- Do you see where I am?
I'm about five feet from that cage.
[beep] slap somebody the wrong way,
I might get some blood splashed in my eye.
[relaxed big band music]
We in Las Vegas, Nevada,
fight capital of the world.
If you a combat sports fan,
you better find your ass up in these seats,
because the reality is,
you train,
you breathe,
you fight in the desert.
And the desert gives you what?
The UFC.
- [Crowd] It's time!
- That's why I braved the heat for the biggest Fight Week
of the year,
right in the UFC's hometown,
beautiful Las Vegas.
A cursed city of glitz and glamor that's been home
to the most legendary bouts in combat sports history.
And the UFC is the biggest combat sport in the world
right now.
Allegedly.
But while Vegas is certainly the fight capital of the world,
is it really the UFC's town,
or will boxing forever hold that title?
To find out,
I'm going behind the scenes of UFC HQ,
talking to the fighters,
the fans,
and the president,
Dana White, himself.
[bright big band music]
- The kick on it,
when you shoot,
is crazy.
- Because you shot it.
- Yeah, yeah.
I've shot it a lot, yeah.
[quick jazz music]
- You better be ready.
You better come to "All Access."
GQ, let's go.
[upbeat big band music]
[relaxed jazz music]
This is the most candy I think I've ever seen
in somebody's office anywhere.
- So, I'm a candy freak.
I love candy.
The reason I put all this out here
is so that I don't want it.
- [laughs] What?
Doesn't make any sense?
- I don't eat it.
- You walk past your obsessions every day?
- Yeah, all day.
And I don't eat it, yeah.
And then right over here is the Muhammad Ali room.
Every conference room that's in this building
was named after somebody who contributed to combat sports.
Muhammad Ali,
Mike Tyson,
Ronda Rousey,
the list goes on and on.
- How many motherfuckers I gotta knock out to get a room?
- A lot.
[upbeat hip-hop music]
So, this is the war room.
It's probably the shittiest room in the place,
but it's the most important room.
This is where we spend most of our days,
most of our time.
If you look over here,
these are all the top 15 fighters in the world
in every weight class,
and over here are all the fights that are coming up.
And we have fights made all the way up into October 15th.
This is one of the big ones that people would be dying
to know right now.
- Yeah, I think your boy right here is gonna win too.
- This one people are dying to know.
- I'm dying to know,
so I'm excited I got to know that, honestly.
[upbeat hip-hop music]
- We are in my office right now.
Everything here is me or represents something that I'm into
or I like.
This guy over here is a real samurai from the early 1600s.
Those are his swords over there.
I've always been into all different types of fighting
and samurais and ninjas and you name it.
I'm into all that stuff.
And I'm obviously into a lot of martial arts weapons.
- For so long,
it's felt like the UFC and Las Vegas were attached the hip.
How did y'all decide on here?
- Well, this is where we're from.
Me and the Fertitta brothers were from here
we grew up here together,
and Vegas is the fight capital of the world.
It's just been this place where all
the biggest and baddest fights that have ever happened
have been here.
From Sugar Ray Leonard at Caesars,
and Hagler and Duran,
and Mike Tyson and Holyfield,
and I think that this place has such a history.
And the reason is because Vegas is a destination.
There's so many things to do here.
Every night, there's so much going on.
When I leave town and I go to other places,
it drives me crazy.
I can't wait to get the hell out of there
and get back to Vegas.
- Being the fight capital,
especially of this country,
especially as Atlantic City veered down
and Vegas only went up,
how do you see the rise of your sport going up
as boxing kind of dipped down?
Do you think about that at all, in comparison?
- I saw it coming in the late-90s
and early-2000s.
I felt that boxing,
the wheels were coming off the bus.
So, the way that we've run this sport since day one
is the absolute best fight the best,
from day one.
Whereas in boxing,
they would save these guys for three years,
pad their record.
There's no record-padding here.
There's no denying,
there's no questioning who the best in the world are.
You fought your way through a gauntlet of badass dudes
or women.
