Michael Muller

Beneath a big tent hastily erected on a roof behind the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, a collection of modern gladiators gathers behind a portable stage, twenty-two broken noses and sets of cauliflower ears standing in a reverent semicircle around a familiar pug — the former bar bouncer, hotel bellhop, and personal fitness trainer who has, over the past decade, helped to turn the Ultimate Fighting Championship into a $1 billion business with fans across the globe.

They are a fearsome-looking bunch — from six-eleven Dutch submission expert Stefan Struve to five-seven crowd favorite Joe "Daddy" Stevenson — all of them having just stripped to their skivvies for the prefight weigh-in, witnessed by three thousand raucous and mesmerized superfans from the coveted eighteen-to-forty-nine demographic, males and females both. There will be eleven bouts tomorrow night in the Octagon, the distinctive eight-sided ring with its black chain-link fence to contain the mayhem. Two of the fights will play free on Spike TV — part of UFC's fan-friendly marketing approach. Five will be seen exclusively on pay-per-view, including the main event, a light-heavyweight championship bout between Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and reigning champ Lyoto "the Dragon" Machida — two prime-time Brazilians with matinee-idol looks and savage fighting styles.

Sixteen thousand will attend the Saturday-night event, styled UFC 104; ticket prices run from $50 to $600. There can be no value placed on a seat in the celebrity section, where Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher will rub shoulders with Anthony Kiedis, Everlast, Will.i.am, Jaime Pressly, David Spade, much of the entire cast of Dancing with the Stars, and even Janet Jackson, whose brother Michael was a huge UFC fan. He once attended a match in a wheelchair, disguised as an old man.

The guy at the center is Dana White. Equal parts Don King, Oliver Twist, and South Boston gym rat, he is the heart and soul of the UFC — a man who is living his adolescent dreams. He is forty years old, five-eleven, 205; his strength as an amateur boxer, he says, was his ability to take a punch. He still benches 340, though the six-pack is a memory. He wears a T-shirt and ripped jeans, a colorful pair of low-top Pumas. His head is stubble-shaved, as are his meaty forearms, "cause i'm a fukn gorilla," he will later text.

Fifteen years ago, White was riding his bike through the slushy winter streets of Boston with eighty pounds of equipment in a hockey bag on his back, going from gym to gym to train his fitness clients. A little more than ten years ago, Senator John McCain compared mixed martial arts to cockfighting. It was officially shunned, if not banned outright, in virtually every state.

Today MMA fighting is sanctioned in forty-two states, soon to be forty-seven. There is a UFC magazine, a best-selling UFC video game, UFC action figures and trading cards. Nine UFC Gyms will be opened this year in partnership with the founder of 24 Hour Fitness. White flies around in one of several company jets, stays in palatial suites at luxury hotels. Beneath the company offices in Las Vegas, he keeps a stable of exotic cars. His thoughts on Twitter are followed by more than 800,000 people; another 100,000 follow his madcap video blogs; millions more see him on The Ultimate Fighter, a reality show on Spike TV. Scores of news outlets, from Yahoo! Sports and ESPN to the more esoteric FiveKnuckles.com, follow his every move. His partners, the Fertitta brothers, whom he has known since before he was kicked out of Las Vegas's Bishop Gorman High School (for accidentally almost hitting a nun with his shoe, which had flown off his foot when he kicked the classroom door open), are the billionaire owners of eighteen properties in Vegas. According to the dispute-resolution clause in their contract, disagreements between Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta are to be resolved via a "Sport Jiu-Jitsu match," three five-minute rounds, refereed by White and "decided by submission or points."

"I wanna welcome you guys," White says warmly to the gathered. Along with his partner Lorenzo and his matchmaker, Joe Silva, White has helped to engineer every one of the upcoming fights. In the early days of the UFC, the matchup idea was style versus style: How would a boxer fare against a wrestler? Today, all the fighters practice mixed martial arts — a little bit of everything, from muay Thai to wrasslin'. Unlike boxers, they fight every few weeks. White estimates that eighteen of his ultimate fighters earn in the millions per annum. Many others make in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. New guys make fifty to seventy-five, "depending where you are in the pecking order."

"Here's how it works," White says — he speaks with the tough-guy inflection of a blue-collar know-it-all. "There's gonna be a lot of people there tomorrow, and they wanna see you guys fight. So fight. Let it go. Fight to fuckin' win. Bonuses are sixty grand. I'll give $60,000 each to the two guys involved in the best fight of the night. I'll give sixty K for the best knockout. And sixty thousand for the best submission. You can win both. You can be involved in the best fight of the night and also win the knockout or submission."

