On Saturday night at the post-fight press conference, Dana White introduced Mark Fischer as the UFC’s newest Executive Vice President. Fischer will head up UFC Asia, spearheading the organization’s efforts to break into the lucrative Chinese, Korean and South Asian markets. While you may not have known it from Fischer’s tentative answers in the press conference but this is something of a real coup for the UFC, with Fischer having successfully led the NBA’s efforts to break into the chinese market. Eventually reaching the rank of Senior Vice President and Managing Director of NBA Asia, Fischer has worked in either China or Taiwan since the eighties.You can read his NBA profile here.
As when it hired the Executive Director of the Nevada Commission Marc Ratner to be its Vice President Regulatory Affairs, agreed to sell a ten percent stake in the company to Abu Dhabi’s Flash Entertainment and made the former Commissioner of the Canadian Football League Tom Wright the head of UFC Canada this is a clear statement of intent from the UFC. China and wider South Asia is a market with huge potential but its a market that needs careful nurturing. Fischer is the man with the local contacts and knowledge to do the nurturing and turn China, Korea and South Asia into a MMA hotbed. Once again you have to recognise (and to be frank applaud) the long-term vision of Zuffa.
