In 2001, in one of his first interviews as president of the UFC, Dana White spoke of his desire to grow the sport of mixed martial arts. And one of the countries he targeted for that growth was Mexico.
And while it look far longer than White had hoped or expected, Mexico has not only become one of the UFC's hottest markets, it has also begun producing impact talent at an extraordinary rate. A Mexican-born fighter, Alexa Grasso, not only holds the UFC flyweight title but is the No. 1 pound-for-pound female fighter in the world. Yair Rodriguez is the former interim featherweight champion.
The roster is now dotted with high-level fighters from Mexico. And as pleased as that makes White, now the CEO of what has grown to become a $12 billion-plus company, he believes it's just the start. On Thursday, White helicoptered in to participate in opening ceremonies for the UFC Performance Institute in Mexico, a nearly 50,000-square foot facility that not only will help UFC fighters but will be open to train aspiring fighters from the area.
"First of all, this is a big, big day for me, and obviously for the sport," White told KevinIole.com. "I have wanted this for so long, and you've heard me say it all the time: Some of the baddest mother f*ckers who have ever walked the face of the Earth are Mexican. To finally be here, where boxing is so ingrained and to now have a strong foothold in the country and be able to bring in young, talented guys and train them from the ground up in mixed martial arts is so huge for me. This thing is going to have such a massive impact not just on the country of Mexico over the next 10 years, but all of South America."
The performance institutes were designed to help reduce the incidence of injury and enable athletes to recover from injury more rapidly; to teach nutrition and proper weight cutting methods; to improve the quality of coaching and to serve as a common training area for fighters.
While Mexico has historically produced some of the greatest boxers ever -- think of Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., Ricardo Lopez, Salvador Sanchez and Canelo Alvarez, among many others -- White has believed its training techniques have lagged. So he's optimistic that the opening of the UFC PI Mexico will address that issue once and for all.
"We'll bring sophistication to training here," White said. "Even though boxing's been here for more than 100 years, or whatever the number is, there still hasn't been sophistication in training here. It was a problem in MMA early on, too. We're going to teach them better ways to cut weight, better ways to strengthen, to condition and how to do better nutrition. It's just going to enhance the performance of combat athletes here in Mexico over the next how-many years.
"Every time we build a performance institute, and obviously Vegas was first, we really started to learn and we made them better. China was better than the first one and this one will be better than those. We take what we've learned and make changes and make each one better and that's impacting the sport in a tangible and obvious way."
Eric Del Fierro, who coached Dominick Cruz to a UFC title, will served as the technical director for MMA, while Alejandro Sanchez De Pablo will be the director of operations.