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I would put Ali as the greatest of all time human being. I mean, it’s easy as a fight fan to focus on him as a fighter, but when you focus on him as a human and you think about what he meant at that time and place, the things he said, the poems he came up with, just the overall brilliance of Muhammad Ali. The guts to have the strength mentally, physically, and emotionally to go against the grain at the time that he did it. It was a very dangerous time for him to be who he was. Yet, because of how smart he was and because of his personality and how if you sat down with him, you could be the biggest racist on the planet, it’s hard to get in the room with Ali and not like Ali.

Certain things that I loved about boxing, I incorporated into the UFC. Things that I hated about boxing, I made sure that the UFC stayed far away from.

I mean, it’s the difference between our commentary and what I feel their commentary was. We don’t hire paid talking heads. We hire people that have actually been in it, done it, love it, and are super passionate about the sport.

Humans have been fighting for millennia, and it seems like with the UFC, the rate of innovation is just insane. In these last three decades, it seems like we’ve discovered how to do unarmed combat faster and better than any time in human history.

Our first jiu-jitsu lesson, me, Lorenzo, and Frank was with John Lewis, and I remember thinking, “Holy shit, I can’t believe that I’m 28 years old and this is the first time I’m experiencing this, that another human being could do this to me on the ground.” It is such an eye-opening, mind-blowing experience when you do it for the first time and then you become completely addicted to it. And we were training three, four days a week trying to kill each other, me and the Fertittas, and that’s how we fell in love with the sport. I think that first time that you do jiu-jitsu, it’s like the red pill and the blue pill in The Matrix.

Frank Shamrock came in one day and Frank Shamrock had me in side control. The pressure that this guy put on my chest made me tap. It felt like there was a car on my chest. And with zero effort from him, it was absolutely effortless. And when you train with somebody that’s at such a level when you’re not, it is the most humbling, mind-blowing experience you can have, especially as a man, but as a human being.

What’s the real beautiful thing about jiu-jitsu? It’s like when you talk about if you wanted to get your daughter into a martial art, “Should I put my daughter into karate or should I put her into this?” You put your daughter into jiu-jitsu 100% because it’s not about size or strength, it’s about technique.

I literally picked up the phone and called Lorenzo and I said, “Hey, I just got off the phone with Bob Meyrowitz, the owner of the UFC, I think they’re in trouble and I think we could buy it and I think we should. You should reach out to him.” So Lorenzo called Meyrowitz, and I don’t remember the timeline, but within the next two months, we ended up owning the UFC for $2 million bucks.

The early days of building this company and building the sport, it was the wild, wild west, man. It was crazy back then. I was literally at war every day with all different types of people. Plus traditionally, there’s bad people that are involved in fighting, man, there’s lots of bad people. And we had to sift our way through that for the first seven, eight years.

When I first started this, we had a production team that was the production team that was in it before we bought it. So there was this incident with Phil Baroni, where Phil Baroni, we did an interview with him, and Baroni flips out in the interview when they’re interviewing him and he goes crazy. And I thought it was awesome. So I’m like, “We’re going to leave this in. We’re going to leave this interview in.” And the production guys were arguing with me. They’re like, “We can’t leave this in. This is totally unprofessional.” I said, “I don’t give a shit. This is what we’re doing. We’re going to do this and clip it like this and do it like that.” We’re sitting in the venue that night, and I lean over to Lorenzo because the fight’s coming up. I go, wait till you see this interview with Baroni. They didn’t fucking do it. They didn’t do it. These guys were freelance guys that worked for Showtime at the time or something like that. I literally got up from my fucking seat, went back there, kicked the fucking door of the truck open, and I said, “You motherfuckers. You ever do that again and I’ll fire every one of you.” Let’s just put it this way. I ended up firing every one of them anyway and going with a whole new crew. But these were the type of things that early on… There’s so much stuff. I mean, I could sit here for three days and walk you through all the stuff that used to go on back in those days. But it was the Wild Wild West, man.

