Transcript of interview with Marc Ratner by Barbara Tabach, August 23, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH MARC RATNER An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amanda Hammar Photographer: Aaron Mayes iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Marc Ratner moved to Las Vegas when he was in the seventh grade in 1957. His father became owner of a retail beauty supply business. It also was about the time Marc became a bar mitzvah. The Ratner family belonged to Temple Beth Sholom, as did everyone at the time, and a favorite memory he recalls is of sneaking a glimpse of crooner Eddie Fisher and actress Elizabeth Taylor getting married there. While growing up, Marc showed no particular interest in being a star athlete. He played little baseball and participated in track as a long jumper. Nevertheless, on the day of this oral history interview, Marc is sitting in his office surrounded by sports memorabilia. It is all a testimony, a museum highlighting his decades of officiating and regulating sports events. His stories include newsworthy boxing episodes that ranged from the infamous ?Fan Man? parachutist incident in 1963 during the Evander Holyfield vs Riddick Bowe fight at Caesars and the 1997 ?Bite Fight? when Mike Tyson took a bite out of Evander Holyfield?s ear. v In 2016, Marc was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, an extraordinary honor for a nonparticipant. He has long been a fan of the sport and talks about the first fight he ever attended, becoming a ring inspector in 1985 and then starting a new phase of his career in 2006, as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC]. In addition, Marc has dedicated much his life blowing the whistle at high school and college sports: he?s officiated on the football field for several conferences, bowl games and mentors would-be officials. He served as Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director for two decades. Among his community involvement is serving on the board of Jewish Family Services Agency. In 1997 he was honored by the National Council of Christians and Jews. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Marc Ratner August 23, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface?????????????????????????????????iv ? v SESSION 1 Talks about Eastern Europe ancestral roots; parents moved west in the 1940s, eventually living in Las Vegas in 1957 when Marc was in 7th grade; his educational background; father owned a retail beauty supply business here, which Marc also worked in. Memories of being a kid in Las Vegas, bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Sholom??????????????????????.1 ? 4 Recalls his personal involvement with sports and how he came to be a sports official; Pacific Coast Athletic Conference, the Big West, Mountain West; three bowl games. Talks about what it takes to be a good official; mentoring others to become officials; female officials; Sig Rogich and KROL radio station business manager; athletic commission appointment in 1992 and stories about Fan Man and Holyfield/Tyson fight situations he dealt with??????????????..5 ? 9 Talks about memorabilia displayed in his UFC office; speaking part in movie Rocky Balboa; decision to leave boxing commission and join the world of Mixed Martial Arts in 2006. Mentions recent officiating at the new T-Mobile Arena; more about MMA becoming a popular sport and decline of boxing?????????????????????????????.10 ? 13 Mentions Muhammad Ali; talks about raising his three children in Las Vegas; entertainers he has seen on the Strip; rare brushes with antisemitism; his memories of the Jewish community when growing up in Las Vegas??????????????????????????14 ? 19 Was honored by the International Boxing Hall of Fame; National Federation of Schools; was Commissioner of Officials for all high schools sports in Southern Nevada; being honored as a Hall of Famer who is a non-boxer; UFC?s building of a new facility in Las Vegas and its advantages; Conor McGregor; Oscar and Carolyn Goodman???????????????..?..20 ? 22 No reasons to retire; joy of working; Fertitta family; advice he might give an athlete interested in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts); thoughts about Muhammad Ali and difference between MMA and boxing; women in the sports, Laila Ali and Ronda Rousey. Talks about changes over his career; performance-enhancing drugs [PED]; US Anti-Doping Agency???????????23 ? 25 vii Mentions interesting Jewish personalities he knows: Len Banker, Rabbi Shea Harlig; Mel and Micki Hecht; Yale Cohen; Gil Cohen, Richard Sturn. His mother Anne Ratner involved in Hadassah; going to Foxy?s Deli???????????????????????..26 ? 28 SESSION 2 Talks about recent move into new UFC facility at S Torrey Pines and I-215; news that Dana White is trying to finalize a fight deal between UFC star Conor McGregor and prizefighter Floyd Mayweather. Recalls his first attendance at a boxing match and being at fights of Carlos Ortiz vs Joe Brown; Sonny Liston vs Floyd Patterson; his favorite venue was the outdoor lot at Caesars Palace???????????????????????????????..?..28 ? 