Hella Nation - Evan Wright [92]
Last January the Fertittas bought the UFC. They reformed it, added safety rules and equipment like ultralight gloves, persuaded cable operators to again carry UFC events and won the all-important sanctioning from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, on which, incidentally, Lorenzo had served for three years as a commissioner. So far, the Fertittas are estimated to have poured $30 to $50 million of their own money into the UFC. They are betting it all on their reigning champ, Tito Ortiz, whom Lorenzo calls the “front and center of our productions.”
Lorenzo Fertitta, the younger of the two brothers, is the more visible presence in the creation of the new UFC, controlling every aspect from negotiations with the cable companies to how much smoke will pour out of the smoke machines when Tito enters the arena. Lorenzo is slightly built and from afar looks like a sort of Las Vegas version of a hipster—with blondish hair, a goatee and shiny suits, all accented with a perfect suntan. Despite his status as pretty much the boss of everything, he has a low-key, approachable manner. Lorenzo enjoys sharing his family’s rags-to-riches fairy tale, how his father started as a bellhop in 1960, worked hard, put his life savings into a seedy bar—far from the Las Vegas Strip—and transformed this into a no-frills but thriving “locals market” casino, which his two sons took over and expanded into the nearly billion-a-year company it is today.
Lorenzo has a similar strategy for the UFC, taking what he sees as a neglected, undervalued asset—with the UFC being the equivalent of the seedy off-Strip bar his father purchased—and building it into a profitable franchise. “Our job is to educate the public that the UFC is not this brutal animalistic exhibition,” he says. “We put on fights in which world-class athletes compete to see who is better.”
At the same time, Lorenzo takes pride in the UFC’s new over-the-top pyrotechnics show that rivals that of a vintage KISS concert or a space shuttle explosion. Three thousand seats have been blocked in the Mandalay Arena—reducing capacity from twelve thousand to nine thousand—in order to make way for a three-story wall of fire that will herald Tito’s entrance atop an elevator rising from the stage. Lorenzo talks of the need to create “superstars.” He imagines a day when UFC fights are on television in American homes every week, becoming a “hybrid between boxing and the WWF.”
In the six months since Lorenzo pushed through state athletic commission sanctioning of the UFC, rivals have emerged—King of the Cage and Gladiator Challenge in California, and Full Contact Fighter, carried by the Fox Sports network in New York. But Lorenzo is confident that the UFC will prevail, thanks in part to Tito Ortiz, whom he speaks of like a secret weapon. “Tito was our greatest asset when we took over the UFC. It is going to be huge when Tito breaks. He’s a great fighter, and he has a powerful aura of destructiveness.”
IN HIS CRAMPED DRESSING ROOM, Tito Ortiz is an outlandish, almost cartoonish presence. He is twenty-six years old, stands six-foot-two and weighs 204 pounds. His hair is dyed fluorescent blond. His chest and legs are smoothly shaved. He wears black trunks with orange flames on them. Overdeveloped rhomboids give him a classic case of jock neck—it seems wider than his head. His face looks like a combination of granite and baby fat. In the ring it projects a menacing, apish ferocity. Out of the ring, Tito often displays a boyish, disarmingly goofy grin. There are three hours of undercard fights before Tito’s main event at nine. During this time Tito alternates between talkative exuberance