Ultimate Fighting's popularity continues to rise

	Tito Ortiz last month defeated Ken Shamrock for the Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight title. AP

I was at Mix Lounge, on the 64th floor of The Hotel at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. It was around 9 p.m., and the lights on the neighboring Luxor pyramid were starting to shoot up the sides and up into the night. This was early June. I was chatting with a group of people, which included a guy who promoted events at the MGM Grand.

"Tell me something," someone asked the MGM guy. (Pardon me if the details are vague, but this was one of those cocktail parties where the drinks were brought around with greater speed and frequency than the food.)

"Yes?" the MGM guy said.

"Do you think Ultimate Fighting will ever be bigger than boxing?"

The MGM guy smiled.

"It already is," he said. "I mean, we love Oscar De La Hoya. But unless it's him, Ultimate Fighting is already bigger than boxing."

This is the sort of news you pretty much have to hear direct from the source, because within the sports world, Ultimate Fighting and other mixed martial arts organizations remains the monster in the closet. You will not see mixed martial arts competitions on network television. I have not seen any highlights on SportsCenter. Or in the agate section of most local sports pages. Or very much in the magazine I work for.

Plenty of fringe sports carry on without mainstream attention. But in UFC's case, I would guess its time will come, and possibly quite soon.

This past weekend Yahoo reported that UFC was one of its top five most popular searches, after a pay-per-view event from Las Vegas featuring a match between Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz. Not only did the event sell out live in Las Vegas, but three auxiliary viewing sights had to be set up to handle fan demand. These fans tend to be young and male, the kind advertisers covet. Usually when people in that demographic decide they are interested in something, the media follow. Hard.

But mixed martial arts stays in the closet, because there is no sport that has a greater disconnect between the way its fans and its non-fans perceive it.