Ultimate Fighting Championship
Ultimate Fighting Championship (or UFC for short) is a professional mixed martial arts organization formed in 1993 and based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is currently owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta of the parent company Zuffa, LLC, and led by president Dana White.
History
The Early Years
The Ultimate Fighting Championship was the brainchild of Rorion Gracie, an expert in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), and Arthur Davie, an ad man. Gracie wanted to promote his family's martial arts school, which focused on techniques that would work in a real fight and discarded any that were meant more for show or style. Before working on the UFC, the Gracie family had become legendary for "the Gracie Challenge," an open invitation for experts in any fighting technique to face off against a member of the Gracie family or one of their students in a real fight.
Davie pitched the idea of a martial arts tournament to Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG). In this tournament, experts in different martial arts disciplines would face off against one another to determine which style was best. Reportedly, it was an SEG employee named Michael Abramson who coined the name "The Ultimate Fighting Championship." On November 12, 1993, the SEG debuted the first UFC event. Later, the event would be called UFC 1.
The event was in a tournament format (most early UFC events followed suit). The winner of a match moved up in the tournament to face another opponent. Davie designated some fighters as alternates in case a fighter was unable to continue. The tournament featured masters in karate, kickboxing, boxing, jiu-jitsu and even Sumo wrestling. Royce Gracie, Rorion's younger brother, eventually won the tournament after he caught Gerard Gordeau in a rear naked choke in the final bout.
The event was a success, and immediately SEG began to plan more tournaments. SEG decided to keep the Ultimate Fighting Championship name and would designate almost all future events by numbering them sequentially (UFC 2, UFC 3, et cetera).
Early UFC events were very different from modern ones. There were no weight classes -- a smaller fighter might find himself facing a Sumo wrestler. Weight classes would be defined for the UFC 12 tournament (though they would be refined several times). Fighters could wear clothing traditional to their fighting style (such as a gi for jiu-jitsu). The UFC experimented with how long rounds should last, and a few early events had no limit on how many rounds could be fought -- they wanted fights to last until a clear winner emerged.
The style versus style format faded away gradually. Most fights would end up on the ground, and many of the disciplines represented in early UFC events had no focus or training in ground fighting. Royce Gracie won three of the first four UFC tournaments and proved that a ground game was necessary to be successful. Fighters began to adapt, expanding their repertoire of styles to include elements of wrestling and submissions. Events featured fewer black belt martial artists - the UFC quickly discovered a black belt didn't necessarily mean the wearer was a good fighter.
Controversy
In the early days, the UFC held events in states that didn't have athletic commissions to avoid regulation. There were no judges, either. Even after judges were added to events, there were no clear parameters on how to judge a fight. Referees could not stop a fight; their job was to make sure the few rules that did exist were enforced, and to witness any submissions. Fortunately, the UFC gave referees the authority to stop fights after the first few events.
Apart from UFC 9, which featured a series of single fights, all UFC events used the tournament format until UFC 18. From that point on, with the exception of UFC 23, events featured single matches - fighters no longer had to worry about multiple fights in one night.
According to Dana White, the evolution of the UFC was haphazard because it was never meant to happen. "That show [the first Ultimate Fighting Championship event] was only supposed to be a one-off. Well, it did so well on pay-per-view they decided to do another, and another. Never in a million years did these guys think they were creating a sport."
Gradually, the UFC introduced more rules and restrictions, both as a means to appease critics and to shape mixed martial arts into a legitimate sport. Unfortunately, by this time SEG was in trouble financially. From UFC 23 to UFC 29, SEG faced the risk of bankruptcy. As a result, SEG could not afford to release these events to home video.
The SEG promoted early UFC events as brutal fights between martial arts experts. They claimed the fights were no holds barred, and that all fights would end with a clear winner. In the end, they said, the superior martial arts style would emerge. By trumpeting the fights as brutal exhibitions of force, they invited scrutiny from critics.
