For a moment, Chris Weidman, the former UFC middleweight champion and native New Yorker, was at a loss for words. After a stellar collegiate wrestling career at Hofstra, where he was a two-time All-American and placed third in the NCAA championships at 197 pounds as a senior in 2007, he became a professional MMA fighter in 2009. As Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta slowly and methodically built the UFC into a power on the international sports landscape, one by one they successfully persuaded state legislatures across the country to legalize and agree to regulate the sport.