It has been a while since Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta tried to choke each other into submission. The brothers took private jujitsu lessons in the early 2000s, and at the end of each they were given the chance to try new moves in a dojo in Las Vegas. But you reach a certain age (Frank is now 54, Lorenzo is 47) and turn up in Forbes (which estimates each brother is worth $1.6 billion), and brawling starts to seem like a bad idea.

That does not mean the Fertittas have given up on combat. After earning their first fortune through an empire of casinos, they spent $2 million to buy the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a struggling mixed martial arts company, in 2001. Since then, the brothers have worked tirelessly to bring into the mainstream what critics have long derided as “human cage fighting.”

Ultimate Fighting Championship events are now broadcast in 158 countries. Until last week, they were legal in all but one state in the union.

The lone holdout was New York.

The Fertittas have tried since 2007 to persuade lawmakers in Albany to overturn a law that expressly prohibits all forms of combat sports, except boxing. Year after year, they were thwarted by an unlikely opponent: a Las Vegas union for kitchen workers.