One such critic was United States Senator John McCain. McCain, a boxing fan, thought UFC fights were akin to "human cockfighting." He urged state governors and city governments to ban UFC events. Several planned fights had to change venues at the last moment when arenas told the UFC they were no longer allowed to hold their fights there.
For a long time, the UFC resisted taking steps to partner with state athletic commissions. Instead, SEG continued to promote the UFC as a primal sport, which only invited more trouble. Some cable companies refused to carry UFC pay-per-views. SEG's options became more and more limited. By the time the UFC adopted rules established by the New Jersey Athletic Control Board, it was too late for SEG to recover.
Zuffa
In 2000, SEG promoted UFC 29: Defense of the Belts. It was the last UFC event SEG would produce. The company faced bankruptcy and political pressure had crippled its ability to book and promote shows. Two brothers, Frank Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta, formed Zuffa, LLC (zuffa means "to fight" or "to scrap" in Italian) and bought the UFC. Former amateur boxer and fight promoter Dana White became president of the new organization.
Lorenzo Fertitta was a former member of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and soon the commission oversaw UFC events. This gave the UFC some much needed credibility, and soon cable companies began to carry their pay-per-view events again.
In 2001, the first Zuffa-promoted UFC event, UFC 30: Battle on the Boardwalk, premiered. UFC 30 saw not only the return to wider pay-per-view coverage, but also a return to home video production. Since that event, Dana White has concentrated on increasing the popularity of the UFC and shedding its historically brutal image. Mr. White is quick to point out, "At the end of the day, these guys aren't barbarians the way they were sold early on. These guys are all good guys . . . they come in to compete to find out who's the best fighter in the world."
The Ultimate Fighter & Spike TV
In 2005, Spike TV aired the first season of a reality television series called "The Ultimate Fighter." The show followed a group of UFC hopefuls as they competed for a contract with the organization. Fighters divided into different training camps, and at the end of each episode a member from one team fought someone from the other team. The winner would stay in the competition; the loser would go home. The show marked the first time viewers could watch a UFC fight on a cable station outside of pay-per-view, and it helped to educate views about the UFC. "The Ultimate Fighter" is currently scheduled for at least two more seasons.
Following the success of The Ultimate Fighter, Spike TV also picked up UFC Unleashed, an hour-long weekly show featuring select fights from previous events. Spike TV also signed on to broadcast live UFC Fight Night, a series of fight events debuting in August 2005; Countdown specials to promote upcoming UFC pay-per-view cards, and several other series and specials featuring and promoting the UFC and its fighters.
With increased visibility, UFC's pay-per-view buy numbers exploded. UFC 52, the first event after the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, drew a pay-per-view audience of 280,000, nearly double its previous benchmark of 150,000 set at UFC 40. Following the second season of The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC's much-hyped rubber match between Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell drew an estimated 410,000 pay-per-view buys at UFC 57. For the rest of 2006, pay-per-view buy rates continued to skyrocket with 620,000 buys for UFC 60, 775,000 buys for UFC 61 which featured the second fight between Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz, the coaches of The Ultimate Fighter 3. UFC 66, featuring Tito Ortiz facing Chuck Liddell in their highly anticipated rematch, garnered 1,050,000 buy rates, the current PPV buy-rate record for the UFC and MMA in general. The UFC broke the pay-per-view industry's all-time records for a single year of business, generating over $222,766,000 in revenue during 2006, surpassing WWE and boxing.
In March 2007, the Fertitta brothers announced that they had purchased Pride Fighting Championship, a competing mixed martial arts organization based out of Japan. Fans of mixed martial arts have talked about dream matches between the best fighters of Pride and the best from the UFC. According to Dana White, that can now become a reality. While plans are still in the very early stages, fight fans may soon get to see who really is the best fighter in each weight class.
