online detractors | cab driver | Sri Lanka

I tried. I really did. But despite my best efforts to get White to tell me about the downside of success, about the rival leagues that want to steal some of UFC’s cachet, about the fighters who want more money, about the online detractors who say disparaging things about him and the company from the shadowy recesses of the Internet, he wouldn’t budge. What can I say? As previously noted, he’s a hard case. This is the closest I came:

“We’re not mainstream yet,” White says. “We’re not there —­ yet. We have so much time and opportunity to grow. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Really? I’m not so sure.

As I walked back to my hotel after UFC 62, after Liddell had demolished Sobral in a first-round knockout, people at the craps table stopped to ask passersby if they had been at the fight and, if so, who’d won. Even the pit bosses stopped. Pit bosses and craps tables wouldn’t stop for a SWAT raid. The next morning, bleary-eyed, I left for the airport at about five — long before the sun had come up and before my brain had switched on. My cab driver, on the other hand, was impossibly perky for such an unsavory hour and began peppering me with questions about my time in Vegas. He told me everything about him, including that he had just moved to the States from Sri Lanka. All I told him was that I was in town to cover UFC.

Suddenly, it was like he was possessed. He turned almost completely around and ignored the road altogether. “Who won the fight last night?” he asked breathlessly.