- [Tyler] All right.
So we heard from the big boss,
but now I want to hear from the man who sold the UFC
to the rest of the world.
Let's give a big round of applause to Dana the Promoter.
Click that button for me if you don't mind.
- If you don't know this weekend,
you don't follow the sport at all.
- Yeah. - This card this weekend
is stacked top to bottom with ridiculous fights.
Have you ever been to a live UFC event?
- Never my life.
- Well get ready, buddy.
This weekend, your life's gonna change this weekend
after you see your first one.
You don't understand until you've actually gone
and seen one and been inside and felt this energy
and this buzz.
You're not walking out of this thing
on Saturday night going,
"Yeah, I don't ever wanna come to one of these again."
[explosion rumbles]
- So, thanks for showing me your office, yo.
I really appreciate it.
- Well, this is just part of the office.
This is nothing.
There so much more for you to see here.
- Take me around.
Let me see it.
- Let's do it.
[upbeat hip-hop music]
- And more candy.
Ah, come on.
He's got these Celtic slippers in here.
- No hate.
I just built the spa over here.
Nobody's actually seen this yet.
You're the first one to ever see this.
As I've gotten older,
I've become addicted to cold plunging.
- Do you like cannonball in or do you just ease your way in?
- No, I get in there.
I stay as long as I can,
which is usually two and a half to three minutes.
That's one of the greatest things you can do for yourself.
If you want to keep working the way that I work,
and as long as hard as we work and travel
and everything else,
this stuff almost becomes a necessity.
[dramatic thumping music]
- [Tyler] So, is where the fighters work out
or what is this?
- No, no, this is my gym.
This is my personal gym.
The fighters have their own whole section over here;
an entire building called the Performance Institute.
[dramatic thumping music]
- Now that I done worked up a sweat,
I wanna meet up with UFC legend, Forrest Griffin,
to understand what the UFC Performance Institute
can really do for a fighter.
- We help fighters to extend their careers,
to train smarter, harder.
Basically, we put science behind MMA training.
- So, show me around.
Show me some of the stuff that makes this place
the best in the world.
- So, this is a force output measurement device.
So when somebody hits somebody,
I want to know how much energy is transferred from me to you
or what's actually happening.
You can adjust it to the height of the athlete.
- Well, put it up.
- We, gotta okay.
[machine rattles]
Not bad, not bad.
- 103, Okay.
That's nice for not turning my hip.
That's nice. - Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Throw a punch or two.
[deep hip-hop music]
Cryotherapy.
It looks cool.
It's cold, do you wanna get in there?
- Hell no. [laughs]
- Oh my God, wow.
So, you don't wanna try new things.
How about this?
- What is this?
Tell me is this.
- This is low-level laser light therapy.
So, it reduces whole body inflammation,
helps you recover.
You think about a sport like MMA,
you're gonna work out two to three times a day.
You need to recover between those sessions.
This is what that does.
Oh my God.
We're all blind.
Don't look!
He looked, he looked.
- He opened it right in front of me.
- After you, sirs.
All right, so here we are in the actual recovery room.
So cold tub, hot tub.
Behind us, we have saunas,
a steam room,
we have a nice, ugly trash can there.
So, now this is what you're gonna do, right?
- I was thinking about doing this, yeah.
- I have a Speedo if you wanna borrow my Speedo.
- It's like an underwater treadmill.
- Yep, and then we can turn the jets on.
Basically, you're running against the flow of the water.
Great workout in 20 minutes with no axial load
or no impact on your joints.
- Yeah, it don't look like no underwater treadmill,
it look like an underwater cheese grater
is what it look like.
So that was cool, Forrest Griffin,
but Dana White promised me a drink before I get out of here.
So, y'all know what I'm about to do.
- The Patriot's games and stuff like that,
I watch in here.
- Oh, so you in here alone,
just getting a little tears off when the losses happen.
I understand. - [laughs] No, no tears.
- It's a quiet room.
- All we do is win, brother.
There's no tears in this room.
