UFC: Of all the challenges you had in legitimizing the sport of MMA, which do you recall being the most difficult?
MR: Well, New York because it took so long. And it had nothing to do with MMA, it had to do with unions. The biggest hurdles for us really were going around from state to state and legislature to legislature, dealing with my contemporaries who just looked at it and said, “it’s not a sport.” So you had to educate. You had to show film. You had to talk it over. But it’s funny that when we would go to a state senator, or whatever it was, the staff all knew about the UFC.
So it was a long process, certainly. Mike Mersch was with me most of the time. It was a big, big help having a lawyer who could talk their language.
UFC: You talk about undergoing a “mind shift” when you undertook learning MMA after boxing. How long do you recall it taking until you were really comfortable with it?
MR: I watched a lot of videos and DVDs. What I couldn’t understand, especially in the first couple years, was how the fighter on the bottom sometimes wanted to be there and be able to use jiu-jitsu and win fights from there. I would say maybe three years. It was a while. Back then we weren’t doing fifty events a year.
I learned to appreciate the art of the fighting. There was a science to it; a move and a countermove. Like a chess game.
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There was definitely a learning period. Coming from boxing, you can’t hit a guy when he’s down. That took time for me to get used to.
UFC: Of all the stories in your book, what’s the one that you still get asked about the most?
MR: “Fan Man”* and “The Bite Fight.” Even to this day, there’s been nothing like that. And to have it on worldwide television?
You just know that after everything calms down, on Monday after a Saturday it’s going to be wild for me, all the calls to my office.
UFC: You’ve refereed college football, you still supervise high school referees for all sports in the state of Nevada, you run the shot clock for the NBA summer league and UNLV basketball. You do work for the Las Vegas Raiders managing helmet communications…I used to think I was a busy person until I realized all the things you do, both inside and outside of the UFC. What’s your trick for time management?
MR: First of all, I have a passion for high school sports. I was a high school official; over 50 years of officiating. To this moment, every morning I have to do some high school stuff with either athletic administrators or coaches. Once again, it’s about communication, so I set aside a few minutes every morning. I have to make my wife a schedule saying, “I’ve got these UNLV games, these Raider games on Sunday.” We’ve been married over 35 years; she’s used to me doing this stuff. It’s delegating, too. I have a good assistant.
