Art Davie’s delightfully decadent yet demented dream to create the first Ultimate Fighting Championship and make it a true reality show some 20 years ago was lacking just one important element.
A TV partner.
ESPN’s rejection letter arrived May 28, 1993.
“After carefully considering your show as far as our scheduling, programming and commitments are concerned, ESPN will not be able to air your product,” wrote programming manager Mike Aresco.
Six weeks later came a similar thanks-but-no-thanks form letter from Terri Quinn, the program director of L.A.-based Prime Ticket. The Jerry Buss-created channel had been in existence only about eight years, focusing more on Lakers and Kings games, and having just landed the rights to the Angels. Infomercials to fill in between games seemed a safer bet.
“Please feel free to submit a proposal should you find that you have other product to offer in the future,” this note cheerfully concluded.
By that point, HBO and Showtime had drop-kicked Davie’s proposal to the curb as well.
Not so funny, but all that did was seem to inspire the ex-Marine and Vietnam vet living in Torrance to not go down without a fight.
Explaining the ingenious and creative process by which he eventually pulled off this 12-man mixed martial arts event in his new autobiographical book, “Is This Legal? The Inside Story of the First UFC From the Man Who Created It” ($24.95, Ascend Books, 272 pages), Davie relishes retracing his steps and missteps.
Because in the end, whether we’re all on board or not, he did create the template that today has become one of the most explosive multimedia, programmable TV sports enterprises on cable, over-the-air TV and the Internet.
At what cost did Davie’s idea take off? Consider this book is 10 bucks more than the $14.95 that nearly 90,000 surprisingly shelled out to pay-per-view distributor Semaphore Entertainment Group just to have living room access to UFC 1.
For those who don’t recall what happened in Denver on Nov. 12, 1993, Davie put the spotlight on legends Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock and six others in a winner-take-all tournament that almost didn’t happen because of fears of someone getting killed.
Instead, it shook the foundation of what people considered as acceptable televised pugilism. It was captioned best by former NFL star-turned-broadcaster Jim Brown, who said that night as he watched the loose teeth fall his way while sitting just outside this strange octagon-shaped cage: “What we’ve learned tonight is that fighting is not what we thought it was.”
Davie, a Brooklyn-born, street-smart former car salesman, already had an idea of what it could become.
He once read a Pat Jordan story in Playboy magazine about the famed Gracie Jiu-Jitsu academy in Torrance and took lessons there to see what the martial art discipline was all about. It piqued his curiosity of what could happen if boxers and other martial artists mixed it up to see who had the stronger survival skills.
The four-year process to make UFC 1 happen involved Davie doing much of his pre-Internet research at the downtown Torrance Public Library, reading up on what had succeeded and failed and with whom he could connect in moving forward.
It all seems rather primitive on a media landscape that today has multiple MMA events on all kinds of platforms. Fox, which began a seven-year partnership with the UFC in 2011, is promoting UFC Fight Night in San Jose this weekend at the same time Bellator has one for Spike TV taking place in Temecula.
Yet when Davie was, in his words, “trying to push the peanut up the hill with my nose,” he knew his TV options were limited, especially if an over-the-air channel wanted to be a co-conspirator in his plot.
“You couldn’t allow someone to choke someone else out to win a title in front of an audience that just watched ‘Murder, She Wrote’ (on CBS in primetime),” Davie said this week from his home in Las Vegas. “No way. It had to be pay-per-view, and maybe cable.”
The PPV universe back then had only about 22 million homes wired for the service. Today, there’s more than 100 million.
The two main PPV outlets related to HBO (TVKO) and Showtime (SET), however, weren’t buying it.
As Davie said in his book, HBO head of sports programming Lou DiBella “let me know that there was a memo floating around their offices in New York that said if a guy came to their door pitching anything that had to do with kickboxing or martial arts — slam the door in his face.”
Meanwhile, the late Jay Larkin, who set up boxing events for Showtime, “told me that he’d be more interested if I was pitching him a show on ‘marital’ arts rather than martial arts.”
After Davie and his partners made UFC 1 happen, and they got a second and third under their belts, they had to contend with a media backlash that followed the lead of the New York Times, which referred to it as the degradation and decline of Western civilization. With his reference to “human cockfighting,” Sen. John McCain would actively campaign against it — which turned out to be the sport’s sales pitch.
Davie eventually sold his business to Semaphore after UFC 5 in 1995, which had more than 300,000 pay-per-view customers.
The states trying to ban the sport took too much out of Davie’s sails.
Semaphore was teetering toward bankruptcy when it sold the UFC to Zuffa LLC — created by brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and business partner Dana White — for $2 million in 2001.
Today, the UFC produces more than 40 live events a year, including stops in Germany, England, Ireland, Brazil, Australia, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and China. It is broadcast in more than 149 countries and territories in 30 languages. And it has launched UFC Fight Pass, a digital subscription service giving fans access to exclusive live UFC events and fights, as well as the UFC fight library and more.
Eight weight divisions — from the 125-pound flyweights to the 265-pound maximum heavyweights — have been established. And less than two years after creating its first women’s division, White, the UFC’s president, has deemed women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey the company’s biggest star.
“The Ultimate Fighter,” the reality show that helped spark the organization’s meteoric rise with its debut in 2005, is nearing its 10th season. That will feature a new 115-pound women’s division and will debut Sept. 10 on Fox Sports 1.
“It’s grown enormously, and in that sense, I’m proud to have been there for the start,” Davie said.
UFC 176 had been planned for Aug. 2 at Staples Center and already generated nearly $1 million in ticket revenue before it was canceled due to injuries. Still, the longevity is testimony to Davie’s vision.
Davie says in the book’s epilogue he’s not bittersweet about the UFC’s success. He told a Sports Illustrated writer last year that he was driving down Sunset Boulevard in his convertible recently and stopped at a red light, looking up to see a huge billboard featuring a UFC bout with Randy Couture, a fighter Davie once recruited to join his shows.
“I felt like a divorced father who just realized someone else was raising his kids,” Davie said. “Then the light changed, and I moved on.”
So what would happen today if Davie sent a letter to ESPN to inquire about the company’s interest in a UFC event?
“That’s interesting, considering ESPN is still a Disney property and they continue to be particularly reticent and hesitant about anything related to MMA,” Davie said.
“There’s a good example of the mainstream still saying, ‘Well, it’s still on the margins.’ In fact, ESPN passed on doing a ’30 for 30’ documentary about me that could have happened three months ago based on the book. I got a feeling it was MMA they’re still not ready to embrace.
“On the other hand, Viacom, Spike and NBC Sports has made a commitment. Fox obvious did so, too, with a $700 million deal (with Zuffa).
“Somewhere down the road, is it possible CBS, NBC or ABC could show this? It’s possible, but imagine what this will be like in 20 more years. It’ll only get bigger.”
And maybe “Murder, She Wrote” will have a new storyline to consider.
