A Boxing Regulator Changes Corners (original) (raw)
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Kendall Grove, top, fighting Chris Price in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.Credit... Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times
- Nov. 24, 2006
About 20 minutes before the start of an Ultimate Fighting Championship event last month in Florida, one of the organization’s newest officials, Marc Ratner, was shaking his head, smiling and raising his eyebrows as he spoke about the show’s coming introduction, a video montage to be played on the arena’s big screens accompanied by the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”
“My favorite Who song,” Ratner said. “That fires me up.”
Not long after the show started, Ratner, 61, was peeking through the fence of the octagonal ring, trying to get a closer look at Seth Petruzelli’s bloody face, the result of a beating by his opponent, Matt Hamill. As Round 3 began, Ratner was chatting with the ringside physician, asking if Petruzelli was O.K. to continue.
“That was the regulator in me coming out,” Ratner said.
For 14 years, as the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Ratner was among the most well-respected boxing regulators in the country. But in May, he shifted his focus to the sport of mixed martial arts, joining the U.F.C. as its vice president for regulatory affairs. Now Ratner will have a hand in helping the booming sport try to gain broader acceptance.
The U.F.C. knows it must preserve its edge to appeal to a young, hip audience but at the same time take a sensible approach to safety, because that will largely determine how successful the sport is in gaining the approval of sanctioning bodies in more states.
Mixed martial arts is regulated and sanctioned in 22 states; New York is not one of them. The New York market would seem to be a pathway to a much higher profile, nationally and internationally.
Mixed martial arts combines punching, kicking and grappling, and is gruesome at times but is less dangerous than it was when it first gained popularity in the United States in the early 1990s. Then, there were few rules and no safety equipment.
In October 1996, Gov. George E. Pataki signed legislation to legalize and regulate the sport in New York after Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican from Rensselaer County, said he would not allow the Senate to approve a ban. Four months later, Bruno, the Senate majority leader, lightened his stance because of state regulations that he said were too harsh. In February 1997, Pataki signed legislation banning the sport.
Even Ratner spoke out against mixed martial arts, in an appearance on “Larry King Live” in the mid-1990s, when he was the executive director of the Nevada commission and the U.F.C. boasted of being no holds barred.
“I said that we would never have it in Nevada without rules,” Ratner said. “Here I was, really, saying it would never come.”
In 2001, at a convention in New Jersey that included mixed martial arts experts, doctors and regulators, unified rules were created. Nevada then sanctioned the sport, and the U.F.C. held its first show in Las Vegas in September 2001. The organization has held 28 events in Nevada.
The more U.F.C. events he saw, the more Ratner became a fan of the sport. Late last year, Ratner said, he began considering leaving the Nevada commission for a job in the private sector.
“I said, ‘He’s got to be with us, there’s no question about it,’ ” said Lorenzo Fertitta, who bought the U.F.C. with his brother Frank in 2001. “If Marc Ratner believes that the future is mixed martial arts and U.F.C., I think, a guy that was so ingrained in boxing, it means a tremendous amount as far was where we’re going.”
And where the sport is going depends on how successful it is at penetrating new markets like New York. To get the ban overturned in New York, the state Assembly and Senate must pass an exception to allow the sport, and the governor must sign it into law.
Mark Hansen, a spokesman for Bruno, said in a recent interview that the sport was “not on anybody’s radar screen” in the State Legislature. The battle in other states is also uphill.
“I don’t feel comfortable enough with mixed martial arts to have that as a sport in our state,” said Steven Allred, the chairman of the athletic commission in West Virginia, among the states that does not sanction mixed martial arts.
But Ratner has experience in dealing with athletic commissions, and he is well connected.
“His reputation precedes him,” said Kirk Hendrick, the U.F.C.’s chief operating officer who was the Nevada athletic commission’s lawyer from 1998-2001. “His respect in the boxing industry was enormous. He’s a bridge builder.”
Ratner said he had spoken with officials in several states, including New York, Illinois and Michigan. He hopes to have mixed martial arts approved in all 46 states that have athletic commissions.
For part of his pitch, he is planning to make a video with background information on mixed martial arts and send it to officials in states that do not sanction the sport. He also wants to develop a deeper pool of people who can officiate and judge the fights.
The U.F.C. publicizes an emphasis on safety, in an attempt to distance its organization from the no-holds-barred product that the previous owners promoted.
“There’s a lot of people who think that the sport is the same as it was 10 years ago, where it’s no holds barred, no rules, anything goes,” Ratner said. “That’s really one of my jobs, is to educate them.”
Of a slender build, Ratner was never a boxer despite his attraction to the sport as a child.
He spent his freshman year of college at Nevada-Las Vegas, then known as Nevada Southern, where he played right field for the baseball team. He spent his final three years at Nevada-Reno, where he ran track for one year.
After he graduated, Ratner became an official for high school and college football . He still occasionally referees high school games, and he is the replay official for U.N.L.V.’s home football games. He is also the shot-clock operator for U.N.L.V. basketball games and the commissioner of all high school officials in southern Nevada.
He joined the Nevada athletic commission as an inspector in 1984 and became the executive director in 1992. In that job, Ratner’s primary role was to administer the rules of the commission.
Keith Kizer, who replaced Ratner in May, praised him for the open lines of communication he maintained with fighters, promoters, managers, matchmakers, the news media and others closely involved with the sport.
“When the situation called for him to be humble, he was humble,” Kizer said in a telephone interview. “When the situation called for him to lay down the law, he laid down the law.”
Now Ratner is trying to change the law, one state at a time.
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