The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the largest mixed martial arts in the world, which houses most of the top fighters in the sport ranking and produces events worldwide. Dana White is the president of the UFC, while William Morris Endeavor owns the company.
The first UFC event was held in 1993 in Denver, Colorado. The purpose of the event was to identify the most effective martial art in a real fight between competitors from different combat disciplines, including boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, sambo, wrestling, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, karate, judo, and other styles. In later competitions, the fighters began to adopt the most effective techniques from different disciplines, which indirectly helped to create a completely separate style of fighting known today as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
The UFC has also bought and absorbed its main rivals like WFA, PRIDE, WEC, Strikeforce, and EliteXC.
Table of Contents
History of UFC
UFC 100 – Late 2000s-present
The popularity increased in 2009 with UFC 100 and the ten events that preceded it including UFC 90, 91, 92, 94, and 98. UFC 100 was a massive hit, garnering 1.7 million purchases under the pull of former NCAA wrestling champion and current WWE superstar Brock Lesnar in his rematch with former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir, the superstar. Canadian Georges St-Pierre in a face-off with Brazilian knockout artist Thiago Alves, and PRIDE legend Dan Henderson against Britain’s Michael Bisping, rival coaches in The Ultimate Fighter: the United States vs. the United Kingdom.
UFC 100 was the only event that attracted interest from ESPN, which provided extensive coverage of the event in the days before and after it. In fact, ESPN eventually became an additional coverage of UFC and other MMA news with the TV show ” MMA Live ” on ESPN2 in May 2010.
Passing UFC 100 was hampered significantly in the second half of 2009 after a series of injuries and other health-related problems forcing the organization to reform and reorganize its matches for various events.
However, momentum slowly began to pick up in the first quarter of 2010 after their championship defences were won by Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, as well as Lyoto Machida’s first loss at the hands of “Shogun” Rua for the UFC light heavyweight title. These fights formed a popular clash between former UFC champions and rivals Rashad Evans and Quinton Jackson – rivals in The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights – at UFC 114, with the first UFC main event headlined by African-American fighters. The event marked more than $ 1 million in pay-per-view purchases, where Evans posted a unanimous decision victory.
This dynamic led through the summer of 2010 at UFC 116, which saw the return of Brock Lesnar defending his UFC heavyweight title against undefeated interim champion Shane Carwin in front of 1.25 million pay-per-view viewers. 16 Lesnar survived an initial barrage of punches from Carwin that was nearly stopped by referee Josh Rosenthal. 17 However, Lesnar recovered in the second round and managed to subject Carwin through a throttling arm triangle thus retaining the undisputed heavyweight championship UFC. The overall event was critically acclaimed in the media For breaking expectations with a series of exciting fights that were featured on the television card.
After a dramatic fifth round with a last-minute victory by UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva over Chael Sonnen at UFC 117, Lesnar finally surrendered his belt to undefeated Cain Velasquez in the first-round TKO at UFC 121. . The bout produced Velasquez’s eighth knockout or TKO in his first nine MMA fights.
UFC 129 featured Georges St-Pierre vs. Jake Shields at the Rogers Center in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Currently, the biggest UFC event in the history of North America, which coincided with the UFC Fan Expo two days at the Direct Energy Center. The event sold out the 55,000 tickets for door earnings of more than $ 11 million, breaking the previous attendance of an MMA event in North America.
WEC purchase
Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, purchased World Extreme Cagefighting in late 2006 and held the first event of WEC with a new owner, January 20, 2007.
On October 28, 2010, Zuffa announced that its sister promotion WEC would be merging with the UFC. WEC held its last event on December 16, 2010. As a result of the merger, the UFC absorbed the bantamweight, featherweight, and lightweight divisions and their respective fighters. The UFC crowned the last WEC featherweight and bantamweight champions, José Aldo and Dominick Cruz, respectively, as the inaugural UFC champions in their new weight divisions.
Purchase of Strikeforce
On March 12, 2011, Dana White revealed that the UFC’s parent company ( Zuffa ) had purchased Strikeforce. After the purchase, the UFC signed Strikeforce’s top stars and champions, including Jason Miller, Nick Diaz, Dan Henderson, Alistair Overeem, and Cung Le. Under Zuffa ownership, Strikeforce made minor changes, including adopting the Uniform Rules for mixed martial arts in its entirety, closing lightweight classes, and ceasing promotion of amateur preliminary bouts. After reaching an extension to continue with Strikeforce through the promotion’s heavyweight division merged with the UFC, and the promotion’s contender series was terminated.
The last Strikeforce event was Strikeforce: Marquardt vs. Saffiedine on January 1, 2013, after which the promotion was disbanded and was taken over by the UFC.
