It was getting late, the questions were droning on, his fighters were getting restless, desperate to escape for a drink or two, or just a good night's sleep.
But Dana White, the man who wears just about every hat in the Ultimate Fighting Championship — promoter, matchmaker, smiling frontman, paymaster, de facto commissioner — wasn't about to walk away from the mike.
"The first time we've had real media here, and these guys want to go," he said. "I'll stay here all f-ing night, if you want."
It had been like the perfect storm this week, a convergence of all of the dreams White and his financial backers, the Fertitta brothers Lorenzo and Frank (Las Vegas casino and real estate magnates who keep a low profile and let White do all of the talking) had dreamed for a business they bought for next to nothing at a time when it seemed like a sick joke.
Receiving an unexpected, backwards bounce from the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr., fight three weeks ago, the biggest money event in the history of boxing, the world of Mixed Martial Arts was under the spotlight this week as never before. Cover stories in Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine, straightforward reportage on ESPN's signature show Sportscentre, no longer treated as a freak show curiosity, but as something close to mainstream.
So there was plenty at stake Saturday night when it came to UFC 71, a card topped by the sport's biggest star, Chuck (Iceman) Liddell, who met Quinton (Rampage) Jackson for the organization's light heavyweight title at the MGM Grand Garden, the very same room where Mayweather beat De La Hoya with a technically perfect but hardly heart-stopping performance.
Knowing that comparisons would be drawn, that all of the straight press would be attracting a whole lot of first time viewers, White and company were confident that their brand of entertainment would stand up and win converts.
No doubt it did — to a point.
Liddell, the UFC's biggest star, was knocked out in less than two minutes by Jackson, and two of the other four televised fights ended in stoppages. Both of those were quick, and brutal, but nothing so horrific to suggest that what Senator John McCain once referred to as "human cockfighting" is any uglier or more dangerous than boxing. The MMA loyalists always point to the bang for the buck their favourite sport delivers, and though the card lacked a classic confrontation, it did have enough action to keep even the jumpiest of the short-attention-span-generation satisfied.
The boxing hard core would note that the punch that superstar Liddell threw immediately before being knocked out, a wide, awkward, off balance left to the body, was something you wouldn't see from a raw novice in their sport. A whole lot of second rate boxers would have dropped the guy White described as "the greatest MMA fighter in history" with a counter if he'd tried something like that. And the boxing purists would also lament the lack of poetry, of art, of epic storylines in the fast food UFC, though they'd have to tip their hats to the fine skills of someone like Karo Parisyan, who seamlessly combined precise punches and judo throws to defeat the talented Josh Burkman.
(For those appalled by the whole idea, who find the notion of fighting as entertainment morally and ethically repugnant — well those minds were made up already when it came to boxing, wrestling, karate and everything else, and nothing about the UFC is going to change them.)
White isn't so concerned with those objectors right now. Even on a night when his biggest star was humiliated, he knew that, thanks to the UFC's purchase of its biggest rival, Pride Fighting, thanks to the television reality show that keeps cranking out new personalities, his business (unlike boxing) can say exactly where it goes from here.
Jackson will eventually take on Dan Henderson, who held both the middleweight and light heavyweight belts in Pride. The wildly-popular Liddell will be trotted out again, since losses in this sport aren't career-killers. There will be shows in the UK, in Germany, eventually in Brazil, in Japan, and in Canada — Montreal, the only jurisdiction where MMA is currently government sanctioned.
And eventually, he says, there will be the first world-wide pay per view. "This is one of those sports that transcend all barriers," he said. "Two guys fighting in the octagon — everybody gets it, everybody likes it."
Well, not everybody. And it's a long, long way from this one big night for a niche sport to global domination.
Still, those who have underestimated White, most especially the boxing establishment, falling back on their laurels, their glorious past, their cultural heft, on the fact that their sport has shown remarkable survival skills over its long history, must understand by now that they have done so at their own peril.