In the early days, there was two employees, me and another girl that worked for me, for my company before I started doing this, and then we slowly started to bring people on and you started to build a team. And then before you know it, we had 10 people. We used to do our Christmas parties back then too. There’d be eight to ten people at our Christmas party. But a lot of it is, you’ll learn as you go. You know what me and the Fertittas knew about production when we bought this UFC? Zero. I want to say we had two or three weeks to pull off an event. This is what we knew about production. Zero. Jack shit. So we had to dive in and we had to learn it. We had to figure it out, and we knew what we wanted. We knew what we liked. We knew what we were looking for. It’s just about building a good team, and I think that’s one of the things, if you want to talk about what I’ve accomplished in the last 25 years of my life, I’ve been really good at building teams.

You have to have the vision. Without the vision, there’s nothing. And then you build the team to come in and help execute.

The secret to success, I would say, first of all is passion and consistency. You have to love what you do. You have to get up every day. And I get here every day at 9:30 in the morning. When we sold in 2016, a lot of people in the company made a lot of money, and they all took off and they retired. Other than the Fertittas, I made the most money. I’m still here. I get here at 9:30 every morning. Last night I left here at 8:30. And I don’t know how late I’m going to be here tonight, but I love what I do. We get up every day and grind. I work just as hard now as I did back then. The difference between back then and now is I don’t have to do a bunch of the that I don’t really like to do, like budget meetings. I don’t like budget meetings. I sat through enough fucking budget meetings and… Horrible budget meetings. Horrible. We’re losing millions of dollars a year, and I’m in these budget meetings. So I get to pick and choose what I do these days. Back in the early days, you don’t get to pick and choose. You have to be involved in everything.

You have to pay attention to every single detail of the business early on. You’re involved in everything. There’s no days off, there’s no birthdays, there’s no Christmas, there’s none of that shit.

I was doing this when I was broke, and I’m doing this now when I’m not broke. I’m doing this because I love it. And I feel like there’s so much more to do, and this is truly my passion in life.

People think that these guys in the martial arts movies are tough, and he was talking about what UFC fighters would do to these martial arts guys if they ever got their hands on them. And I was like, this is exactly what I need. A guy who isn’t afraid to speak his mind and knows the sport inside and out, but more importantly, is super passionate about it and loves it. Joe Rogan does not come off as a paid talking head. He comes off as a guy who loves this.

I value loyalty a lot, and I remember there was a moment not too long ago, maybe a year ago when I was sitting with Joe and he had a phone call with you. Joe was getting canceled for something, and they didn’t want him commentating the fights, and you on the phone offered your resignation over this. I got teary-eyed over that. That’s such a… You’re a good man.

Anybody who is with me, has been with me, knows. When you’re with me, you’re with me. It’s a two-way street. It’s not a one-way street. I’m not one of these guys that is going to roll over and… It’s like going through COVID. I wasn’t laying any of these people. Some of these people have been with me for 20 years. We’re going to lay them off? This will motherfucker will burn, burn, before I would do that to my people. None of that type of stuff is ever going to happen while I’m here. I can’t say what’s going to happen when I leave, but when I’m here, the people who are with me and have been with me, they know exactly what’s up, and Joe knows what’s up. And again, it’s a two-way street. Joe Rogan has been very loyal to me, and I’m very loyal to Joe Rogan.

And in this business, you might be an older fighter, but if you’re still ranked in the top 10, there’s young guys coming for you. Killers. Young killers are coming out and they want your position. So you being the veteran that you are have to prepare yourself to go in. And everybody was saying, when we made that fight with Saint-Denis that Poirier was in big trouble. That’s awesome. That helps build the entire thing that Poirier, and then Poirier goes out and does what he did that night. That’s what makes fucking legends.

Whatever takes your attention on a Saturday night is my competitor.

Losing sometimes is a catalyst for greatness.

When you’re successful, there’s always people out there that are going to talk shit.

It’s funny when you talk about how powerful fighting is. This last Miami event, the President of Ecuador and the President of Spain both posted about the fights. Habib beat Conor. Putin was on FaceTime before he even made it to the locker room. Trump, sitting President, ex-President, watching all the fights, calling, wants to talk about the fights. Valentina Shevchenko, every time she goes home, she meets with the President of the country. The list goes on and on and on. Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, the list goes on and on and on, the most powerful people in the world are all obsessed with fighting.

