Issue 083
December 2011
Marc Ratner
UFC Vice President of Government & Regulatory Affairs
Hearing that the UFC had signed a deal with the Fox Network, I was thrilled. It’s a remarkable point in the history of MMA and a great thing for the sport. It’s clearly another positive and all it can do is benefit MMA in the regular sporting world. Having it on the Fox channel is also an asset for us when we are talking to different places about putting on events, which has been a large part of my role within the company for almost six years.
We have advanced, but that said, we’ve barely scratched the surface in really putting the sport on the map. There’s a long way to go before you can really say we are ‘mainstream’ but this is a big, big step in that direction. Wider exposure will educate more people and we’re going to have more eyeballs on this sport than we’ve ever had. That’s great, but it will always be about education and awareness. It’s part of the nature of what we do.
What’s really great about the sport right now is our demographic is 18–35 year olds, but every high-school wrestler in America knows about the UFC, and the guys fighting in the Octagon are their idols.
All the karate schools and the jiu-jitsu schools are also teaching mixed martial arts now so you have a whole new generation of kids growing up on the sport. I do believe the sport is going to keep growing.
Other North American-based sports have not been exported to such an extent. The big difference between mixed martial arts is that it translates anywhere in the world. People understand combat, they understand fighting so you don’t have to teach the rules, as you do with football (NFL) in America, or the rules of cricket if they want to bring it over from India. Mixed martial arts transcends everything in that way. It’s a worldwide sport, not just a North American sport.
Before I joined the UFC, I was executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission in Las Vegas (1992–2006). This really is a different role, obviously, because I’m also out there lobbying for the sport. But it’s been very gratifying for me, every day is fun and a challenge. I’ve been to places I never dreamed I would go to. It was a hard decision for me to make – to come over to mixed martial arts – I really wasn’t sure, but it’s the best decision for my business life I’ve ever made. I love boxing still, I go to as many fights as I can, and I look back on my time with great gratitude. But I’m more than happy to be with the UFC.
You really can’t compare the two sports though, they’re just so very different. But you can definitely love both boxing and MMA. The best analogy I have would be that I have two children, my oldest is boxing and my youngest is mixed martial arts, and I love them both!
We’ve recently been to the state of Vermont and they don’t know about the sport. When you go to a new state there’s a lot of people who think it’s still 1995 and so we have to educate them. Three US states -– Vermont, Connecticut and New York have not approved the sport yet.
We have a big map in the UFC’s office in Las Vegas. Five and a half years ago, when I joined, there were around 20–22 states with approval for MMA, now we’re up to 45. Every time we get a state to approve it we turn it green – for ‘go.’ New York is going to be a long struggle – because of political situations and the unions – but believe me it is a case of ‘when’ not ‘if.’ We’ll be there one day.
When it comes to Japan next year, we’ll probably self-regulate to start with. They don’t have a mixed martial arts commission but in order to grow the sport we’ve got to put these fights on and it would be a lot better if we didn’t have to self-regulate. I would love to be under their auspices but until they get it, we’re going to go there, push ahead, and grow the sport. We’ll be there on February 26th.