- Imagine being a fuckin' Knicks fan. [laughs]
[upbeat hip-hop music]
Oh, how about that? - How cool is that?
There you go, my brother.
- To Fight Week.
[glasses clink]
[calm acoustic guitar music]
[Tyler groans]
People aren't supposed to be here because as hot as [beep]
every fucking day,
and yet,
every fighter in the world refuses to go anywhere else
that's not Vegas.
We're on our way to see Jacob "Stitch" Duran.
Here's the thing about Stitch,
at one point in time,
he and the UFC were synonymous with each other.
These days,
it's like he's a ghost.
I've been wondering why that is,
and who better to ask than the man himself.
- Love Vegas,
boxing of capital of the world.
- The boxing city,
not a fight city.
- 'Cause it is.
So many great, great fights that have been here.
The UFC is based here,
but nobody's ever called it.
Nobody's ever said,
"Vegas is the UFC capital of the world."
- Do you follow the UFC?
- I haven't seen the UFCs.
A lot of the characters have changed.
And during the time I was there was the golden era of MMA.
I started working with 'em for UFC Number 32,
and was with them for 15 years.
Fighters were making a lot of money on sponsors
and UFC went into the Reebok deal
and they took away all the sponsors from everybody.
So, nobody was happy.
Everybody's f-ing Dana,
f-ing UFC,
f-ing Reebok.
And so anyway,
I get a call from bloodyelbow.com,
John Nash,
and he asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview
on how the Reebok deal affected the company.
It went viral. [laughs]
So I got home and sure enough, man.
I get a call,
and the only thing he says,
he goes, "Because of the interview you did about Reebok,
The UFC's not gonna use you no more."
And [imitates punch],
took a shot.
- Do you miss it?
- The UFC?
- [Tyler] Yeah. - No.
No, not at all.
- Not for one second.
- Not at all.
I know what I did was right for the sake of the fighters,
and for everybody.
- Have talked to Dana at all,
in all of these years? - No, I haven't seen him.
You haven't talked to Dana one time?
- No, I haven't seen him.
- [Tyler] There was a lot of value in hearing from Stitch.
Having an outside perspective on the fight game
can be crucial right now,
especially as I'm driving back to the UFC for media day.
I wanna try to find if Israel Adesanya,
the Middleweight Champion of the World for the UFC,
and see what he's got to say about a few things
when it comes to Fight City.
[deep hip-hop music]
What was the fight you watched that made you say
that you wanted to be a fighter?
- UFC 90, Anderson Silva versus Patrick Cote.
That was the first pay-per-view I watched live.
And I was like,
"Yo, I'm skinny and black too.
I can whoop some ass."
- What are you looking for in your future?
- Just having fun and whooping ass.
That's it.
That's what got me to the dance,
is just kicking everyone's ass that they put in front of me
or that I selected.
And I don't just pick up the little chumps.
I pick the toughest guys that no one wants to fight.
And I put them in front of me and I break 'em off.
- What's it like to fight in the fight capital of the world?
- Fighting in Las Vegas,
it's an experience.
It's the energy,
the people.
It's got significance in combat sports.
This place,
this land,
'cause of the people that have come before me.
- Let's see with some other UFC stars
gotta say about all this.
- It feels like home.
And for me to continuously be able to book fights in Vegas,
they're always massive cards.
They're always pay-per-views.
Sug-Mobile Arena.
They're actually changing it from T-Mobile
to Sug-Mobile Arena because I've won and fought there
so many times.
- For me, it's the city of competition.
To be stronger,
to enjoy a little bit. [laughs]
- It's the best place, man.
Fighting at the MGM Grand,
all the history of the arena.
Nothing matches it.
- Mayweather,
Oscar De La Hoya,
- Okay, those guys. - Myself versus Conor.
And Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Everything happened here.
- [Tyler] Remember, part of the beauty of Las Vegas
is that eventually,
the temperature goes down and the lights get brighter.
So, we start where anybody should for a good night
on the town.
You gotta talk to your local cab driver.
