Organized Chaos

Update, Wednesday, 2:46 p.m.

The big news was that Lorenzo Fertitta, the No. 2 highest paid casino executive, will join Dana White as heads of Ultimate Fighting Championship. His primary focus is on international expansion, which is a move that, of course, worked well for professional boxing and pro wrestling.

He turned away from a salary of more than $100 million to begin a job that he said demanded a significant amount of involvement. Speculation has run rampant that White’s job is in danger, but he scoffed at the notion.

The aim is to increase the scope of MMA and doing so in population-rich foreign countries. This is especially true given how many males reside in countries across Asia and Europe in UFC’s target demographic of ages 18-34.

Again, this isn’t huge news as far as mind blowing stuff. But it is big for the industry that is already saturating the mainstream public. 

—————————— (earlier post stuff follows)

Dana White, president of UFC, pushed back his “huge” announcement until today (Wednesday). He claimed late last week that his news was only to be broken to his staff, and that he never intended to bring the media into it.

Right, and I’m Lord of the Universe.

Dana White recently has been quoted as saying MMA will be the biggest sport in America within the next 10 years. It will even be bigger than the NFL, he said. That’s still to be seen.

The latest news is he announced on Tuesday that UFC will holf a live event July 19 on Spike TV. The featured bout is middleweight champion Anderson Silva moving up to light heavyweight to face James Irvin. The event also directly opposes a first-ever pay-per-view event from the Affliction company.

White conceded that the “big” announcement may not live up to the hype surrounding it. However, he said it still will be big news.

I’ll update later when word trickles out, which is expected at around 2 p.m. CDT.

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