Politics is the most dirtiest, scummiest thing on planet earth, man, and who knows how this is all going to play out. It’s all dirty. It’s all ugly. There’s nothing dirtier than politics, nothing.

I think that Mike Tyson is actually one of those unique guys who has crossed over. Any of these other boxers from his era, they have no way of making money other than fighting. Mike Tyson has made a lot of money outside of fighting. Tyson still has that aura. You could be at a restaurant and he walks in and you’re like, “Holy fuck. Mike Tyson’s here.” He still has that type of aura and energy in a room, and he makes lots of money outside of the ring. I think that he ends up getting these offers that he can’t refuse.

The guys that get into it for the right reason are the guys who get into it for greatness. Because you want to be the fucking best. And when you’re in it for that reason, you love it and you want to be looked at as the best ever, and you have the talent, the money happens.

The exhaustion makes cowards of us all.

When you think about these fights that you see in the UFC every fucking Saturday when these men and women get to this point where they’ve been in a dog fight, yet they keep fucking going and you keep trying to win. You can’t imagine what’s going on inside their heads. Self-doubt and all these other things that come into play when exhaustion sets in and they fucking power through it.

It’s always great to win. Winning is a great feeling in business, in sports, in life, and definitely in gambling. Losing is never fun, but it’s part of the game. You know what I mean? If you want to be in the game and it’s sports, it’s business or whatever, there’s going to be wins and there’s going to be losses.

When you gamble and you lose and you go into a deep, dark depression, I’ve seen this with guys that do it, get depressed. Gambling isn’t for you. If you are the type of person that’s on social media and people say horrible things to you and you get depressed, you shouldn’t be on social media. You know what I mean? These are all part of being in the game. When you’re in the fucking game, great things happen and really bad things happen, and you got to take it all in stride. And you got to pick yourself up the next day, strap your fucking shoes back on and get out there and go to fucking war again. That’s how it works.

Every day when you get out of bed, life’s standing right there to kick you in the fucking face, man. Could be anything. Could be you get up and you walk downstairs, you got a fucking flat tire, and you’re late for work, and you got this and that. Life is going to throw all kinds of crazy shit at you, and you have to be ready for it, and you got to fucking deal with it. You can’t curl up into a ball. You can’t run away from it. You can’t hide. You have to take all this shit head on. You have to get up… Every day when I get up out of bed, I strap up and I’m getting ready for fucking war. Because I know I’m coming in here. I know a bunch of bad shit’s going to happen that I’m going to have to fucking deal with. And if that’s not bad enough, when I finally get out of here, I’m probably going to go to the casino and I’m going to get into another fucking war. I thrive in chaos. I actually love chaos. Everybody talks about retiring. Fuck that shit. What am I going to do when I retire? What would I do? I like to go to war. I like to battle. I like to win. Sometimes I lose, but then I have to come back from the loss. And I love to build brands. I love to set short term and long-term goals and then knock them all down. This is just the stuff that excites me.

I can’t tell if the city of Las Vegas was built for me or I was built for this fucking city, but I love it.

I believe that what you put out, you get back. And I believe that when you have, you should take care of other people and you should always try to bring people up with you

A lot of people think they have all this time so they fucking waste it, and they never go out and do what they really set out to do or accomplish or do anything great in their life.

I’m 54 years old right now, like that. I mean, it just fucking flew by. And you think when you’re young that you have all this time. You have no time. There’s no time. I mean one of the quotes on the wall in the gym in there is, “There is no tomorrow,” from Rocky III. There is no tomorrow. Fuck that shit. Let’s get all this shit done today

I don’t even like to sleep. My life is so fucking awesome, I don’t even want to go to bed at night. I don’t even want to go to sleep. I want to stay up, I wish I could do fucking 24 hours and never have to sleep. That’s how much I love my life.

I mean humans fight and humans love watching fighting.

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration, it’s a dare.”

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