Association with Fox
On August 18, 2011, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Fox announced a seven-year broadcast agreement through the Fox Sports affiliate, which terminated the agreement between Spike TV (now Paramount Network ) and Versus (now NBC Sports Network. ) with the UFC. The deal includes four events on Fox’s main network, 32 Friday Nights events per year on its FX cable network, 24 events from the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, and six Fight Night events.
The promotion’s first television event – UFC on Fox: Velasquez vs. dos Santos – broke the records for a single fight seen by viewers. In the main event, Junior dos Santos dethroned then-undefeated UFC heavyweight champion Caín Velásquez by KO at 1:04 of the first round. The broadcast peaked with 8.8 million viewers tuning in to the fight with an average audience of $ 5.7 million, making it by far the most-watched MMA event of all time and the Most watched sporting event since the 2003 fight between Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko.
One of the programming possibilities that is already underway is a weekly magazine-style UFC show. When asked about the possibility of a weekly magazine-style series UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta replied, “Not just weekly, but possibly several times a week you will have a UFC magazine (show).” The UFC will maintain production control of its product, including the use of its Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan broadcast equipment. Fox Sports will produce the pre-and post-shows.
Association with ESPN
In May 2018, the UFC entered into new US media rights agreements with Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International and ESPN Inc., succeeding those with 21st Century Fox, which began in January 2019. The five-year contracts have a cumulative value of $ 300 million per year for digital and linear rights, roughly doubling the amount paid by Fox in the last year of their previous contract, and include 42 events per year on ESPN platforms. ESPN’s linear networks will televise preliminary cards for UFC PPV events and 10 UFC on ESPN Fight Night events per year. The ESPN + subscription streaming service will broadcast 20 exclusive events per year under the UFC on ESPN + Fight Night brand; Regardless of the network, all Fight Night events will feature a full 12-fight card, and its preliminaries will air exclusively on ESPN +. The ESPN + service will also have on-demand rights to content from the UFC library and archive, new seasons of Dana White’s Contender Series and other new original content. UFC Fight Pass can be purchased as an add-on to ESPN + to broadcast pay-per-view events.
On March 18, 2019, it was announced that ESPN had reached a two-year contract extension. In addition, it was announced that in the United States, future UFC PPVs will only be sold through ESPN + to their subscribers, and will no longer be sold through traditional TV providers starting at UFC 236. At the same time, the price Standard for UFC PPVs were reduced to $ 59.99 (from $ 64.99), and new subscribers will also be able to purchase a UFC PPV package and a year of ESPN +.
Women in the UFC
On November 16, 2012, one day away from UFC 154: St-Pierre vs. Condit Dana White confirmed with Jim Rome that the UFC would feature female fighters, with Strikeforce champion Ronda Rousey being the first. Subsequently, she became the first UFC champion, the first Olympic medalist with a UFC title, and the first woman to defend the UFC title.
On December 11, 2013, the UFC took on the contracts of 11 women to fill its new 115-pound division. The inaugural champion will decide who won The Ultimate Fighter 20. Some of the fighters are Felice Herrig , Claudia Gadelha , Tecia Torres , Bec Hyatt , Joanne Calderwood , Invicta FC strawweight champion Carla Esparza and many more.
Rules of UFC
The current rules of the Ultimate Fighting Championship had originally been established by the New Jersey Athletic Control Board. The set of “Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts” that New Jersey established has been adopted in other states that also regulate mixed martial arts, including Nevada, Louisiana and California. These rules are also used by many other promotions within the United States, becoming mandatory for states that have adopted the rules, thus they have become the de-facto standard set of rules for professional mixed martial arts in the whole country.
Fat rounds
UFC bouts vary in maximum length, depending on whether the match is for a Championship title, or is the match for a “main event” undercard. In all fights, each round cannot be longer than five minutes. Championship fights last a maximum of five rounds. Beginning with UFC 138 on November 5, 2011, non-championship “main events” (ie the final fight on the card) also lasted a maximum of five rounds. Non-main fights in events last a maximum of three rounds. UFC on FX: Alves vs. Kampmann is notable for having two flyweight fights in the organization as part of his first flyweight tournament. There is one minute rest period between rounds.
The Octagon
The UFC cage is an octagonal structure with black vinyl clad metal wired walls and has a diameter of 32 feet (9.8 m), allowing 30 feet (9.1 m) of point-to-point space. The fence is 5 feet 6 inches (1.70 m) to 5 feet 8 inches high (1.78 m). The cage sits atop a platform, raising it 4 feet (1.2 m) off the ground. It has foam padding on the top of the fence and between each of the eight sections. It also has two opposite entry and exit doors. The carpet, painted with the sponsorship and art logos, is replaced at each event.
