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  We handed him the number of the venue.

  My father got up and walked to the phone. A short time later he was talking with Michael, who was open to meeting him for lunch. I found out later that Michael had a refreshingly open attitude about the whole thing. A lot of people would have held a grudge after all that time. But not Michael. He probably figured, Look, let me go meet the guy. If he’s nice, great. I’ll have two fathers: the man who raised me and my biological father. If I don’t get along with Joe Buffer, no harm done. I never have to see the guy again.

  The two met for the first time at a restaurant in Century City. I’m happy to report that they got along very well—well enough to agree to a second meeting with the whole family. With Dad, Mom, Brian, and me.

  We met one night at La Terraza, an Italian restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. I was so excited going into the place. Besides the novelty of connecting at last with a long-lost sibling, I was a huge boxing fan and was starstruck by the guy’s charisma and the coolness of his job. We got along tremendously, and Michael told us that his mom had died when he was still young, and he’d been raised by a foster family for much of his life but had never been formally adopted. Luckily his last name had never been formally changed, or we would never have found him.

  It was a further thrill for him, a fight announcer, to discover that the fights ran in his blood. Had my father not reconnected with him, Michael would have gone his whole life not knowing that he was the grandson of a prizefighter and the son of a man who boxed in the military. How it is that he was drawn into this particular profession is one of the great mysteries of life. He’d served in the Army during the Vietnam War. Afterward, he became a professional model and even sold cars. Somehow, one thing led to another, and through his passion for the sport, he became a boxing ring announcer.

  The three of us—Michael, Brian, and me—became friends. Every time I watched him, I started to have a new feeling deep down, a feeling I never expressed to anyone. As a young man I had never wanted to be a professional fighter, but I had trained hard like one. But announcing in the ring seemed like a great way to connect with the sport in a way that called upon the traits that I knew I had inside me. A strong voice. An ability to connect with people. And passion for fights.

  I wish I could do what Michael does, I thought. I wish I could be an announcer.

  At the time, it was one of those crazy wishes you make that you don’t think will ever come true, and I buried the feeling. Besides, the closer I got to Michael, the more I learned about his career. Yes, it was an amazing job. He got to travel all over the world. He got to hang out with tremendous athletes who regarded him as a classy icon of the sport. And since he was such a good-looking guy, I’m sure beautiful women desired him every time he walked into a room. And let’s not forget the fact that his catchphrase drove audiences wild and had become synonymous with the start of every boxing event. Even if you didn’t know Michael’s name, you knew boxing just wasn’t the same without the handsome guy in the tux roaring, “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!”

  But the truth was, fight announcers just weren’t paid well in those days. In order to make a living announcing full-time, Michael did a large number of events and was traveling almost every week. He made good money, but he’d never had a million-dollar year yet.

  Michael and I got to talking about this. For a young man, I was a very successful businessman. I was driving great cars, living on the beach, dating wonderful women, and pulling down six figures a year. Okay, so I hadn’t had my own million-dollar year yet, either, but I’d proved my ability to sell my products and myself. A while back, Michael had had the notion to trademark his catchphrase, and had even hired an attorney to handle it for him. The trademark didn’t go nearly as far as it had to in order to protect his intellectual property. On top of that, Michael was not actively trying to market it in any way, and no one was pushing him to do so or asking to do so for him. Selling himself was not something Michael felt comfortable doing.

  I thought maybe I’d be able to help, but I didn’t want to jump in with both feet. If I started telling him what to do, maybe I’d hurt the relationship that was still growing. And I was probably intelligent enough to know that I still needed to learn a lot more about the sports and entertainment industry before I tried my hand at managing someone’s career. In Los Angeles, everyone gets this idea that they can manage people. God knows, there are many people out there who need managing, and if you have any business sense at all, it occurs to you, Hey, I should take someone under my wing and see if I can make us both some money.

  So it wasn’t a far-fetched thing.

  It just wasn’t time.

  Then one night I drove to Vegas with Mom, Dad, and Brian to catch the Evander Holyfield–vs.–Riddick Bowe fight at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. Michael was announcing. The date was November 13, 1992. It turned out to be a pivotal night for Holyfield, the first time he lost to anyone in his career.

  It turned out to be pivotal for me as well. I was sitting in my seat watching Michael announce live.

  “LET’S GET READY TO RUMMM​MMMBB​BBBBL​LLLLL​E!”

  The sound of the crowd flowed over me like a wave. It was so deafening, so powerful, so filled with freaking potential that I could barely concentrate on the fight.

  Suddenly my mind was filled with ideas. One after another after another. I could not stop thinking where Michael’s career could go. It suddenly seemed so clear to me that it was possible to harness his fame and push it beyond the squared ring of boxing. Michael was not just a ring announcer. I wanted to establish him as the world’s most renowned sports and entertainment announcer—that was my goal.

  If you could somehow build on that, you could—if you were smart—create a ripple effect to other financially rewarding opportunities.

  After the fight, I rushed back to my hotel room and started pouring out my thoughts onto a legal pad. Page after page after page.

  In a flash I had seen what kept so many announcers from making it big. They were trapped. They had booming, powerful voices that they didn’t know what to do with.