32 Shares memories of events he was involved; for example, Mike Tyson biting off ear of Evander Holyfield; football game at Notre Dame in South Bend; first game he refereed (Bishop Gorman vs Basic High School; watching game film to critique his accuracy. Mentions instant replay as a future feature for UFC and boxing; special equipment needs; best qualities of referees?..33 ? 35 Recalls being honored by NCCJ in 1997; expressing his Judaism; raising his two children and holidays; his sister Susan Eisner; his personal bar mitzvah and party at Alpine Village. Mentions other Jewish people in the community that he has known over the years and works with; sneaking a glimpse at the Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor wedding ceremony at Temple Beth Sholom????????????????????????????????..36 ? 39 Served on board of Jewish Family Services Agency; longtime executive director of Nevada State Athletic Commission for high school sports; National Association of Sports Officials past-chair; Officiating Development Alliance representing combat sports???????????.40 ? 41 viii 1 SESSION 1 This is August 23, 2016. This is Barbara Tabach. I am sitting with Marc Ratner; M-A-R-C, R-A-T-N-E-R, in his Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC] office on West Sahara. With the Jewish Heritage project, I always like knowing a little bit about the ancestral roots: what you know about your Jewish background. What I know is my parents were both born in America. My sister knows all this much better, but I think my grandmother was of Hungarian decent. I'm not sure where my grandfather came from ? somewhere in Europe. But they're European. My father [Heiden Ratner] was born in Chicago in the early 1900s and my mother [Anne Ratner] was born, I think, in Richmond, Virginia, probably in?we never knew her real age?somewhere around 1910, 1911. How did they come to live in Las Vegas [in 1957]? My father was working in El Paso, Texas. They got married, in the 1940s. I don't know the exact date. Anyway, he was in the retail ready-to-wear business and they moved to Phoenix where I was born in 1944. So they must have got married in May '42 or '43; something like that. We stayed in Phoenix, I think, until I was four years old; I have no recollection at all. Then they moved to Pomona, California, where he then was in the beauty and barber supply business. His territory, when we lived there, included Las Vegas. We moved here when I was in seventh grade, which was 1957. What school did you go to? I went to John C. Fremont Junior High School eighth and ninth grade. From there I went to Las Vegas High School; graduated from there in 1962. Went a year of college here; it was called 2 Nevada Southern in those days, and then graduated after three more years up in University of Nevada, Reno. What did you get your degree in? I majored in business management?I took a lot of journalism courses, but business was my major. What were your aspirations when you were a teenager? I loved working with my father in the retail world. We had a beauty supply here, and so that was part of my world. When I graduated from college, I spent a year on the road working for the Helene Curtis Company in Chicago and then I came back in...It might have been...Let's see. I graduated from college in '66. Sometime in late '67, I came back here and went to work with my father. So he owned his own supply? Right. He owned his own retail store. What was the name of that business? At that time it was Nevada Beauty and Barber Supply, which we sold. We had partners from L.A. in that one. Then we opened our own store probably in the late sixties or early seventies called Ace High Beauty Supply. So I was going to beauty shops and selling beauty supplies in barbershops. Met my wife JoAnn at Caesars Palace, a manicurist there. How long did she do that? Certainly not after we got married very long. No, probably about ten years she was a hairdresser and a manicurist. And at Caesars? Caesars and Golden Nugget. 3 What was Vegas like for you as a young kid? What do you remember? I can remember riding my bicycle up and down the Strip, which the Strip was different in those days, obviously. There wasn't as many hotels. And they used to give you souvenirs. They'd give you dice or cards. So for myself and some friends?from where we lived, which was near John C. Fremont on St. Louis and Maryland Parkway?we could ride up to the Strip. I remember the El Rancho. The original El Rancho was still there, the Sahara, no Stardust then, the Flamingo. I think the Tropicana was just opening. I can remember being in junior high school or maybe in ninth grade and I saw this big sign for the Stardust being up and down. It was called in those days San Francisco Street, not Sahara Avenue. So, yes, I can remember when the El Rancho burned down, which had to be probably in the early sixties. Who were some of the people you hung out with as a kid? In junior high school? I played Little League baseball and stuff. When I really was hanging out more was when I first got to maybe the first year in high school I think it was more. Some people that are very prominent now in town; one is Sig Rogich, who is very big in public relations and advertising, former commissioner Bruce Woodbury, several lawyers who have done very well here. And I still see all my friends. It was such a small town then. It was easy to know those people back when you were a kid, I suppose. Right. There was Las Vegas High School, there was Rancho High School, there was the one in Henderson, Basic High School, and Bishop Gorman High School and then in my senior year they opened Western High School. That was it. Amazing, isn't it? Yes, when you think of it. Because now we have thirty high schools. 