Attire
All competitors must fight in approved shorts, without shoes. No shirts, chalk, or long pants (including gi pants) are allowed. Combatants must wear approved light-weight open-finger gloves, which include at least 1 “of padding around the knuckles, (110 to 170 g / 4 to 6 ounces) that allow fingers to grip. These gloves allow fighters to hit with less risk of a damaged or broken hand while retaining the ability to grab and fight. A mouth guard and jockstrap is also required and must be supervised by a State Athletic Committee official before being allowed to enter the cage/octagon. The official uniform until 2021 was the Reebok brand. Currently, the contract is with Venum.
Results of a combat
Battles can end through:
- Submission : a fighter slaps the mat or his opponent, expresses verbally, or clearly communicates that he is suffering from pain (for example when yelling) at a level that causes the referee to stop the fight. Additionally, a technical submission can be called when a fighter loses consciousness or is about to suffer serious injury.
- Knock out : When a fighter enters a state of unconsciousness.
- Technical Knockout (TKO) : If the referee decides that a fighter cannot continue, the fight is declared as a technical knockout (TKO).
- Judges’ Decision : Depending on the score, a match can end as:
- Unanimous decision (all three judges vote for the same fighter).
- Majority decision (two judges vote a victory for a fighter, the third votes a tie).
- Split decision (two judges vote a win for one fighter, the third opts for the other fighter).
- Technical decision (a fighter becomes unable to continue as a result of an involuntary action or movement, resulting in a decision based on completed and unfinished rounds if the number of rounds being judged is sufficient).
- Unanimous tie (the three judges vote a tie).
- Majority tie (two judges vote for a tie, the third judge votes for a victory).
- Split tie (one judge votes victory for one fighter, the second votes for a victory for the other fighter, and the third votes a tie).
- Technical tie (the bout ends in a manner similar to that of a (technical decision), with the judges’ result resulting in a tie).
- Disqualification : A fighter intentionally executes an illegal move that is considered by the referee or opponent to be harmful or significant enough to negatively alter the opponent’s performance in the fight, resulting in the opponent’s victory.
- No Result : A fighter becomes unable to continue or compete effectively as a result of an intentionally illegal item. Additionally, the bout may be ruled out without a winner if the original match result is changed due to unsatisfactory or illegal circumstances, such as a premature stoppage or a fighter’s testing positive for banned substances.
Criterion to judge
Three judges score each round and the winner of each round receives ten points, while the loser receives nine points or less. Scores of 10-8 are normally awarded for dominant rounds and anything more dominant is scored less. Rounds of 10-7 are rarely seen.
Fouls of UFC
Athletic Commission of the State of Nevada describes the elements of the list as needed – Chapter 467 for unarmed combat:
- To bite.
- Directly press the eyes in any way.
- Insert your fingers into any hole in the opponent’s body, as well as cuts or wounds.
- Kicking or stepping on the opponent’s head or neck when on the ground.
- Manipulate small joints.
- Grab the hair.
- Heading.
- Attack the neck or spine.
- Strike with the tip of the elbow in a downward direction.
- Hitting the throat or grabbing the windpipe.
- Scratching, pinching, or twisting the skin.
- Grab the collarbone .
- Intentionally attempting to break an opponent’s bone.
- Kicking an opponent’s head when he is on the ground.
- Kneeling an opponent’s head when on the ground.
- Stepping on an opponent on the ground.
- Kick the kidneys with the heel.
- Nailing an opponent to the mat with the head or neck (see Piledriver ).
- Throw the opponent out of the cage.
- Grab the gloves, the opponent’s clothes.
- Spit at the opponent.
- Any unsportsmanlike conduct that causes harm to an opponent.
- Grab the bars.
- Using offensive language.
- Attack the opponent at half-time.
- Attacking the opponent while in the custody of the referee.
- Attack the opponent after finishing the round.
- Ignore the referee’s instructions.
- Intimidation, avoiding contact with the opponent, intentionally falling or pretending to be injured.
- Interfere with the corner.
- Throw in the towel during the fight.
- The application of any foreign substance to the hair, body, clothing or gloves before or during the fight could result in an unfair advantage.
- When a foul is committed involuntarily and without incident, the referee verbally warns the fighter and removes one or more points as a penalty. If the foul is committed intentionally, the fight is suspended, a doctor checks the affected fighter, and if he sees that his opponent can continue the fight, he is only penalized by removing points and warning him that on the third fault he will be disqualified.
If due to an injury committed by a fault the fighter cannot continue the fight, his opponent loses by disqualification.