goes to White, a 40-year-old former amateur boxer who has become as much a celebrity as the UFC fighters themselves.

White maintains an ultratight grip on UFC, involving himself in everything from the selection of fight cards to public relations and marketing. He is described alternately as congenial and tyrannical, fiercely loyal and merciless.

To some, he is the perfect executive for the UFC, his shaved head and jacket-with-no-tie look the perfect personification of the edgy nature of the sport. But as UFC went more mainstream, some fans called on White to adopt the buttoned-down manner of other top sports executives befitting of a legitimate league.

The debate turned hot in April, when White posted a profanity-laced video on UFC’s Web site blasting a reporter who wrote a story about the organization’s policy for credentialing fighters’ agents. White was forced to apologize for the rant, which contained a string of anti-gay and sexist terms.

“That’s not something people necessarily want to be associated with,” Philpott said. “As you look forward now, as UFC starts to get these blue-chip sponsors and starts to get mainstream, you’re looking at the prospect of whether Dana White is going to be able to adapt to what is required of him and UFC to be a billion-dollar corporation in the future. And that’s a big question mark.”

Too brutal?

UFC unquestionably is violent, and that violence plays a big role in the sport’s popularity.

Fighters routinely exit the octagon with bruised faces, broken bones and busted eardrums, and it’s not uncommon for a man to be knocked out cold. Kicks to the head, elbowing and repeated punches to the face all are legal.

The raw, intense nature of the fighting clearly is part of UFC’s appeal, and defenders of the sport say it is no more dangerous than boxing or even football.

Over the years, UFC has crafted an ever-evolving list of banned actions that currently includes 31 items. Most rules are designed to prevent permanent injury or death. Fighters are forbidden, for instance, from kicking a man on the ground, striking an opponent on the back of the head or poking an eye. Referees are trained to end contests when one fighter is defenseless, and any athlete can “tap out” of a fight at any time.

“There will always be some people who think it’s too violent, but those are the people who think boxing is too violent,” said Mark Ratner, UFC’s vice president for government and regulatory affairs and the former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. “I’m a former Division I football referee, and I’ve never seen more people get hurt than in college football. I hear people say there’s no intent to hurt, but I’ve seen that over and over again.”

Some evidence suggests that mixed martial arts fighting is less dangerous that boxing in one key aspect: the risk of severe head injury.

In an article published in the Journal of Sports Science in 2006, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said injuries in mixed martial arts fights occurred at about the same rate as in boxing. But the researchers also said the risk for traumatic brain injury was smaller in mixed martial arts because punches to the head are a relatively small component of fights.

But not all state athletic commissions are sold on the sport and its safety.

Mixed martial arts fighting has yet to be approved in the key states of Massachusetts and New York, where legislators have spoken out against its violent nature. UFC has resisted calls by lawmakers to require head protection or a scoring system similar to that in amateur boxing.

UFC officials said approval in Massachusetts and New York, in particular, could come within the next year. White last week expressed desire to hold a UFC event in historic Fenway Park, the home of baseball’s Boston Red Sox.

“New York’s going to happen,” White said. “I’m not worried about it. I’m pretty confident we’ll have it in the next year. And I’m excited about the Boston market. People don’t realize how big this thing is until they see it. That’s always been the thing about the UFC. I don’t care if you’re a sponsor, a network, a commission — we’ve never had anyone come to our event and say, ’No, I want no part of this.’”

The competition

UFC is not the only mixed martial arts organization around — it just seems that way.

For every rival mixed martial arts organization now competing with the UFC, it seems, there are two that have tried and failed. Some groups have managed to hold successful single events, but no one has consistently come close to matching UFC’s power in drawing live crowds and pay-per-view buys.

“The UFC on a pro level is kind of what the NFL is in pro football,” said Joe Favorito, a sports marketing consultant in New York. “There is not a big enough audience to sustain a number two right now. There’s no business model outside of the UFC that has ever proven it can make money on a sustained basis by doing events.”

Favorito should know. Between 2006 and 2008, he served as the senior vice president of business development for the International Fight League, which featured showdowns between “teams” of fighters. The league raised more than $35 million in a public offering of stock and was the first mixed martial arts league to score a traditional television deal. But attendance at events was sparse, and the league, citing financial difficulties, folded last summer.

ProElite, another rival organization, struck an unprecedented deal last year with CBS to show four events in prime time.

ProElite signed Kimbo Slice, a street fighter who became an underground Internet sensation, as the marquee star for the prime-time “EliteXC” events.

Ratings for the first fight last summer were strong, but the company stopped staging fights in November after accumulating debt that reportedly exceeded more than $55 million. ProElite in February sold most of its assets to Strikeforce, a rival organization still in operation.

The most recent mixed martial arts casualty was Affliction, a clothing company that branched out last year to promote its own events. With backing from casino mogul Donald Trump, Affliction drew more than 11,000 fans to its first event featuring well-regarded heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko. But it has since returned as an official UFC sponsor after the cancellation of its most recent event earlier this month.

Favorito said that over the years, UFC has created an ultraloyal fan base that is not interested in watching other mixed martial arts events, regardless of the perceived quality of fighting. That makes it difficult for any rival league to turn a consistent profit, because the cost of putting on events is high.

“There’s a core audience that travels almost like a college football weekend and goes from event to event to event,” he said. “So you’ll see the same 6,000 or 7,000 people at every event. Whether it’s in Columbus, Ohio, or Las Vegas or Philadelphia there will be the same people there every time. If you try to do things the way that’s not exactly the way the UFC does it, those people will rebel. They will not go and see anything else.”

That loyalty was apparent in Philadelphia last week, when the Wachovia Center was more than half full early in the evening, before the first of the night’s preliminary fights even began.

As the night went on and hip-hop and heavy metal music blared, the building filled and the energy grew with the tally of punches, kicks and submissions. By the end of the night, UFC officials were already promising to return.

“We’ve been very blessed and lucky that this business has continued to grow and flourish,” White said. “I’m very thankful. We have the greatest fans in the world.”