4 I don't even know all the names of all the schools anymore. You said you were playing Little League. My husband always talks about he didn't really get involved in a lot of sports because he was busy with his Hebrew school. Were you going to Hebrew school or any education that conflicted with that? When we moved here, which was the start of my eighth grade, I had been going to Hebrew school in California before I moved here. I think, as I mentioned to you, the temple here was I remember near Eleventh and Carson, Temple Beth Sholom. It was a little, small building. I was bar mitzvahed there in 1958. I do know that. I still have the tallit they gave me and I still wear it High Holidays. I was confirmed at the new synagogue. We had confirmation in those days; they still do, I guess. It was after I was bar mitzvahed and they opened a new synagogue on Oakey, which I would imagine was sometime in late '58 or early '59. But here is an interesting thing. At one of my confirmations there was a big famous wedding going on. It was Eddie Fisher marrying Elizabeth Taylor and it was right here and we were in the synagogue. So you were there when they actually had the ceremony? Not in the ceremony, but I saw them coming in, yes. How is that for an aside? Not everybody has that memory. Right. You'd have to go back and see if it was '58 or '59. [May 12, 1959] What was your personal involvement with sports as a kid? Because obviously, that's a big part of your life. A big part of my life. I didn't do anything high school-wise. At Nevada Southern I was on the baseball team for one year and then I went to the University of Nevada, Reno where I was on the track team and was a jumper?a long jumper it was called. So that was that. 5 When you graduate from college and you still want to do something athletically, you can either play City League basketball or slow pitch softball. There's not much else to do, even today. So sometime, probably in '67-68, there was an ad in the Las Vegas Sun I can remember, because the Sun was a much bigger paper with Mr. Greenspun...So did you ever watch television and say, "Boy, those referees are terrible; I can do better than that"? So I went to a meeting at Las Vegas High School about officiating. I started officiating lower games, kids' games and junior highs and junior varsities in 1967 and am still the commissioner of officials here in 2016. Now, did you get paid for those first officiating jobs? Yes, eight dollars, ten dollars. But I was able to progress. I did all the varsity games after a couple of years. Then I did the playoff games and the state championships. Then in, I think 1985, one of the college conferences invited me to officiate. It was called the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference, mostly West Coast teams. Then that league morphed into what they called the Big West, which changed whenever UNLV joined, which changed into the WAC and then the Mountain West, and I moved along with them and refereed college football for about twenty years. So these balls [pointing at a display in his office] are from my big bowl games. I refereed the 2006 Cotton Bowl. This was an Independence Bowl, I believe, maybe 2001 or something. The Aloha Hawaii Bowl. Yes, those are my three bowl games. That's pretty awesome. That's a great way to see a game. You're involved that's for sure. It seems to me that it's got to be treacherous to be a referee in a football game. Yes, because you have to be aware, because you can get knocked down just as easily as any player. Yes, so you have to be on your toes. You have to be physically fit?you have to take care of yourself. 6 Yes. I could run up and down the field with no problems. What happened to me toward the end of my career, the field got a little bit longer and I couldn't keep up at as well. But at one time I could keep up real well, yes. Does a person go into refereeing of sport because they played it once or because they wish they could have played it? What inspires a person to want to be a referee and what qualities do you need or characteristics do you have? You have to be certainly even-handed. You have to be able to take criticism, not show it, not get mad. And you have to deal with people. It's all about communication and the better referees throughout all the way to the pros usually can handle the coaches. Now, there are some guys that can yell at a coach and get away with it; some who can't. But there is a progression. In town some of my best referees now?I have a couple in the NBA?I have one kid who started with us who's done the Super Bowl. I've had a lot of college football guys, a lot of college basketball guys. So I'm very proud of that part. Are most of them former athletes themselves? Most of officials have been somewhat athletic, yes. So