IN A SOFT GLOBAL economy that keeps getting softer, the punch line to that old joke seems more appropriate than ever.

Q: How do you make a small fortune?

A: Start out with a large fortune.

But while throngs of worried investors wonder what the heck happened to their incredible shrinking stock portfolios and 401(k) accounts, there remain at least a few business ventures that, for now, appear to be so robust as to be almost recession-proof.

Take Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC as it is more commonly known, which is to mixed martial arts what Microsoft became to electronic gizmos when a nerdy Harvard dropout named Bill Gates imagined in the mid-1970s that nearly everyone would someday want to own a personal computer.

UFC president Dana White, with his shaved head, bulging biceps, aversion to suits and propensity for profanity, doesn't much resemble the bespectacled, brainiac Gates. But upon closer inspection, the streetwise White emerges as the same sort of visionary who peered into the future and came up with a strategy for transforming a struggling enterprise into a force that eventually would become an obsession in the lives of countless millions around the world.

Particularly among those in the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic.

Tomorrow night, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, UFC 100 celebrates not only the company's meteoric rise, but its staying power. Not so very long ago, those who questioned UFC's prospects for long-term success wouldn't have given a plugged nickel for its chances of reaching triple figures with pay-per-view shows.

And now? It's a given that UFC 100, which pits UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar against UFC interim heavyweight champ Frank Mir, will do 1 million-plus PPV sales, with a live gate exceeding $3 million. Those projections are modest; the actual numbers could be substantially higher.

"It's expected to be our biggest event ever," said UFC publicist Jennifer Wenk, who has ample reason to believe all existing records for a mixed martial arts card will be shattered.

The future of UFC appears to be even brighter than its present, if that is possible. UFC 101 on Aug. 8 ushers not only the next era, but a fertile new market in the Wachovia Center, which has bought in with the ardor of a lovestruck suitor who finally has a chance to snuggle close with his beloved. With hardly any advance local promotion, UFC 101 - with co-main events that have UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn defending his title against Kenny Florian, and UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva, who is moving up to light heavyweight, taking on former UFC light-heavy titlist Forrest Griffin - already has sold more than 14,000 tickets (with a top price of $600) and guaranteed a live gate in the vicinity of $3 million.

Imagine how quickly the remaining seats will be snapped up once UFC adheres to tradition and springs for a couple of TV commercials and newspaper ads.

UFC 1 - White was not involved then, and neither were his primary backers, brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta - launched on Nov. 12, 1993, with an eight-man tournament. There were no weight classes and hardly any rules, which at once explains its primordial appeal and reason for revulsion. Republican Sen. John McCain denounced mixed martial arts as "human cockfighting," and many others held a similar view; MMA was banned in all but five states at the time.

But there was no denying that mixed martial arts had . . . well, something that stirred the souls of more combative spectators.

Frank Mir was a 14-year-old high school freshman when he and his father caught the telecast of UFC 1, in which Royce Gracie, a 6-1, 180-pound master of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, defeated a succession of larger, stronger men, culminating with his final-round victory, via submission, over Dutch fighter Gerard Gordeau.

"I had the assumption that everyone else did, that if you punched somebody, they fell down," Mir recalled. "I never had any clue about grappling. I never realized judo and jiu-jitsu were dominant martial arts.

"That first UFC show was an eye-opening experience for me. I had never seen anything like what Royce Gracie was doing, shooting in and tackling people. Me and my dad were completely dumbfounded by what was going on."

Lesnar's earliest recollections of UFC are a bit, uh, hairier.

"The memory that sticks out in my mind is Gracie and Kimo [Leopoldo] when Gracie pulled the ponytail out of Kimo's head," Lesnar, who turns 32 on Sunday, said with undisguised glee.

Certainly, officials with the Semaphore Entertainment Group, which established the UFC brand in 1993 in conjunction with original investors Art Davie, Rorion Gracie and Robert Meyrowitz, weren't exactly sure what they had.

"They marketed it as the most brutal, bloody sport in the world," White said. "It was great for them short-term because originally their plan was, 'Let's get a couple of pay-per-views out of this thing and make a quick buck.' "

White foresaw mixed martial arts as something bigger and more respectable when he pitched UFC as a potentially profitable opportunity to his high-school buddies, the Fertittas, who were executives with the Las Vegas-based Stations Casinos. They agreed and purchased UFC for $2 million in January 2001 under their new company, Zuffa LLC.

"We bought a brand that was tarnished," White admitted. "But when we got involved, we marketed it the way it should have been marketed - as an incredible sport with amazing athletes."

The "anything goes" mentality was jettisoned, weight classes instituted and rules enacted. White, who had been managing two MMA fighters, Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, brought them in as UFC's first superstar attractions and the UFC took off like the space shuttle.

Well, the truth is that it was stuck on the launch pad for a while.

At one point, UFC was $34 million to $44 million in the hole, depending on whose bookkeeping you chose to believe, and the Fertittas were considering getting out before their losses mounted. But they decided to stick it out a while longer, and their persistence was rewarded with a remarkable turnaround.

UFC now is legal in 36 states, Pennsylvania being the latest to join the party, and a growing number of foreign countries. In 2008, its value was set at $1 billion. The Fertittas and White are now extremely wealthy men, speculators who had a dream, took a chance and built a better mousetrap.

As might be expected, challengers to UFC's dominance arose. But, for whatever reasons, competitors EliteXC, International Fight League and BodogFight have ceased operations, leaving Affliction as the last semiserious threat still standing.

Lorenzo Fertitta gives much of the credit for UFC's emergence as a global conglomerate - it already has a major presence in Europe, and further expansion into South America, Asia, Africa and Australia is being considered - to White.

"He is by far the best promoter on the planet right now," Fertitta said.

No shrinking violet, White isn't about to disagree. In fact, he envisions a day when UFC will be as pervasive in the global sports culture as the Super Bowl and World Cup.

"This is probably one of the cockiest things I've ever said, and I've said some pretty cocky things, but this will be bigger than the NFL and bigger than soccer in the next 8 years," White predicted.

Lesnar, the former All-America wrestler at the University of Minnesota who became a prime box-office draw with World Wrestling Entertainment before going legit, said there is a reason White's formula works.

"The UFC is all about building superstars," said the 6-3, 265-pound Lesnar, who will attempt to avenge his only UFC loss against the smaller, more technically proficient Mir. "There's a weekly television show that makes it accessible for the Joe Blow who's sitting on his couch every night, flipping channels. Visibility is the key."

Affliction, which last year went into partnership with financier Donald J. Trump, has some highly visible MMA artists of its own, including heavyweights Fedor Emelianenko and Josh "The Baby-Faced Assassin" Barnett, who is not to be confused with the Daily News executive sports editor of the same name.

For his part, White professes to be as unconcerned with the threat posed by Affliction as he was by the defunct organizations. There can be room for only one No. 1.

"There really hasn't been a rise in mixed martial arts," he said. "There's been a rise in UFC." *