I met Jeff Mullen in the bathroom as he stood in front of the mirror trying to wipe the blood of Elvis Sinosic off his suit jacket. Sinosic had just lost an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout by unanimous decision to Allessio Sakara. Sinosic, clearly outmatched from the beginning of the three-round fight, spent most of the final round getting pummeled. By the end of the fight, Sinosic's face was so covered with his blood that it perfectly matched the red dye in his hair. Jeff Mullen, one of the three judges in this under-card bout for Ultimate Fighting Championship 57, was splattered by a bit of the blood trying to keep a good count of the blows.
"You don't even really think about it until after the fight. But after the fight you want to get it washed off real quick," he says. Mullen notes fighters in the league are tested for HIV and hepatitis. The blood dabbled by water into near invisibility on his suit, Mullen told me that even what looks like a lopsided fight can change with one blow: "Anyone can beat anyone on a given night."
Mullen works as a kickboxing instructor in Memphis and has been judging Ultimate Fighting Championship fights since 1996. "It is so explosive. Anything can happen at any time." And, like the fights themselves, Mullen sees the popularity of the league in explosive terms, particularly, he notes, in the past year after Spike TV began airing highlights of past bouts as well as producing a reality show featuring aspiring fighters:
"The more people that see it the more people are going to love it; everybody is going to be excited about it once they get a chance to see it. There are the kicks and submissions and takedowns. It is so much more exciting than boxing because you have so many more weapons: your hands, your feet, your knees."
And, fans do seem almost addicted to it. My friend Raelynn, 21, has followed the league since 1995 when she discovered her older brother watching a tape of UFC 6. "I just like it because it is a lot more intense than boxing. And, unlike wrestling, it is real people and real fights." She follows the league through websites, blogs, and even trying to run into the fighters around Vegas ("A lot of them train and hang out here"). Despite her long-term dedication and that this night's title fight included her favorite, Chuck Liddell (who won by a TKO against Randy Couture), Raelynn was forced to watch UFC 57 at home on pay-per-view. The rising popularity of UFC has made tickets almost impossible for her to get.
UFC 57 was the league's most lucrative event yet. The fight at Mandalay Bay sold out its 11,200 seats swiftly with an overflow room of 1,300 watching on closed circuit and thousands more on pay-per-view. The top tickets officially were priced at $700, but the markup enjoyed by ticket brokers led one scalper to favorably compare UFC to the most elite concerts. "One pair of tickets on the floor (to UFC 57) went for $3,500, and you aren't going to get that even for the Stones."
Clearly, UFC is a triumph of marketing and event planning as much as it is an athletic event. Short interviews with fighters played on video screens during the event show that while the fights are real (and can be bet on at the casino sport's book), the UFC knows the value of show business in a way that recalls the heyday of how fake wrestling did back in the '80s. Boxing writer Cesar Garcia, who is covering UFC 57 for Punch News magazine, tells me that the UFC organization is particularly skillful at creating fight matches that fans want to see. And UFC sure knows the audience; a visit to UFC's website reveals a privacy disclaimer that essentially tells fans that the company is helping themselves to any information about them they can harvest.
Sports get created. Dr. James Naismeth, for example, invented basketball; the first game took place on January 20, 1892 in Springfield, Massachusetts. There have been some changes since that game in basketball, ranging from the size of the court to the number of players. The Ultimate Fighting Championship league has a similar if slightly more colorful history, and one that preceded the term "mixed martial arts," which describes the sport.
Ultimate Fighting Championship started out in the early '90s (mostly with events in Japan, New Jersey and the deep South) like the plot of a Bruce Lee movie: a brutal competition with few rules and only one fighter emerging at the end of the night as the champion. As a result, the event was banned in much of the nation until Las Vegas brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased the league in 2001 and made it more legitimate. Reborn with weight classes, rounds, and basic rules, UFC was sanctioned by the Nevada Athletic Commission and has been holding around three events a year here ever since. Drivers leaving UFC 57 could see the marquee at Mandalay Bay proclaiming the arrival of UFC 58 there on March 4.
Boxing writer Garcia notes that this is the second time he has been sent to cover an Ultimate Fighting Championship and he expects to do more as these events increasingly become more mainstream. Though he is a fan of UFC, he also admits he has mixed feeling about it:
"This is just becoming more and more popular. It is brutal, violent and exciting. These fighters are really exciting for fans to watch and this is going to be really a challenge for boxing over the next few years. But boxing will always be my first love because of the artistry and the precision."