THE RISE
The ascent of the most controversial sport in history through the eyes of a legendary team
The eyes of 20,000 fans are glued to an octagon in the center of the T-Mobile arena in Las Vegas that is covered with matte blood and sweat of the night’s fighters.
Now, a pair of toned, glistening men lean against opposite sides of the cage that surrounds them, hands gripping the metal fencing as they stare at each other like their next juicy meal. On one side stands the Miami-native, Masvidal, in red. Across from him is the curly-haired Askren in black.
The arena roars with screams of anticipation seconds before the fight begins. Ben “Funky” Askren, a former Olympic wrestler is preparing to defend his undefeated UFC record against seasoned fan favorite Jorge “Gamebred” Masvidal.
The fight comes after months of trash talking by fans, coaches and fighters themselves.
The multicolored lights glaring brightly from the top of the arena swirl around in quick circles before they suddenly center on the octagon.
The referee stands in the center of the octagon, gets signals from both fighters and waves his hand down towards the mat. With one swift movement, the fight begins.
Askren slowly approaches as Masvidal runs and picks up speed. He suddenly leaps off the mat with one knee raised. It makes direct, brutal contact with the side of Askren’s skull. In just five seconds, the fight was over.
As Askren lies motionless on the ground, the crowd erupts. Up in the stands, Dan Lambert shoots up from his seat.
“I’ve seen him get married, have kids, win fights, lose fights, celebrate and cry,” Lambert said of the fighter who had spent the last 12 years in his gym. “The bond between all the coaches and fighters here… it gets really, really tight over the years.”
Lambert has been front and center since the beginning of mixed martial arts, way before the sport paved the way for several multibillion-dollar international promotions. He is one of the few to believe in the sport through the staggering journey of its biggest promotion, the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Since 1993, the UFC has gone from a disgraced spectacle shunned by most of the world to arguably the fastest growing sport in existence with over a million viewers per event. Through it all, Lambert has been there fighting past the resistance.
The Dawn of 'Human Cockfighting'
Back in 1995 when Lambert started a small grappling team, he never imagined it would grow to what it is today. His gym, now called American Top Team, is one of the biggest, most awarded mixed martial arts teams in the world. He had a fascination with fighting since he was young, before mixed martial arts was even a term.
“Back in the early nineties, they started making these Japanese pro wrestling shows look like real fighting that broke away from the fake fighting,” Lambert said. “That is kind of where MMA was born.”
Lambert said the athletes started to get rid of the fabricated flying moves and replaced them with arm locks, submission holds and chokes. Once he saw the first UFC event in November 1993, he was hooked.
Lambert trained in Brazilian jiu jitsu himself and experienced the public’s shame stemming from their lack of knowledge of the sport that at the time was considered a crude spectacle; a fantasy dreamt up by street fighters and athletes who never found their place in a single martial art.
“I would come home or go to a meeting and I’d have a black eye from training, and you try to explain what happened but everyone is looking at you like you’ve got three heads,” Lambert said. “So, I just started lying.”
When the Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded in 1993, the mixed martial arts promotion was relatively small, but extremely controversial. With practically no rules, the “no-holds-barred” fighting was a foreign and unwelcome concept.
Lambert said as he looks back on those days, he is shocked at the utter lack of precedent and rules him and his colleagues had to follow as leaders.
“We didn’t know what the hell we were doing,” Lambert said. “Looking back, I’m surprised we didn’t get people that we were training killed because there were no guidelines or things to look at historically on how to train fighters.”
Lambert said the rules for fights back then would simply be determined by mutual agreement.
“We’d literally be in the locker room before the show trying to figure out what the rules were going to be.” “I’d be like, ‘Okay guys, who wants to let kicks to the head when you’re on the ground be legal? Raise your hand,’ and of course the first thing everybody would do is turn and look at their opponent like, ‘You want it?’’’ Lambert recalls, “It was kind of like the Wild Wild West.”
UFC’s main revenue was coming from pay-per-view and they were doing well. In 1995, combat sports grossed $25 million and represented almost 10 percent of the entire pay-per-view event market, according to figures from Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm.
Through its early years, the organization hit many lows with politicians voicing their distaste for mixed martial arts, most notably the late senator John McCain, who referred to the sport as “human cockfighting.”
Thirty-eight states banned the sport in 1996, making expansion in the United States very difficult. In 1997, when two of the biggest cable distributors, TCI and Time Warner, dropped the UFC, people pointed at McCain’s relationships with big players in the cable industry. At this time, the only way consumers could buy pay-per-views was through their cable provider.
Lambert remembers this blow to the sport with disdain.
“You could literally go and order pornography on pay-per-view, but you couldn’t order a UFC fight, which is just kind of crazy,” Lambert said.