they have a better working knowledge of the game and the strategy? Yes, I think it's always better to have played somewhat or at least be athletic. You have to be fit to referee any of these (sports). So most everybody has done some officiating, yes, or some playing. So if you give advice to a young person who wants to do that as a career, what do you say? Well, first of all, I would say you don't need any experience. You don't need to have played. We have meetings going on right now and we'll teach you. You're not going to start doing the biggest, Gorman and Las Vegas High School the first game, but we'll put you in the ninth grade 7 games. We'll put you in the Pop Warner games. That's how you learn. What you're involved in isn't just football; it's all different sports. All different sports. Do women get into it? Yes. When did that start? We've had women probably the last fifteen to twenty years, but just a few. It's not as many as?we're always trying to recruit. Now in the NBA and NFL they have women officials. So it's slowly but surely changing. Officiating is not for everybody. You have to be able to, like I say, be able to take it and make people mad at you. I want to make sure I understand: How did you go from a beauty supply business career to officiating? Well, officiating is a part-time career; back then I worked once or twice a week. So I was working full-time in the beauty supply business. Even now I'm the commissioner of officials, but I'm available every day if they need me in the morning or something. I might do a little bit of work from seven-thirty to eight o'clock and I go to meetings on Sunday, but my full-time job is here at the UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. I saw in one of the articles about you that you were a business manager at KROL radio. Yes, back with Sig Rogich. We opened a radio station with those call letters. It was simulcast in Laughlin and in Las Vegas. It was tough getting?I remember all the big towers?getting the signal. The signal wasn't strong between Laughlin and here and stuff. So Sig sold it and then I went to work full-time at R&R Advertising. 8 Now, R&R Partners is a name that is very entrenched in the community. So you were there when it was probably smaller. It was always the preeminent advertising agency. The big account was the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Sig became the ambassador to Iceland under Poppa Bush [President George Bush] and sold it to a man by Billy Vassiliadis. I was still there. Then in 1992, the governor and the athletic commissioners?my predecessor at the athletic commission had taken ill and passed away, a Jewish boy by the name of Chuck Minker, whose family was here. He passed away in May of '92, and then the governor and the commissioners appointed me as the executive director where I was with the athletic commission until 2006, before I came here to the UFC. So was that a full-time job? That was full-time. What were your responsibilities in that role? The athletic commission? Yes. Describe your job. That would entail approving fights, making sure all the rules were followed, training officials, referees and judges, every aspect of a fight when you would go to a fight, the timekeepers, the scorekeepers. I was in charge of them all. I was the day-to-day guy, but there was a five-person commission that certainly they were the board, more or less. All kinds of medical tests. It's about health and safety. Make sure the fighters got paid what they signed their contracts for. Make sure that (cartoons)?when a fighter went to fight there was nothing in his gloves; make sure his hands were wrapped; he didn't have rocks in his gloves or something. 9 Yes, it was full time. I loved it. I had the best regulatory athletic commission job in the world. I still believe that to this day. I had some of the biggest fights in the world whether it be Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield and Oscar De La Hoya. I had many big international incidents. In November 1993, a guy [James Miller] flew into the ring with some kind of paragliding contraption he was strapped to. He was called the Fan Man. You can look up some of this stuff. The fight was between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe at Caesars Palace. He flew into the ring? Yes, he had something with a parachute and he actually was able to do it with his feet. Yes, you can YouTube it, but it's called the Fan Man. In 1997, I had the infamous bite fight with Evander and Mike Tyson. In fact, here's the picture. I had to take down this down because I have to put something else up. This is right after the first bite. Oh my, okay. And there you go. How did you handled those kinds of situations? How did I handle it? Yes. What was your involvement in the aftermath of these things? So here is this picture. Now, all heck is breaking loose and the crowd is going crazy and the referee is telling me what happened. The commission ended up fining Mike three million dollars and suspending him for a year. But I was more or less the face of the commission. So I was involved in all the hearings. Up there is a LeRoy Neiman picture of one of the hearings. I don't know if it's valuable to anybody else, but that's an actual LeRoy Neiman copy of a painting at least. 