One of the stats that UFC president Dana White likes to reiterate when quizzed about the growth of mixed martial arts is that the UFC is in a half a billion homes worldwide. Via the massive population distribution in China and India, White and the UFC team is looking to double that number and more by the end of summer. “We’re a couple months away from closing deals in China and India that will put us in over a billion homes all over the world”, tells the Inquirer in Philadelphia, the city which hosts UFC 133 on August 6th. “Think about where this sport’s going to be with a generation of kids growing up in a billion homes worldwide watching the UFC.”

That is a pretty staggering informational piece to mull over and bodes well for the potential of the sport worldwide, especially the UFC, which is the monster leading brand across the planet for mixed martial arts.

Many question the UFC’s vision of world domination and attempts to become the leading sport across the globe. However, those who reduce it to grandiosity stemming from delusion were also most likely a few years back quick to dismiss the sport reaching the heights it has to date.

The worldwide appeal of fighting is something White has been drilling for years, and while he’s no PhD in biology, he often speaks about fighting being a part of DNA and we all seem to have a primal urge to want to witness it. White recently elaborated on the cross-cultural appeal of fighting vis-a-vis some other sports to the Philadelphia Daily News:

This is a sport that can work all over the world, unlike football, unlike cricket, I mean, could you imagine trying to start a cricket league here in America? It’d be a [freaking] joke. It’s huge in India, but it’d never work here. We wanted to build a brand that is versatile and can work anywhere and that’s what we’ve accomplished.

I think when you talk about wanting to become the biggest sport in the world, soccer (football) fans will definitely get up in arms and get extremely upset at the thought of someone entertaining the belief that they could usurp the game’s position as the most popular sport on the planet. Nations across the globe love the sport of soccer and it’s so entrenched into the culture of a vast amount of countries. One of the aspects of a game of soccer which gives it a different sort of appeal is that it’s such an easy game to play and anyone can do it. You just need a ball or anything to kick around and you can play. Anyone can train mixed martial arts, but it’s definitely not a cultural norm everywhere you go to train in fighting. One of the problems is the fact that mixed martial arts, while is a legitimate sport with highly trained athletes, to the casual uninformed observer looks very similar to the sort of things you see people doing in the form of violence to people they dislike when rage takes over the thinking brain. It’s one of those situations where future generations (the generation in the billion homes watching the UFC) will feel a lot more comfortable with mixed martial arts, it will be not only palatable but highly pleasing from an athletic entertainment standpoint to watch these fights and be interested in all aspects of it, including training. It’s not an overnight process for sure, but one that the UFC has definitely kickstarted in a fast motion with a large young generation hooked onto mixed martial arts.

I recall speaking to Carlos Newton in early 2004 prior to his UFC 46 bout against Renato “Charuto” Verrissimo, and asked where he thought the sport was headed. This was prior to any reality series deals with Spike TV, and still an age where the majority of the sport had no clue what the UFC was and those who did thought it was a ridiculous circus-like stage-show for the bloodthirsty. But Newton, the first Canadian UFC champion, was extremely confident that the sport was heading to the top. The analogy he made was a rather interesting and effective one. He spoke about how people just know KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is good and like because it just smells good. And the same could be said, from his perspective, about mixed martial arts. I recall him talking about how the sport of MMA just is so visually pleasing and enjoyable to watch that once people get a chance to watch it, they’ll be hooked. Newton prophetically described the recent rise of the UFC and mixed martial arts in the 155 nations the sport has descended upon. I don’t anticipate any different sort of reaction when the UFC invades India and China. It’s rather paradoxical that fighting seems to bring the world together, but it does. The spirit and talent of competitors, the unpredictable nature of the game and the superb excitement of a live fight really draw people into a singular community. Those massive populations in India and China are going to fall in love with the game of MMA and as other countries catch a glimpse of it they will fall in line as well.

So it makes sense for the UFC to not only think really big, but to also put no limits on that enormity based on current cultural conditions.

DESI FIGHTER. Fight Hard. Fight Proud.

DESI FIGHTER Original MMA Apparel.

“In India, there’s 300 million males aged 18-24. That’s more people than are actually in the U.S.” –UFC President Dana White.