Claps and whistles. The men look around at one another approvingly.

"Didn't that happen last time?" Joe Daddy asks.

"That's right," White says. When he smiles, his mouth sags slightly on the lower right side — the result, he says, of a fight in his youth with a pair of twin neighbors. He had one of them pinned on the ground when the other hit him in the face with a shovel.

Joe Silva mentions the name of the fighter who won the double bonus — Rick "Horror" Story, a former all-American wrestler at Southern Oregon University. "You call that a good day," he says.

"He was making five and five," White says, meaning $5,000 to show up and $5,000 to win.

"And he ended up walking with an extra $130,000," Silva says.

Hoots and applause.

"Wow, Dana, have you been lifting weights?" This is Joe Daddy again. A short guy with veiny arms and swollen, stick-out ears, he brings to mind a cinnamon-colored Hulk. His sweet smile and raspy, childlike voice don't match at all. "You look huge," he tells the boss.

"There's no drug testing for promoters," Silva laughs.

"No brownnosing," White admonishes. He flexes his biceps — more hoots and jeers. There are deep sweat stains under his arms and sweat streams down his head; he is fighting a losing battle with the flu.

Now Silva steps forward. A small man with a thin mustache, he's the one who finalizes the details of the fights. He looks around the semicircle ominously. "The absolute worst part of my job is having to cut people," he says. "I have to cut people after every show, that's just how it goes. But I don't judge you on wins and losses. What I do care about is a great fight. If you fight your ass off, if you go out there and go to war, I'm gonna give you another shot. If you go out there and your fight sucks, you're probably not coming back. So please fight hard."

A hush falls over the group.

White nods approval to his minion... and then he aims his face toward his fighters and rolls his eyes — Gawd, can you believe this pencil-neck geek?

"On a better note," White sings sardonically, breaking the tension, causing everyone to laugh, "have a great night you guys. Go eat and drink, rest and relax. We'll see you tomorrow."

Courtesy of UFC

A black escalade with oversized rims arrives to collect White and his entourage. The cobbled driveway of the Montage Beverly Hills is chockablock with exotic horsepower. It is Saturday, late morning. The fight is tonight. Like fans undertaking a road trip, they pack the back compartment with dress clothes and a cooler full of refreshments.

Riding shotgun is Tom Page, director of security, an affable retired Las Vegas cop with a thick white pompadour. White sits behind the driver; behind him is Bob Moore, forty-three, from Southie and a former training client. At one time Moorzo may or may not have had dealings with the mob. As he says, "Back in the old neighborhood, you either swim with the sharks or you're fuckin' bait." Next to him, at a perfect vantage point to capture White's every move and snippet of commentary, is Elliott Raymond, thirty. He showed up a few years ago to shoot some photos of White for a car magazine and basically never left. Like his boss, Raymond is the son of a single mom who worked in health care to support her only son. (Raymond's mom was an EMT; White's was a nurse.) Like his boss, Raymond had an absentee dad. (Raymond's was a state trooper; White's was a firefighter with a penchant for drink.) And like his boss, who hails from Ware, Massachusetts, Raymond has come a long way from his roots, in his case a small town in northwest New Mexico.

Because they fly ungodly distances every year producing shows and spreading the word, the guys have about them the going-nowhere-fast air of professional travelers. A second cooler, stored in the passenger space, holds fluids and flu medications. Raymond pours a tube of raspberry Emergen-C into a bottle of Smartwater and hands it to White. The schedule is packed with interviews and other prefight obligations, but first there will be lunch at the Peninsula hotel. White needs a big bowl of the chicken soup — the best in town, he says, taking another swig of his pink-tinted water.

There is a lull in the cabin while everyone checks their phones. White has three — an old flip phone, a BlackBerry, and a $10,000 TAG Heuer that he is ready to throw out the window for lack of reception; he only bought it because everyone was giving him shit for having such a cheap flip phone. (A 10 percent owner of UFC, he's worth something like $200 million.) White gives out his telephone number to everyone. He answers everyone's texts, from the actor Lee Majors, who used to play the Six Million Dollar Man, to Jesus Castillo, UFC fan from the Inland Empire.

"Can you believe I lost ten pounds?" White says, looking up from one of his devices. "How do you keep a virus? I'm not taking any more medicine, man. I'm gonna try and keep this thing as long as I can and lose some weight."