10 That's pretty wonderful. Yes. So those are notorious antics. How did boxing become so important to Las Vegas? That's a very good question. These big fights they realized brought in the big gamblers. And so the hotels might have given away some of the tickets, but they brought them in because they gambled big. The notoriety the city got, you can't buy it. You'd have every sports reporter from all over the country, all the big papers. Things have changed now because of the Internet. But back in the 1980s and early 90s, it was really, really big. We had fights outdoors at Caesars, 18,000 people there. Gerry Cooney fought a guy by the name of Larry Holmes. We had 24,000. Up there is a lot of credentials from those fights. I love your office here at the UFC building. My office is different than everybody's. Oh, my gosh, yes. It's a museum. It's just great. Yes, it's a little museum. It's good stuff. Yes. There's football pictures of referees. There's a picture of Sylvester Stallone and I'm in the background there. There was a movie called Rocky Balboa, the last movie, and I got to play myself in it. Did you speak, have a speaking part? Yes. I'm getting residuals to this moment, not very much. I had like two lines. What were your lines? "Rocky Balboa, two seventeen," because I was the one who weighed him. The other guy's name 11 was Mason "The Line" Dixon, two twenty-one. I get a residual check of thirteen dollars. It was about fifteen years ago. So I'm still getting money. That's great. I'll have to go back and look at that movie. Wow. When we were traveling in Africa, one of our experiences when we would go into remote villages was that the kids would want to know where we were from. We'd say, "Las Vegas." And the first thing that they would talk about were the professional fighters. Yes. And that tells you. Yes. They knew their names and Vegas was synonymous with that. Yes. So here I am as the leader of this commission. So it was a very heady time and it was very hard for me to leave there. But one of the former commissioners, who was a commissioner at one time during my term, was Lorenzo Fertitta; he called me up in 2005 and said, "I want to have breakfast with you." Then he and the other partner, Dana White?we talked a couple of months, a couple of different times, and they made me an offer and said, "You could really help us grow the sport in mixed martial arts.? It was a gamble because a lot of people didn't like the sport. At that time there was maybe eighteen, nineteen states that had approved it. Now we have a big map right there that shows the whole country is green. So every state has approved it. So that's part of my world. We're working at being in New York in November. It took us eight years to get licensed in New York, many trips to Albany. Did you like the sport of mixed martial arts [MMA] yourself at first? I understood it. It took me awhile to really know some of the nuisances of the sport because I thought if a guy was on top of another guy, he automatically won the round, but that wasn't always true. Some guys could be on the bottom and they know how to use Jiu-Jitsu and judo and 12 could do things. So I had to learn a lot. There is a certain excitement about (the sport). People who want to compare boxing and MMA, I tell them not to. It's like having two kids; you can like them both; you don't have to pick one over the other. The other night we had 15,000 people at the new MGM property, the new T-Mobile Arena, for big fights; plus people all over the country, all over the world watching it. So, yes, it's exciting and it's fun for me. An aside, how was that facility for that kind of a match? T-Mobile Arena?it's beautiful inside. It's a little bit hard after the fights to get in and out of. This fight I was able to park at what they call the loading docks. So it was easy for me to get out. But if you just want to go see Barbra Streisand or any rock and roll group, you have to park in one of the hotels. It's more of a hassle. It doesn't seem as central, but I think you get used to it. I've been to a couple of events there and you just have to change your way of thinking, I guess. Yes. You have to go a little earlier. You have to park. We'll see how it does when people have to pay eight, ten dollars to park. Everywhere else I go in the world, you're paying to park. So I'm sure that will catch on here and other hotels will do it. But, no, it's a gorgeous arena. The acoustics are good. So, yes, I think it's beautiful. How and where did mixed martial arts start as a competitive sport? Oh, it goes all the way back to early days in the Olympics; there was something called the Pankration [a combination of wrestling and boxing]. It's a derivative of that. There's different aspects to MMA. There's judo. There's Jiu-Jitsu. There's wrestling. There's striking. So that's 13 why they call it mixed martial arts. It really didn't become a recognized sport until 1993. There is a Brazilian family called the Gracies who have what they call Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and they're the founders of it in a lot of ways. The Fertitta family bought it in 