DaytonDailyNews.com

CINCINNATI — In just 30 minutes, I heard Dana White — he of the black Dead Kennedys T-shirt, ripped jeans and head shaved smooth as a cue ball — talk about "Hollywood agent scumbags ... maggots ... parasites," as well as "the (expletive) crazy Russians" he dealt with trying to sign heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko.

As for his own fighters, White said there are those he likes and some "I just can't (expletive) stomach."

Then there were aging boxing promoters, Don King and Bob Arum, of whom White said, "It was all about 'how much money can I put in my pocket, right here, right now' ... without ever trying to secure the future of the sport."

By now you might be able to tell that the 38-year-old president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is putting on UFC 77 tonight at sold-out U.S. Bank Arena, is aggressive, opinionated, sometimes dictatorial, always profane and rarely holds his tongue.

He's also a visionary.

With his orchestration the past seven years, the UFC has gone from an underground fight league with no mainstream embrace to the fastest growing spectator sport in America.

Back in 2001, White was a Las Vegas gym owner and fight manager when he heard the UFC was for sale. He contacted childhood friends, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta — now casino executives — and they bought the franchise for

$2 million.

Last year, UFC generated more than $220 million just in pay-per-view revenue. Add in live gates, basic cable money, merchandising, and you get the picture.

White's magic, he said, is simple. To make his point, he directed attention out the window of the downtown hotel room we were in and onto the busy corner of Fifth and Vine:

"On one corner there, they could be playing stickball. On the other, basketball, and over here street hockey. But if a fight broke out on the fourth corner, where do you think the crowd would go?

"Everybody would run to the fight — even the people playing the other games. It's something we were born with. We just love a fight."

With that he compared his sport to boxing and the NFL: "Right now if you look at the top cable show ratings, you see No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 is the NFL. No 5 is the UFC, and below us is the Major League Baseball playoffs, NBA, NASCAR ... everybody but the NFL."

Yet, while the NFL hasn't made inroads in Europe, White notes, "We did four shows in the U.K. last year and sold them all out. ...We're in 170 different countries in some form of television."

He attributed that to the universal appeal of a fight, but said the UFC shares few other traits with boxing, a sport that has "been killed off" by "the pay structure, lazy (expletive) promoters, all the sanctioning organizations ... and overall greed.

"We use boxing as a blueprint of what not to do."

With that, someone else looked out the window and mentioned how more people were walking around Cincinnati wearing Reds apparel than UFC shirts.

Although the comparison was unfair, White didn't duck the punch:

"Baseball's been around more than 100 years. The UFC, as we know it, has been here just seven. Give us another seven, and see where we are. We haven't even scratched the surface."