  But I did.

  Not long after, we talked and I laid it all out for him.

  “I want to make you richer and more famous than you’ve ever dreamed. You give me a chance to manage you, and you’ll have more chances to announce than ever, in all forms of sports and entertainment. All we need to do is put together a little seed money, sign some papers, and I’m ready to go to work.”

  BUFFERISM NO. 5

  “STOP DREAMING—TAKE ACTION.”

  Only 2 percent of the world’s dreamers successfully put their thoughts into action and achieve their goals. They become leaders and top earners. The other 98 percent keep dreaming. Think like the minority.

  I also conveyed that after I made him rich, I wanted to fulfill my dream of being an announcer, too.

  It was out! I had just uttered my secret dream …

  “There’s no money in it, and I’m probably the only one making a full-time living from it!” Michael told me. “What have I been telling you?”

  “Hey, no worries,” I said. We agreed that it was a conflict of interest for me to announce boxing. I agreed then and there that I would never announce boxing without his blessing—a pledge I have never broken. I knew in my heart that someday something would come along that would be a perfect entertainment arena for me to fulfill my dream.

  5

  SELLING THE VOICE

  Now that I had Michael on board, I took my parents out to a nice dinner and told them my plans. They were fascinated but worried about what I was proposing. The biggest thing on their minds? I was earning six figures a year at the time. If I divested myself of all my businesses to focus on Michael, wouldn’t I be shooting myself in the foot? If I was making this much money, why would I ever jeopardize it?

  If anyone could understand why I wanted to do this, it was my father. After all, here was a man who had quit his VP job to chase a dre
am as a writer. But even he was confused.

  “How are you going to do it?” my father said, unaware that he was echoing Michael’s own words.

  “Trust me,” I said. “Believe in me. And I’ll make it happen.”

  I definitely had a lot on the line. I had a beach house with a $5,000-a-month mortgage. I was rolling the dice with just the money in the bank and a dream. But I had started enough businesses to know how easy it was to make a comeback. I just basically said fuck it, let’s do this …

  It would not be easy, but I was working from a few basic principles that are obvious to anyone who had ever run a business: If you’re good at selling, you can sell anything. In my life, I’ve launched companies that sold everything from home and business security systems to water filtration systems, clothing apparel, direct-mail solutions for businesses, and of course telemarketing companies that sold products to individuals and businesses. One of my mantras has always been All business is the same; only the products are different. If I could sell toner and nutritional supplements, I could certainly sell my brother’s voice. I just had to convince customers why they would want to pay to license such a thing.

  To me it was obvious. Michael’s image was known to millions of people who followed boxing, but the catchphrase was elastic enough to apply to almost any other sport, event, or product. When people heard “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble,” they thought things like, “Let’s get down!” “Let’s party!” “Let’s rock and roll!” “Start your engines!” There was something infectious and fun and exciting about the phrase and Michael’s delivery. It seemed to apply to everything in life—not just fighting. I saw it as a clarion call to the competitive spirit. It seemed logical to me that if a company wanted to evoke those kinds of feelings in their patrons, customers, and fans, they’d want to use Michael’s line.

  I would need some help locking down Michael’s trademark, so I hired a lawyer and put him to work making sure that Michael had the strongest possible protection under the law. Then I designed a promotional kit, a little folder with tons of information about Michael and what we were offering, and had copies printed for about thirteen dollars a pop. That wasn’t cheap in 1994 dollars. At the beginning I didn’t have much money to play with, so I worked alone out of my home office, doing everything from packing boxes to cold-calling.

  One day I flew to New York to attend a licensing trade show, and I walked the floor with those promo kits under my arm. I had never done anything like this before, and I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I just thought, When I see something that fits, I’ll know it. If anyone seemed like they might be a good fit, I’d walk up to them and go into my pitch.

  I got three types of responses:

  “I see that guy all the time when I watch the fights!”

  “Hey, yeah, I don’t watch boxing, but I’ve heard of that line!”

  “Michael who?”

  I was deliberately soft-sell. If they hadn’t heard of Michael, I didn’t want to push the explanation; too much explanation always puts you at a point of weakness. I educated them just enough to start thinking about the phrase. Then, some weekend, when they were sitting at home and heard Michael say the phrase on TV, they’d make the connection and suddenly get a “brilliant” idea. And I’d get a call from them the following Monday. There’s an old saying in Hollywood that Michael and I both agreed with: If it’s not their idea, it’s not going to happen. That was exactly my mentality.

  I was tenacious. If I read a boxing magazine and saw an ad for some kind of apparel or nutritional drink, I put them on my list. If I saw a company mentioned in the business section of the Los Angeles Times, on the list they went. I’d prowl the aisles at the local Toys“R”Us or Spencer’s Gifts, looking for toys and little gadgets that might be a good fit for Michael’s brand. I’d flip the packaging over and make a note of the companies I liked. Everything went on my list, and then I’d get back to the office and start researching the companies. These were the pre-Internet days, so I often had to do my homework by making a few calls or running out to the library to look them up in the business directories. But eventually it all came down to picking up the phone and making that call.

