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Ultimate fight arbiter Marc Ratner going into Boxing Hall of Fame

Boxing gloves hang from the ring.
(Hively, Ken / Los Angeles Times)
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A day after Muhammad Ali’s death, the Ultimate Fighting Championship made its debut at the Forum, the same place where Ali eked out a split-decision triumph over Ken Norton in 1973 in his only appearance at the legendary arena.

It was fitting at UFC 199 on Saturday that a fun-loving, quick-witted fighter— England’s Michael Bisping — became middleweight champion in the main event. It was also special that Ali’s son-in-law, Kevin Casey, fought on the undercard.

And it was a tribute to a lasting allegiance to the fight game that Marc Ratner could say he attended both events.

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Ratner, 71, the former Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director from 1993 to 2006 who now serves as the UFC’s senior vice president of government and regulatory affairs, will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on Sunday in Canastota, N.Y.

“It’s a little overwhelming for me, still hard to believe,” Ratner said.

The respected regulator was speaking of his induction, not of the sometimes maniacal happenings around boxing that happened on his watch.

Three months into the job came the famed “fan-man” heavyweight title fight when a para-glider hovering over Caesars Palace experienced mechanical problems and crashed onto the ropes where Riddick Bowe was fighting Evander Holyfield.

“Nothing in the rules say what you do when somebody flies into the ring,” said Ratner, who permitted the fight to proceed following a 21-minute delay.

During Ratner’s reign, Mike Tyson tried to bite off Holyfield’s ears during a fight. A Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout was marred by a melee with Zab Judah’s corner in the ring. The egos of volatile promoters Don King and Bob Arum had to be managed. And there was the Tyson-Lennox Lewis news conference brawl that resulted in Tyson being booted from Nevada fights.

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“I learned I could never relax until the fight was over, nothing controversial happened, and no one got hurt,” Ratner said.

As a testimony to the type of care Ratner brought to his job, the first thing he mentioned when asked to reflect on his state commission work was the regret that seven boxers died of injuries during his tenure.

“There’s nothing worse,” Ratner said. “I would be at the hospital … and some were from body punches. You just never know. That was the low point, and it’s not fair not to talk about that.”

Ratner presided over a steady string of major bouts in the world’s fight capital, including two Tyson-Holyfield battles and Oscar De La Hoya’s disputed loss to Felix Trinidad.

“Obviously I have great memories of all the big fights, but as enjoyable were some of the small fights at the Orleans [Hotel] and the club fights, where I kept the officials busy and tried to run them the same as I did a big fight,” Ratner said. “Those club fights kept everybody sharp. [Veteran judge] Jerry Roth might’ve worked Holyfield-Bowe, but the week before, he worked a six-rounder at the Orleans. I kept them as busy as I could. I had Joe Cortez, Richard Steele and Mills Lane among my referees — three in the Hall of Fame — to select from.”

Ratner religiously carried a briefcase containing a tape measure so he could ensure before each fight that the ring was indeed the specified 20-foot by 20-foot square, and he kept in his car trunk a variety of different-sized and different-colored trunks for fighters to change into to avoid wearing matching-colored trunks.

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He wouldn’t hesitate to move a judge or referee from a poor showing in a marquee fight to a string of smaller bouts, even dismissing a handful. “There are people who don’t like me to this moment, I’m sure,” he said.

While Ratner was aware many of his important decisions would be met with reckless claims that someone in Sin City was on the take, he was adamant about keeping Arum and King “at arm’s length,” referring to them as “Mr. A.” and “Mr. D.K.,” instead of Bob and Don, and avoiding even a dinner invitation.

When critics chided him for not disqualifying the undefeated Mayweather for the April 2006 brawl with Judah, Ratner stood firm.

“I still believe this to this moment: To disqualify Floyd — he got hit low, hit on the top and on the back of the head — it just never entered my mind,” Ratner said. “He went right to the neutral corner. It could’ve been a lot nastier. We fined [Mayweather’s trainer/uncle] Roger [Mayweather] for jumping into the ring. I stand by that decision.”

Tyson’s 1997 “Bite Fight” at the MGM Grand brought referee Lane to disqualify Tyson after three rounds.

“I see Mike a lot. He sits cage-side, enjoys our [UFC] fights, is very, very sweet,” Ratner said. “I had a lot to do with him sitting out a year, getting the $3-million fine, but one-on-one he’s always been good with me. Never discussed it with him. I recall a class-action lawyer coming to us saying the fans didn’t get what they paid for in that fight — they got to see much more than they ever dreamt of! It was a frightening night. But as I look back on it today, it’s just another chapter.”

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Ratner and Tyson got together again when Tyson was seeking a license to fight Lennox Lewis, a bout that ended up in Memphis, Tenn., because of Tyson’s crazed behavior at a Las Vegas news conference to announce the bout.

“He applied again to fight Lennox here, and I remember talking vividly to Lennox’s promoter, telling them the morning of their press conference, ‘No matter what, don’t let them pose, because I think Mike will be licensed here and the MGM wants this fight real bad,’” Ratner said.

“As you recall, they got in a huge fight as they were starting to pose, and the state of Nevada lost that fight — tens of millions, if not $100 million, in money that would’ve come here. I don’t know why they thought it was so important to pose them. I’ve always been the face of the commission. And the negative publicity of that ... the commission couldn’t license that fight.”

One of the commissioners who told Tyson he was done in Nevada is current UFC Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta, who in 2006 phoned Ratner to arrange a breakfast meeting and sought to hire him to convince other states the UFC was no longer the “no-rules” type of fighting a prior owner promoted at its origin.

“I think you can help us to grow this sport,” Fertitta told Ratner. “Work with other states. You have a good rapport with different state commissions.”

Ratner mulled the offer through two major boxing cards — “probably one of the toughest decisions I ever made because I absolutely loved being the executive director, it was a dream job,” he said.

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After accepting, Ratner has kept a U.S. map in his office as he negotiated with states, coloring each new one that allowed MMA in green before only New York remained. After an estimated “28 trips to Albany,” he said, New York approved MMA fighting and the UFC will debut at Madison Square Garden in November.

“Boxing people thought I was crazy to leave for MMA, but it’s like having two children,” Ratner said. “My older child is boxing, my younger child is MMA, and there’s nothing wrong with loving them both. I still go to all the big boxing fights I can, still love them, and when we self-regulate in some of these foreign countries, I’m still doing everything I did in the boxing commission. I run it as if it was the Nevada commission. That’s been real fun.”

Ratner’s credibility as an ultimate arbiter is pronounced.

For 33 years, he has run the shot clock at UNLV basketball games. He was an NCAA football referee for 20 years, and commissioner of high school officials in Nevada.

“The motto I hoped people would remember me for was, ‘He always called me back.’ No matter what, with all these crazy things, I might’ve had 40 phone calls. I always called them back,” he said. “I try to teach my kids that.”

Ratner will bring those children, Mary, Heiden and David, to Canastota, along with his wife, Jody.

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