On the
future of the UFC and its place among American sports: “What are the major
sports in
America
right now? The NFL and Major League Baseball, with the NBA third. The NHL was
fourth, but now we’re fourth, and we’re still in our infancy. Our ratings on Spike
TV beat most of the major sports in our 18-to-34 demo. Last year we beat four
Monday Night Football games in the demo. In eight years, the UFC will be bigger
than the NFL, bigger than World Cup soccer. It will be the biggest sport in the
world.”
On Senator
McCain’s “human cockfighting” comment and how it helped the UFC: “John McCain
created the UFC. All he meant was, you can’t put on illegal fights; you have to
be sanctioned by an athletic commission. We agreed.”
On who
would win in the Octagon, McCain or Obama: “I would go with Obama. He’s
younger. Hillary Clinton might kick the sh*t out of both of them.”
On the
death of boxing: “Corruption, fragmentation and greed killed boxing. When I
started with the UFC I took all the sh*t I hated about boxing and changed it.”
On Dallas
Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban and Donald Trump’s interest in MMA: “Mark Cuban’s a
smart guy. He’s passionate about basketball, but I don’t think he gives a sh*t
about mixed martial arts. He sees some quick money in it. Trump’s different. I
have a ton of respect for him. When the Fertittas bought the UFC, most venues
wouldn’t deal with us. We were outlaws. Out first event was at the Trump Taj
Mahal, and Trump actually came to the fights. You’ll never hear me say a bad
word about Donald Trump. He can have my seats anytime.”
On nearly
striking a multiyear deal with HBO and why he pulled out: “I pulled the plug at
the 23rd hour. HBO was pi**ed off… I would have had to sell out, literally.
They would have owned the UFC… I took meetings with HBO’s boxing guys. I’ll
tell you, if I had to hear one more time about how many fu**ing Emmys they had
won, I was going to dive out the window. I said ‘You won a bunch of Emmys, but
I’m kicking your a** on pay-per-view.’”
On the
Spike TV deal that helped lead to the UFC’s success: “There would probably be
no UFC without The Ultimate Fighter. Spike wouldn’t pay to produce it, so we
had to do that ourselves. It cost $10 million. Frank and Lorenzo said, ‘Okay,
we’re in for $44 million. Let’s go another $10.’ If they hadn’t had the balls
to do that, we wouldn’t be having this interview.”
On the
perceived excessive violence of MMA: “People think our sport’s more violent
than boxing. Wrong! They’re weirded out because it goes to the ground. We grew
up with John Wayne movies—you don’t hit a man when he’s down. It’s un American!
John Wayne would deck a guy, stand him back up and hit him again. So when
Americans first watch UFC—one guy’s on top of the other, hitting him when he’s
down—they say, ‘Oh God, he can’t defend himself!’ It’s not like that in
Asia, where they’ve been doing martial arts since the
samurai days.”
On former
UFC star and The Celebrity Apprentice Contestant Tito Ortiz: “That big-mouthed
bit*h, that clown. Back when he had the title, he refused to fight Chuck Liddell.
He sat on the sidelines for a year and a half, crying, ‘Aww, I don’t have any
money!’ So I brought him back and made him a coach on The Ultimate Fighter.
That year he made more than $6 million, yet he bit*hes about me. Well, I put up
with Tito’s sh*t when he was a decent fighter, but now he’s not and I don’t
have to… Did you see what a wall flower he was on [The Celebrity Apprentice]?
The guy has no presence. He was the idiot hiding in the back. If he actually
did something, people would know how stupid he is.”