He credits McCain’s ridicule of the sport to his lack of knowledge. Lambert said during a debate, McCain admitted he’d never seen an event.
Step Inside the Octagon
Most people will never know what it is like to be in an octagon. Watch this video for a unique and thrilling immersive experience with two professional MMA fighters at American Top Team. *Click and drag to look around, or put on a headset for the ultimate adventure.*
In a desperate attempt for revival, the UFC began to develop a set of rules and regulations in the hopes of being sanctioned by state athletic commissions. They introduced weight divisions, fight restrictions and five-minute rounds.
Steve Mocco, a former Olympic wrestler and current head coach at ATT, believes that the rules not only made the sport safer for the athletes, but also made it more fan friendly.
“People used to be watching 45-minute fights with no weight divisions that end only when someone taps or gets knocked out,” Mocco said. “So, during the first fights, the pay-per-view would time out before the main event even started.”
Lambert watched the sport make notable advances right in front of his eyes, but they were not enough to save the company that owned it from the brink of bankruptcy.
The Semaphore Entertainment Group, the pioneer pay-per-view company that owned the UFC, was down to its last dime by the end of the 20th century. Lambert signed a contract to buy 51% of the UFC for $500,000, along with $1 million up in escrow.
Shortly after signing the contract, three business partners made a much bigger offer to buy the entire corporation for $2 million. Lambert was tempted. He was aware that the three men, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White, had “deep pockets” and substantial connections to state athletic commissions. He believed they had a better chance of making it a success and backed out in 2001.
While this era for the sport began with promise with the UFC returning to pay-per-view cable television and secured sanctioning in Nevada by the State Athletic Commission, by 2004 the company lost $34 million.
While the matches were originally viewed as a spectacle and not as an actual sport at all, its quick adaptations changed the way people viewed it. Lambert said the Fertitta brothers and Dana White made many successful attempts to make the sport legitimate which got more respected professionals involved, further boosting its reputation.
“That’s what made this fall more in line with a sport, rather than in the early days when it was promoted as ‘two men enter, one man leaves — fight to the death,’” Lambert said.
He believed the real turning point was the creation of the Ultimate Fighter, a reality television show that featured up-and-coming MMA fighters in competition for a six-figure UFC contract.
One of the original founders of American Top Team, who is now the general manager, Richard Guerriero, spoke about how the show gave potential fans insight into the life of a fighter.
“It opened up a lot of people’s eyes,” Guerriero said. “They could relate to the fighters living in a house and going through all these trials and tribulations.”
The popularity of the sport skyrocketed following the premiere of the show as mixed martial arts became sanctioned within the United States and abroad. With a rapidly growing list of highly anticipated bouts, the sport repeatedly shattered its own attendance and pay-per-view records.
Looking back to the days when MMA was at risk of insolvency, its growth to a valued $4 billion company is staggering. Alongside it grew American Top Team, which is now the largest and most awarded MMA into one of the biggest and most awarded MMA teams and training facilities out of the hundreds in the world.
The team started in Coconut Creek, Florida, but now has 40 locations around the world and more currently in the works.
Hundreds of fighters have come through their doors to put their careers in the hands of Lambert and his staff.
Sidney Outlaw, an up-and-coming fighter who recently joined the team, endured hardships trying to make it as a professional fighter. Outlaw chose to pursue MMA instead of college and was homeless living on the streets in Philadelphia for his first years as a professional athlete.
With his managers and trainers taking most of the small amount of money he was making, he could only afford to live on the streets. He was even shot and jumped in a random incident in 2017. But he feels gratitude for the way MMA and the team have changed his mindset in relation to life itself.
“When I think about American Top Team, I think of the playground for true champions,” Outlaw said. “You don’t have to have a physical belt, but [being] a champion is almost like a mindset or a character trait.”
When asked what advice he would give to young aspiring fighters who may be struggling, he said, “Don’t take any easy roads and go try to embrace the chaos… everybody got ‘quit’ in them, but not a lot of people work on that. It will create who you are as a person.”
During the years of pushback from the majority of the public and even high-ranking political figures, many people wondered how the sport could gain respect. After all, why would talented athletes choose to put their lives at risk and why would millions of fans pay to watch something so dangerous, according to Lambert.
“Everyone gets fighting, whether it’s a street fight or boxing match, everyone gets it,” Lambert said. “So, I just think it has universal appeal to all people; men, women, older and younger.”
Other team staff members like Guerriero agreed, saying the power of MMA to innately attract viewers is responsible for the ultimate success of the sport.
“People just like violence,” Guerriero said. “It’s the same reason why you slow down and rubber neck to go look at a car crash… at the end of the day, I think it’s in people’s DNA.”
