By L. Jon Wertheim

Another slick move was creating The Ultimate Fighter, which matched aspiring UFC combatants, in 2005. Apart from capitalizing on the reality-television craze, the show demystified the sport of MMA, served as a sort of UFC farm system and made stars out of the fighters. After a dozen episodes viewers were intimately familiar with the personality and backstory of, say, Haynes, whose son Thor was born with a brain tumor and underwent seven surgeries and months of chemotherapy but has been cancer-free for four years. By the time he graduated from the show last June, Haynes already had traction with the fans. What's more, the show doubles as a de facto infomercial for the pay-per-view cards.

UFC is more likely to draw viewership away from WWE than boxing. "Athletes want to compete and [MMA] gives you a chance to do that in a way that pro wrestling doesn't," says former UFC middleweight champion Frank Shamrock.

Perhaps above all, White had seen firsthand how "f----- up" (his words) boxing was and did everything to avoid those missteps. "Blame Don King and Bob Arum. Those two sucked the life out of boxing, put it in their pockets and did nothing to secure the future of [the sport]," White says, his voice filling like a sail. "We just had a card that was like the biggest marketing spend in England's history! My CFO said, 'You know how long it will take to make this money back?' I said, 'I don't care if you're a f------ sheepherder in the middle of nowhere. You better have heard of the UFC!'"

The growing popularity of MMA and the creation of weight classes has upgraded the quality of UFC competition. Gone are the immobile 600-pound behemoths and the brawlers such as Tank Abbott -- an early UFC cult hero who was hyped as specializing "in the ancient martial art of kicking ass" -- replaced by world-class athletes. "If you're going to measure every parameter [endurance, flexibility, coordination, strength], without a doubt, MMA fighters are the most accomplished athletes out there," says Carlon Colker, a Connecticut physician who has trained or advised the likes of Andre Agassi and Shaquille O'Neal as well as UFC fighters. "It's not even close."

As the UFC improved the product, the pedigree of its participants changed too. One of the organization's talking points: Around 80% of the fighters have college degrees, including Chuck Liddell -- he of the recent Entourage cameo -- who may look like a bouncer at a biker bar but was an accounting major at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo. Rich Franklin, a former middleweight champ, was a high school math teacher in Cincinnati. Even Ortiz, the resident bad boy who's dating porn star Jenna Jameson, can come across as thoughtful and well-spoken.

Top fighters like Ortiz have contracts that pay them six figures per fight and can earn seven figures when bonuses and a percentage of the pay-per-view haul are factored in. Lower-profile fighters on the same card, however, might earn only $2,000 to $3,000 for a bout. The UFC's current Zeus, heavyweight champ Couture, is a 43-year-old father of three who was an All-America wrestler at Oklahoma State, twice finishing as the heavyweight runner-up in the NCAA tournament, and served in the military for six years. After failing to make the 1996 Olympic team -- the third time he was an alternate -- Couture figured his career in competitive sports was over. He was an assistant wrestling coach at Oregon when he saw a former Oklahoma State teammate, Don Frye, fighting on a televised MMA card.