- [Cameraman] Why do you think people like fighting?
- I think it's just the mono a mano of it, you know?
Trying to see who's the best,
who's the strongest.
[light big band music]
- [Tyler] Do you like Dana White?
- He's kind of like,
I don't know,
like a mixture of Vince McMahon
and Don King.
[light big band music]
- It's the Friday before the fight
and we here at UFC X,
and I'm ready to go.
Let's see what the fans got to say.
[ethereal hip-hop music]
It's like a car show for fighters.
- What I like about UFC,
is one,
people get punched in the fuckin' face.
These dudes get half naked in a cage
and fight on some gladiator shit.
- Do you think Vegas is a UFC town or a boxing town?
- I think Vegas is a UFC town, man.
- Vegas is a UFC town.
Las UFC.
Now they have the Institute,
the PI Institute,
which is really great because now they're taking care
of all the fighters here.
And it's Sin City too.
- Anybody comes to town short of Canello,
UFC's gonna out outnumber 'em,
outrank 'em all day long.
- Are you going to the fight tomorrow by any chance?
- I'm going to the fight tomorrow, yeah.
- We're asking everybody,
how much did you pay for your tickets?
- My tickets, I think,
were like 350.
- Grand total of 1400.
- So far in the last year,
we spent over a hundred thousand dollars on the UFC.
- You think it's worth it?
- It will be.
[slow dramatic music]
- In a few hours,
this stadium's gonna be packed to the brim
to see UFC 276 right here in Las Vegas.
[slow dramatic music]
- I mean now, it's an MMA town.
It's mixed-martial,
we would call this the Mecca of mixed-martial arts.
You know what I'm saying?
- What's your favorite part of being in Las Vegas, yo?
- My favorite part of being in Vegas is this,
the excitement of Fight Night
and then getting the [beep] outta here.
I was at Poirier and McGregor last year.
That was pretty next level.
The whole card was crazy.
Mel Gibson gave me [beep]
[Tyler laughing]
Straight up.
It was only me and him during the prelims.
And then I walked outta here with that shit,
so you tell me what happened.
- I'm gonna tell you that Mel Gibson gave you [beep]
- There it is.
- [Cameraman] I saw his name on a chair down there.
- They separated us.
I asked them to separate us.
- As you can imagine,
once the fights get started,
it's real hard to film around that arena.
So, we shoved backstage to sneak in a few more interviews.
- Do you think Vegas is an MMA city or a boxing city?
- I'm a little biased,
I'm gonna say it's an MMA city now.
- I will say that on boxing night it's a boxing city,
on MMA night is an MMA city.
Whether it's MMA or boxing,
you will find it here.
- Right now,
this is MMA,
this is UFC country here in Vegas.
- Now, the UFC is the show on the scene.
- [Tyler] Once the main card started,
we couldn't film in the arena.
So I had to decide,
am I about to sit cage-side and watch these fights,
or am I about to go sit in the media tent?
Y'all know what the [beep] I chose.
[heavy hip-hop music]
- [Bruce] Ladies and gentlemen,
This is the main event
of the evening!
- [Tyler] Is it a UFC or a boxing town?
The jury's still out.
But from where I'm sitting,
it looks like the UFC is here to stick.
Boom!
Okay, let's do some "either or."
"Naruto" or "Dragon Ball Z?"
- Naruto.
- Okay.
Tems or WizKid?
- Ooh, Wiz Kid.
- Rampage or Rashad?
- Woo!
Why you gotta do this to me?
- [Tyler] Yeah.
- I include some specific ideas from the samurai world,
to be honest,
strong,
unshakeable mind.
Not just in the cage,
not just there and there.
You can keep it everywhere.
[screen beeps]
- As much as we don't like,
talk about the guy,
like his profile-
- Who?
- The guy.
- Who?
- The guy.
- Who? [indistinct]
- Conor McGregor.
- Yeah.
- [Tyler] What is that?
- These are all meteorites.
This is the dumb shit you buy when you got a lot of money.
[cymbal crashes]