2000-2001. They sold it [UFC] last week for $4 billion. Wow. So this is a monumental time. Does this change your relationship with the organization? So far, no. We actually are having meetings this week with the new buyers explaining from the regulatory side what we do. So I'm looking forward to that. So it's very exciting that it's based in Las Vegas. Yes, it's exciting that way. I look at the new owners and see that they have offices around the world and I think all it's going do is grow the sport. How did the Fertittas?we should probably interview them for one of our projects?but how did they get involved in MMA? As I said, Lorenzo was on the commission. Dana was his partner, his friend. They had friends who were doing it and Dana was managing some fighters and he said, "Hey, I think we can do something. This guy wants to sell the whole business for two million dollars." Dana didn't have the money and the Fertittas did. So they bought it. They lost a lot of money for a few years. They turned it around, sold it for big money. It's a huge success story. It really is. It's just amazing. So is it more popular today than boxing? Different genres, different generations. It's more popular with the younger eighteen- to thirty-year-olds I'd say. What's happened with boxing is that the best big fighters are playing basketball and football. They can come right out of high school and make big money. In boxing it takes some time and you get hit. Now, you're up in Cuba, boxing is really, really big. The best 14 example would be the Olympics that just finished. We had a woman win the Gold Medal. That's a big thing. But we didn't have one male Gold Medalist. And that was disappointing. And it's been that way off and on the last few years or the last probably three or four Olympiads. Maybe they've had one or two. But on TV you never saw a boxing match no matter how much Olympics you could watch. You had to go to a special station and know the times. So, yes, that's a shame. That's interesting. I can remember as a kid growing up that's how we knew Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali. It was like he was Cassius; he was a big deal. So you?ve met a lot of these boxers. I was talking to [Mike] Tyson on Saturday night. Yes, I do. I have met them all. There's a picture right there [pointing] of Ali and myself probably fifteen years ago or more, holding that picture on the top; he's holding that picture. That's Sonny Liston, the famous fighter. Then there's Ali. The next picture, the third one down is Lennox Lewis and Evander and Sugar Ray Leonard on the next one. Yes, so I've met them all. Would it be fair to ask who are among the ones you admire most? Well, Ali. I would be shocked if everybody wouldn't say they admired him because he stood up for what was right and it was certainly proven that he was right. But what I have found, most of the fighters are great guys. Sometimes their entourages are tough and they surround themselves with some...But, no, I love being involved and it was a hard decision for me to leave. What do you remember about Muhammad Ali when he was a conscientious objector? He was hated. Yes. That was our era of being young adults. What did you feel about him then? 15 I saw him fight here as Cassius Clay in his seventh professional fight. So I knew all about him. But I didn't know much about Muslims when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali from Cassius Clay. Then he went to jail for those years. It took him some time. Once he got out, though, he was able to rehabilitate himself and became probably the most popular person in the world at one time. You could go to Africa and they would recognize him. Yes. He was right up there with Michael Jordan. Those are among the most recognizable figures. Yes, but much, much more. Because Michael Jordan was still an American basketball player. This was a world guy. Yes. Good point. You also told me that have been a longtime UNLV timekeeper or something. Tell me about that. Through officiating and stuff. The Thomas and Mack opened in 1983, I believe. In those days, I recall one of the timekeepers passed away. It had to be in '83. My friend Chuck Minker was running one clock, and so he moved up and they brought me in. I've been running the shot clock it's called throughout all the years, so over thirty years. I just worked a couple of weeks ago with our US Olympic team; held here at T-Mobile Arena. I run the clock for that. I'm getting ready for the next season. I'm also instant replay at UNLV. So I'll be doing the football game pretty soon. So officiating is a big?not a big part?this whole thing is sports. It aggravates Joann, my wife, sometimes. She could always go to the big fights, but she didn't like the crowds. I have extensive travel now and she doesn't really like to travel for these fights. But every once in a while...Saturday night I was able to get a couple of extra tickets. So my daughter and my son went with their respective spouses and my wife went. So it was good, yes. 16 Does she have a favorite sport? No, I don't think she really cares?well, my son was a very good high school basketball player and she never missed a game. He got a scholarship to play ball at Ja