  My first hit was with a little company called Funomenon. They had some nice gift-shop novelties. I liked them because their products were so inexpensive that people of any income level could buy them. Funomenon loved the idea of doing a Michael Buffer key chain and coffee mug. You press a button on a little plastic microphone and it screams at the top of its electronic lungs. Ditto for the coffee mug.

  As soon as I had dozens of those samples in my office, I was no longer selling from an empty shelf. Anyone who does sales will tell you that sometimes people suffer from a lack of imagination. If they can’t picture what you’re trying to sell them, they won’t buy it. But what’s more memorable than a key chain that sounds like Michael Buffer?

  Eventually I was able to persuade the merchandising people at World Championship Wrestling to use Michael in their licensing and merchandising of WCW products. We agreed to licenses for action figures, an electronic wrestling ring, and a WCW Thumb Wrestling toy implanted with audio voice chips of Michael’s voice, among other products. Their sales were huge. But then the big one hit.

  I’d been a big video game player since the days of Pong and Space Invaders. I was crazy for the stuff. I pitched a few companies, but they all wanted to pay a flat fee up front and go their merry way. That didn’t sit well with me. I remembered the story of how Sylvester Stallone turned down multiple offers to buy his script to Rocky because he wanted to star in it and to own a piece of the movie.

  10 TIPS FOR STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS

  1. Be an “OPMer”—invest with other people’s money (OPM).

  2. Keep it legal!

  3. Check out the competition and incorporate their success formulas into your own.

  4. Teach your employees by example. Be the best, and teach them how to teach others.

  5. The secret of success is delegation. You can’t do it all yourself.

  6. Have PASSION for what you do, or don’t do it.

  7. Building your own business is not work, it’s a lifestyle. Enjoy it!

  8. Do NOT sleep with your employees.

  9. “Fake it till you make it.” You can look and feel successful without lying.

  10. Winners concentrate on winning. Losers concentrate on getting by. Be a winner!

  That got me thinking: If I sell people the rights to Michael’s likeness and voice, we’ll get a little money now and we’ll never see much more than that. How can I get on the inside? How can I position Michael to become essential to a video game and become his own brand-name game?

  I envisioned a Let’s Get Ready to Rumble video game, and shared the concept with everyone I talked to. The game ought to have fictional boxing characters with funny names mixing it up in a ring with a Michael-like character calling the fights. The game should use a name that was a play on Let’s Get Ready to Rumble. Above all, our company had to own a piece of the profits. Otherwise, we couldn’t do the deal. Midway, the company known for Mortal Kombat, made us an offer on those terms.

  Ready 2 Rumble Boxing was released in 1999, bundled with the new Dreamcast video game console along with nine other Dreamcast video games. The reception was huge. How huge? Within the first twenty-four hours, the Dreamcast console and its ten video games racked up $97.5 million in sales. Variety magazine noted that this package set a new record in Hollywood history, racking up the most sales of an entertainment product in a twenty-four-hour period ever.

  It was a huge success for me, the biggest mark I’d made in my business career up to that point. One day, our first royalty check from Midway arrived at the offices of the Buffer Partnership. Kristen, my vice president, opened the right side of the envelope and pulled out the check slowly …

  First we saw five numbers: 168.40.

  Then we saw an 8.

  Then a 2.

  I thought, This is gr
eat! We just made $28,000!

  That would certainly be a nice chunk of change for our first video game endeavor.

  Kristen whipped the rest of the check out of the envelope. At the head of all these numbers was the number 6.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s for $628,000!”

  The two of us were jumping up and down in the office. It was a long while before we were calm enough to phone Michael.

  Later I realized what a tremendous accomplishment this was. To my knowledge, no one had ever taken someone’s voice and trademarked phrase and sold it so successfully and so profitably. If I had not taken this shot, it probably would never have happened, because no other manager would have seen the potential and taken on a fight announcer as a client. No other manager in Los Angeles would have seen the potential. In fact, a number of Hollywood people cautioned me that it was a bad idea to take on just one client. It only worked if your client was a superstar. One of these naysayers was Michael’s own attorney, who told me that he himself would not be able to survive representing just one client like Michael. It seemed clear to all the players in Hollywood: If you wanted to earn a healthy six-figure income and set yourself up in the good life in L.A., you could not bank on one client.

  This only made me hungrier for the success I had envisioned. My response to the naysayers? “I will blow you all away!”

  But I was no ordinary manager. I was connected to Michael by a bond stronger than the contract we’d signed. I knew my parents and Brian were watching me, too. I could not allow myself to fail. I was acting out of passion, out of love of family, and out of the conviction that I could make his voice and catchphrase a part of American culture.

  That was just the beginning. We also started making money from various court settlements for copyright and trademark infringements. I don’t like to dwell on it because so much of what goes on in such matters is acrimonious. Everyone feels bad, everyone feels embarrassed. But let’s put it this way: If you have a trademark or copyright, it’s your duty to defend it. If someone uses it in violation, you have to call them on it or you’re setting up a dangerous precedent where you’re allowing people to abuse your rights. So we let it be known that we would pay a reward to anyone who informed us of infringements, and we started getting calls almost immediately.