"You can start licking people's palms," Raymond suggests.

"Nasty!" Moorzo says.

Everybody cracks up.

"I fuckin' lost ten pounds after I went in that porta-potty yesterday," White says, recalling the portable facility he visited behind the big top after his talk with the fighters. "I seriously thought I was gonna puke."

"You have to wonder," says Raymond, the artsy-philosophical one in the bunch, "who takes a shit in a porta-potty?"

"I have no problem dumping in a porta-potty," Moorzo says unequivocally in his thick Southie drawl.

"After that $1,200 room-service bill, do you doubt it?" White asks. It's a running joke — Moorzo's $1,200 room-service bill at the Peninsula hotel in New York. ("It didn't even include the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners he ate with everybody else," White says.) Moorzo was one of White's first clients, twenty dollars an hour to train at his gym in South Boston, a nonprofit where street kids were taught to box. The personal fitness clients kept the place afloat. Moorzo eventually lost a hundred pounds. These days he's down to a steady 210.

"I've gone home with dye stained on my underwear from backsplash," Moorzo offers.

White makes a disgusted face.

"TMI, dude," Raymond says.

"Depth charge!" Moorzo calls.

"Never mind lunch," White groans, only half joking. "Let's go straight to the venue."

After a meal, there must be Pinkberry.

White orders his regular: a large cup of original flavor topped with Fruity Pebbles.

Moorzo orders his regular: a taste.

"How come you never fuckin' get your own serving?" White asks, every time.

"I'm on a fuckin' diet," Moorzo explains, every time.

"Order some more room service," White suggests.

Fans approach. White talks to them with his mouth full, sends them to Tom the cop for free tickets. Tom pulls the stack from the back right pocket of his blue jeans like a greaser going for his comb. "What do you need?" he asks. "Two together? Three?" He fans out the tickets like a deck of golden cards, looking for just the right seats.

Raymond shoots everything. The results are edited and posted late at night, comic minimovies about White's life, viewed by a hundred thousand people.

Often, when there is a big fight upcoming, White likes to Twitter where he'll be so people can meet him and win free tickets. So far this weekend, he has given out two thousand free tickets. All the recipients are grateful and overwhelmed. To meet such a huge media celebrity! And so normal. Bro! Dude! "You seem just like a regular person," one girl tells him as he signs her T-shirt. Another guy chokes up while telling White about losing his job: "These tickets are the best thing that's happened to me in two years." White doesn't know what to say to that. He gives the guy a strong soul shake followed by a hug.

Now he lifts a spoonful to his mouth, savoring the tangy taste. "Lemme tell you when I started goofing around with Twitter," he says. "Lemme fuckin' lay this out for you.

"I'm in New York City. It's 10:30 on a Monday night in midtown Manhattan. It's raining. And it's a Jewish holiday, okay? As you know, I'm a Pinkberry freak. I like to have my Pinkberry. I have this one store in midtown Manhattan that will stay open for me late. I just have to call and let them know, and after I have dinner, I always go there and eat Pinkberry, right? So this one time I'm like, 'Let's just fuck around here and try something.' I Twitter my people. I say, 'Meet me at Pinkberry in midtown Manhattan. I got tickets to the fight if you guys want to go.'

"So you've been to New York enough, right? People don't give a fuck about anything in New York. I've never seen a city where people just don't fucking care — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can be walking down the street holding hands and people could care less, you know? They take shit in stride.

"I'm twenty minutes late showing up to Pinkberry. The fucking place is packed. There's people everywhere. I get out of the car and everybody starts cheering and going crazy. I look at the police and I'm like, 'Are you guys mad?' And they're like, 'We didn't believe you were coming.' I get out, I sign autographs, take pictures. We hand out like a zillion tickets. We're there for two hours.

"And this is the craziest fucking thing about this whole story: Not only is it Monday night, raining, in midtown Manhattan on a Jewish holiday, I'm giving away tickets to a fight in fucking Los Angeles."

He shakes his head abashedly — Shit, man, I can't believe it either. "Look at my arm," he says, offering up his big, stubbled salami of a forearm. "I get chills just talking about this."

