Not really what I was thinking of, but this is a very good article on Silva and Shelby, the other UFC matchmaker.
An excerpt:
Silva’s something of a special relic in the UFC. He’s one of the few employees who worked for the company back when it was owned by SEG, before Zuffa bought it in 2001. Before that, he was a manager for a software retailer, but really, he said, “I didn’t care what I did as long as I could do martial arts and hang out with my friends.”
He loved the first UFC but saw problems on the horizon. When SEG took out an ad in “Black Belt Magazine” that included the office phone number, he called it just hoping to share what he thought was good advice.
“I didn’t think I’d get a job out of it or anything,” Silva said. “I just said, ‘Hey, I love this [stuff], but here’s the problems you’re going to have.'”
And they listened to him. Silva became a kind of an unofficial advisor, then an official employee. The problem was, SEG didn’t pay very well. He went into debt just from holding onto the job. When Zuffa bought the company, Silva was one of the few employees who came highly recommended to the new owners. They wanted him to relocate to Vegas, which he did for a short time.
“I hated it there,” Silva said. “But I thought, this is my chance to get out of debt.”
Powerful, but a little misunderstood: UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby | MMAjunkie