While working under Dana White may seem like the ultimate dream job, it also comes with its own set of risks. Speaking about her role, UFC’s senior vice president of operations, Amber Bowen, revealed the high-risk situations she has faced while handling championship belts during marquee events, surrounded by hundreds of fans.

“Getting the belt in the Octagon isn’t necessarily scary, but the scary thing is actually walking down to get the belt there because you’ve got all these drunk fans that are like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the belt.’ Bowen said in a recent TKO video, “When we were doing Conor vs. Floyd, they had the big money belt that was like a $2.5 million alligator-skin belt. They had two guys getting handcuffed to the suitcase and to themselves. 

“The night before, I drove to Walgreens and literally met a dude in the car and grabbed the belt from him and took it to my house and carried it in my purse at the T-Mobile the next day. As I hand it over to these guys with the handcuffs, I was like, ‘Where was this last night?’” 

For the unaware, Amber Bowen has been part of the UFC’s operations team for over a decade. According to her LinkedIn profile, she started her career in the company as an event operations manager and was later promoted to senior vice president of operations. With that level of experience, it’s no surprise she has handled such tricky situations. However, there have been rare instances where the promotion experienced theft during an event.

Most notably, former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre lost his belt after defeating Johny Hendricks at UFC 167. While ‘Rush’ was showering and getting ready to attend the post-fight press conference, someone reportedly stole his classic UFC gold belt, which was worth around $300,000 at the time.

Since then, not many instances of belts being stolen at UFC events have surfaced. However, Henry Cejudo once revealed that his UFC belts were stolen from his podcast studio. With that in mind, the job becomes highly risky for an operations head, tasked with protecting such prized possessions during events packed with thousands of largely unrecognizable individuals.

Still, for the UFC executive, handling belts isn’t the only challenge. Bowen also spoke about the stressful side of her role, highlighting the logistical hurdles of shifting one of the promotion’s marquee events from one location to another.  

UFC operations head reveals handling logistics during Jon Jones vs Alexander Gustafsson rematch

Initially, the UFC announced Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson 2 for UFC 232 at T-Mobile Arena on Dec. 29, 2018. But the promotion had to switch the entire event to Inglewood, California, with the new date being December 29, 2018. The reason? The United States Anti-Doping Agency, the UFC’s former drug testing partner, reported an atypical finding before the event.

By the time the former champion was cleared to fight, the Las Vegas date had passed. So, the promotion had to shift the entire logistics to California so the event could proceed. Amber Bowen oversaw the event’s logistics and later explained how tough it was to book flights and manage the entire process on just 7–8 days’ notice.

“The way to understand operations is the way to understand every part,” she added in the same video. “Every department cares about their department, and rightly so. In operations, we have to care about all of the departments. We are very much a get s—t done team.

“When we moved Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson to California on like 7–8 days’ notice, everybody jumped into the car and drove to California and was like, ‘Alright, we’ll figure it out when we get here.’ You’re chartering jets. In order to charter a jet, you have to have a bunch of information. But we just buckle down and get it.”

With so much risk and stakes attached, do you think someone would actually be tempted to take the job of an operational executive? What do you think?