Michael Muller

A swirling, hypnotic carnal atmosphere prevails inside the Staples Center. Huge screens run footage and interviews, beautifully produced in-house by the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, an Italian word meaning "melee." Music pounds at shattering volume from special high-powered speakers overhead, a mix of rock and hip-hop that readjusts the rhythm of your heart. Celebrities laugh and preen inside the velvet ropes; fans from all strata strut the concourse between matches, seeing and being seen; the alcohol and nachos flow. Down in the Octagon, the fighters come two by two, carved and thickly muscled. There is much kicking and punching, much grappling on the mat. Pounding fists, spurting blood, flying sweat, arms and legs twisted in wrong directions; the sickening rolled-back eyeballs of a man being choked, followed by the frantic tapping hand, the tap out, a cry of uncle to stop the match. White patrols the territory ringside in a Tom Ford suit, welcoming VIPs, signing autographs, putting out fires. At the start of each round, he returns to his place at a table where there is a monitor and headset so he can listen to the live broadcast. He watches his fighters raptly, grimacing with each elbow and roundhouse like everyone else in the joint. Like a kid in his room with a boxful of action figures, he has willed this spectacle into reality.

As it happened, we're here tonight because White, a lifelong boxing fan, had become fascinated with jujitsu — an ancient form of combat developed around the principle of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it. One night at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, White met an MMA fighter who specialized in the discipline. In short order White had himself and both Fertitta brothers signed up for lessons. "We got fucking psychotic about it," White recalls. "We started training three, four days a week. And then we started to learn shit on our own that the other guys didn't learn, so that when we trained, we could tap each other out."

Traveling around the country to attend UFC fights as spectators, White and the brothers would sit in the audience and brainstorm — We could do this so much fuckin' better! White branched out to managing and training some MMA fighters himself, including Chuck Liddell and another former champ, Tito Ortiz. During negotiations for one of his fighters, he discovered that the then-seven-year-old UFC was in trouble. MMA fighting was banned almost everywhere; pay-per-view wouldn't touch it, either. White and the brothers ended up buying the league in 2001 for $2 million.

Lorenzo Fertitta had recently stepped down as the vice-chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Using Fertitta's contacts and general know-how, the partners set about changing the rules of UFC fighting (e.g., time limits and rounds), cleaning it up, making it more palatable in statehouses around the nation. At one point the league was $44 million in debt. There was a decision to stay the course. At the eleventh hour, White and company somehow convinced testosterone-rich Spike TV to air a UFC show, The Ultimate Fighter. (That first season, to sweeten the pot, the partners even paid the production costs.) Today it is the network's biggest franchise. In 2008, Forbes estimated the UFC's worth at $1 billion. Even in 2009, despite the awful economy, UFC says its revenues grew by 20 percent over 2008.

UFC 104 goes off without a hitch — until the title bout.

The reigning champion, Lyoto "the Dragon" Machida, thirty-one, is an ethnic Japanese trained by his father in a special form of karate. In the days leading up to the fight, White raved about him: "He can throw his feet as fast as other guys throw their hands," he told the press. "He's only a couple fights away from being called, pound-for-pound, the best MMA fighter in the world." Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, twenty-eight, was in the middle of a comeback, a former star of the Pride Fighting Championships, a popular Japanese MMA league in which he picked up his nickname. Two years ago people were calling him the best fighter in the world. He beat Liddell, he beat everybody. And then he had two knee surgeries back-to-back; he was out for a little over a year. "He's back to his former self," White declared.

In person at various press stops during the week, Shogun and Machida had been perfect gentlemen, each safely enfolded within his own entourage. One person in each camp spoke English. (Machida's father, a distinguished little mop-haired man wearing a denim karate gig and Japanese-style sandals, brought Yoda to mind.) "These are arguably two of the best strikers in the world," White told the press — the language barrier meant that he had to carry the lion's share of prefight publicity himself. "They both have great kicks, knees, elbows, punches. It's going to be a war."

The fight is slated for five rounds, five minutes each. (Nontitle bouts are three rounds.) Shogun takes the offensive from the opening bell, pounding Machida's outer and inner thighs with kick after kick, a tactic designed to rob the champ of his legs. Machida gives his best, but without his secret weapon, feet like hands, he seems unable to do much beyond surviving the repeated savage blows from his opponent. Toward the end of the match, Machida's lip is split and bleeds copiously. Later it will require stitches.

When the decision is announced, Machida is the surprise winner, three rounds to two. The champ retains his belt — fourteen pounds of sterling silver and twenty-four-karat-gold plate.

There is a smattering of boos — the music is so loud, it is hard to be sure.

