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MIDDLETOWN — He'd already done his morning session with his Middletown chiropractor and had an intense workout with the drill sergeant turned local gym master.

Later there'd be a couple of hours of boxing — other days it would be Brazilian Jiujitsu or Thai kickboxing — and in the evening he'd run or swim.

But for the moment, it was time for Rich Franklin — the 32-year-old UFC middleweight champ from West Chester — to relax over lunch at the Golden Dragon.

Every day he goes to this Chinese buffet in Middletown and gets the same thing: steamed rice, green beans, grilled chicken with vegetables and some of his daily two gallons of water.

Across the table sat his friend, fellow UFC fighter and training partner Jorge Gurgel, the one-time Wright State student from Brazil who now lives in Centerville and runs the JG Mixed Martial Arts Academy in Middletown.

Both men sported the remnants of black eyes.

Franklin's came from a sparring session readying for his Oct. 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship title bout with Anderson Silva in front of what almost certainly will be a sold-out crowd of 10,000-plus at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Gurgel's mouse came from his victorious UFC fight last Saturday in Anaheim, Calif.

Now that they'd both eaten, they took dibs on the remaining fortune cookies.

Franklin cracked his open, pulled out the prophecy ribbon and read: "At 20 years of age, the will reigns. At 30, wit. At 40..."

He tossed it aside and Gurgel shook his head, "That wasn't that good."

No wonder.

Franklin's fortune isn't in a cookie. It's in his fists.

And that's made for one of the more improbable ascensions in sports. It's turned a mediocre Harrison High football player, an honored University of Cincinnati math student and an area high school teacher into a guy with one of the biggest followings of any pro athlete in the state.

Not only is he a UFC champ, but he starred on the Spike TV reality series — The Ultimate Fighter — that drew over 2 million viewers an episode. His face is on billboards and video screens along the Vegas Strip, he has his own Web site and T-shirt line, a calendar full of public appearances, and he just came back from a 12-day — celebrities meeting the troops — USO Tour of Iraq.

The UFC has struck such a chord with the young male demographic that it's often beating boxing on every fistic front, from live attendance and pay-per-view sales to advertising sponsorships. Yahoo recently reported that "UFC" was one of its five most popular Web searches.

All this has evolved from the nonregulated, often-banned days of no-holds-barred bouts that prompted U.S. Sen. John McCain to call the competition nothing more than a "human cockfight."

"It was originally banned in 48 of 50 states and the previous owners even thought of shutting the organization down," Franklin said. "Then to survive, they went to athletic commissions around the country and asked what they'd like to see."

That brought a round system, weight classes, mandatory gloves, fight night doctors and new regulations including the exclusion of tactics like groin kicks, eye gouges and head butts.

Under the new ownership of a pair of Las Vegas casino executives, the UFC began to get the embrace of many states' sanctioning bodies. The biggest coup was getting Marc Ratner, the respected head of the Nevada State Athletic Commission and a no-holds-barred critic — to become a UFC vice president.

That's why Franklin and Gurgel chafe when the old "human cockfight" reference is brought up.

"'Don't make us out as animals," Gurgel said. "All we want to do is be recognized and respected for the job we're doing. We want to be treated like the hard-working professional athletes we are."

And there isn't a harder worker than Franklin, who gave up life in the classroom — after teaching math at Oak Hills High School, he monitored a program for at-risk students— when he won the UFC crown last year.

"I'm not the kind of person in life who's been blessed with special gifts of any kind," he said. "I'm not super-intelligent, not a super athlete. But God granted me a hard, hard work ethic. Anything I don't have, I'm willing to work for it. I won't settle for less."

That was evident in his last fight — a March 4 title bout with David Loiseau — when he broke his left hand in the second round.

"Quitting wasn't an option," he said. And once he got to his corner, he heard Gurgel parrot the thought.

"I know his courage and told him to suck it up and keep punching," Gurgel said. "I told him his hand would go numb and he could keep going."

Franklin did just that, won the five-round bout by decision and raised his record to 22-1. Three days later he had a titanium plate and seven screws surgically inserted in his hand.

The Oct. 14 match will be Franklin's first time back in competition, and as he's trained, he's heard the buzz begin to grow.

When he runs along Breiel Boulevard from Gurgel's academy to Middletown High and back, he's had a dozen or so people salute him with car horns or roll down their windows and yell things like "Good luck, Champ."

But once he and wife Beth get to Vegas, he said it will get "crazy." He's best known there and has become a favorite for everything from that Psalm 144:1 — "teacheth my hands to war, my fingers to fight," — inscription on his trunks to his relentless style in every bout.

As for how long he'll keep fighting — along with the broken hand last bout, he had a hairline foot fracture, tendon damage in an ankle, ligament damage in an arm and a deep gash over his eye — he shrugged and guessed a few more years.

After that?

"Maybe you'll find me on a beach in Brazil, lying in a hammock sipping a Mai Tai," he laughed.

As wild as that might sound, it's not as far-fetched as what's already happened.

But that's what you can get when there's fortune in your fists.