Visibly angry with the decision — Who cares what I think? I'm only the fuckin' promoter! — White retreats with his entourage to his private dressing room, where he is joined by two financial officers from Zuffa. Along with Lorenzo Fertitta, White decides who should win the bonus money for best submission and the rest. Bonus checks for all the fighters are written out by hand. When they get to Shogun's check, White orders the accountants to "pay the taxes." Meaning, essentially, that he wants Shogun's previously contracted payday to be doubled.

With a check for $250,000 in hand, White goes off looking for Shogun.

When the defeated challenger sees the boss enter his dressing room, he rises shamefacedly from his bench — his body language says defendant about to be sentenced. His manager stands stolidly at his left elbow; his entourage surrounds him in a semicircle.

White hands Shogun his check. He points to the amount. "Tell him that's the real number," White instructs the manager.

"Thank you, thank you very much," Shogun says in heavily accented English. Back home in Curitiba, Brazil, his wife is expecting their first child. He looks appreciative — if not exactly satisfied.

"We paid the taxes," White reiterates. Maybe he didn't understand? He points to the check again. "That's the real number there. That's take-home pay."

Shogun listens to the translation. He ratchets his proud, chiseled jaw one crank higher. "Okay, thank you," he says. "Thank you very much."

"I know it doesn't erase what happened."

Resigned: "No, no problem."

"But it's gotta make you feel a little better." White elbows the fighter playfully in the triceps — I just gave you an extra hundred grand, dude, lighten up!

Shogun breaks down and smiles for real. White regards him appraisingly. "Do you want a rematch?"

No translation is necessary.

The cornermen clap and cheer and hug one another. They pound their fighter on the back. He winces.

"He will do it if Machida will do it," the manager says, not to be disincluded.

"Thank you very much," Shogun says. This time you can tell he really means it.

"No, thank you," White says. "Great fight. Really great fight." He also means it. "But listen. Next time? Be more aggressive at the end. When there's thirty seconds left, go for it, steal the round, you know what I mean?"

"I know I know I know," Shogun says. Coming into that last round, he'd thought he had it won. The expression on his face is universal.

Back in the Escalade, headed west toward Beverly Hills, there is a sated, overtired feeling among the occupants, reminiscent of a ride back to the hotel with relatives after a wedding. Extending the image are the extra bodies stuffed into the vehicle. Lorenzo Fertitta is wedged between Moorzo and Raymond in the far back. Craig Borsari, a Zuffa executive in charge of operations and production, is sitting on top of the medicine cooler, next to White in the second row. (White's wife — a natural stunner — has wisely opted to take a separate car back to the hotel. Together they have three children under age nine. The two boys train with daddy in MMA.)

Raymond hands White another bottle of pink-tinted Smartwater. The boss is still sweaty and congested. His shirt is unbuttoned to the abdomen. Everyone fusses with their various phones.

"I have so many fucking texts," White says, to nobody in particular. He scrolls down, reads randomly: " 'Shogun got fucked.' 'That's a fucking rematch if I ever saw one.' 'Maybe the worst decision in Zuffa-UFC History.' "

"No way!" Fertitta protests from his seat in the back.

"Truthfully," White says, "I had Shogun winning the fight."

"It was close," Fertitta says diplomatically. "But to say it was the worst decision in fuckin' history? ..." His voice trails off in real disappointment.

"This fight was very calculated," allows Borsari.

"How about that flurry from Machida in the third round?" Raymond enthuses.

"How about Shogun dancing in the fourth?" Moorzo says. "He looked like Ali up there."

"Some of those kicks were brutal."

"Do you know how bad it hurts when you get kicked like that?" White asks. "That shit will fold you."

"It looked like Machida broke a rib," Raymond observes, ever the caretaker.

"Machida's beat up, man," White says. "He sat there at the end of the press conference because he didn't want to limp off the stage in front of everybody. He can't even fucking walk."

"You know how bad they must feel in the morning?" Borsari muses.

White groans. "How do you think they feel on the flight back to fucking Brazil?"

"I'd just stay here for a week first," Borsari says.

"Or go to a spa for four days," Raymond suggests.

"So what's a good place to eat late in L. A.?" White asks. He hasn't had a thing since the chicken-noodle soup.

"How about Mr. Chow's?"

"Ben Frank's."

"Spago?"

Now White succumbs to a coughing fit. He hocks up a loogie; Raymond hands him a napkin. "Actually, I still feel like shit," White concludes. "There's good room service at the hotel."

"Great room service," Moorzo says.

Everybody cracks up.

Mike Sager Mike Sager is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter who's been a contributor to Esquire for thirty years.

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