While the UFC has its headquarters in Nevada, the company has recently begun a campaign to hold fights in other states as well as internationally. UFC events can already be seen on television in 170 countries. Dana White's goal is to bring live events to these countries to help build a grass roots fan base and build word of mouth support. He says, "When you take the live event somewhere and you get 15,000 or 20,000 people to show up to the event and those people leave the event and go to work the next day, they talk to their relatives. They talk to their friends. It starts to spread...that whole word of mouth thing happens, and it's imperative for the growth of the business and to take it global." UFC events are planned for Europe, Japan, Canada and Mexico.
Today, fans can see UFC bouts on pay-per-view (about once a month), on "The Ultimate Fighter" and special "Fight Night" events on Spike TV, on DVD and at live events. Unfortunately, UFC events 23 through 29 are still not available commercially.
Mainstream Emergence
The UFC's mainstream emergence has also been noted by many popular online sportsbooks. BodogLife.com, a popular online gambling site, stated in July 2007, that 2007 would be the first year that the UFC will surpass boxing in terms of betting revenues.[24]
In March 2006, the UFC announced that it had hired Marc Ratner, former Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, as Vice President. Ratner, once an ally of Senator McCain's campaign against mixed martial arts, was credited as one person responsible for the emergence of sanctioned mixed martial arts in the United States. Ratner is expected to help raise the UFC's media profile and help legalize mixed martial arts in jurisdictions inside and outside the United States that do not sanction mixed martial arts bouts.
The UFC continued its rapid rise: from near obscurity in 2005, to gracing the covers of Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine in May 2007. UFC programming is now shown in 36 countries worldwide, and the UFC plans to continue expanding internationally, running shows regularly in Canada and the United Kingdom, with an office established in the UK aimed to expand the European UFC audience.
Rules
The current rules for the Ultimate Fighting Championship were originally established by the New Jersey Athletic Control Board.[35] The "Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts" that New Jersey established has been adopted in other states that 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 those states that have adopted the rules, and so have become the standard de facto set of rules for professional mixed martial arts across the country.
Rounds
Every round in UFC competition is five minutes in duration. Title matches have five such rounds, and non-title matches have three. There is a one minute rest period between rounds.
Weight divisions
The UFC currently uses five weight classes:
-Lightweight: 146 to 155 lb (67 to 70 kg)
-Welterweight: 156 to 170 lb (71 to 77 kg)
-Middleweight: 171 to 185 lb (78 to 84 kg)
-Light Heavyweight: 186 to 205 lb (85 to 93 kg)
-Heavyweight: 206 to 265 lb (94 to 120 kg)
In addition, there are four other weight classes specified in the Unified Rules which the UFC does not currently utilize: Flyweight (under 125 lb, 57 kg), Bantamweight (126 to 135 lb, 61 kg), Featherweight (136 to 145 lb, 66 kg), and Super Heavyweight ( above 265 lb, 120 kg). The Flyweight, Bantamweight, and Featherweight classes are used in another promotion owned by Zuffa, LLC, World Extreme Cagefighting.
Cage
"The Octagon"
The UFC stages bouts in an octagonal caged enclosure, "The Octagon." Originally, SEG trademarked The Octagon and prevented other mixed martial arts promotions from using the same type of cage, but in 2001, Zuffa gave its permission for other promotions to use octagonal cages (while reserving use of the name "Octagon"), reasoning that the young sport needed uniformity to continue to win official sanctioning.
The cage is an eight-sided structure with walls of metal chain-link fence coated with black vinyl and a diameter of 32 ft (9.75 m), allowing 30 ft (9 m) of space from point to point. The fence is 5'6" to 5'8" high. The cage sits atop a platform, raising it 4 ft (1.2 m) from the ground. It has foam padding around the top of the fence and between each of the eight sections. It also has two entry-exit gates opposite each other.
The mat, painted with sponsorship logos and art, is replaced for each event.
Attire
All competitors must fight in approved shorts, without shoes. Shirts, gis or long pants (including gi pants) are not allowed. Fighters must use approved light gloves, that include at least 1" of padding around the knuckles, (110 to 170 g / 4 to 6 ounces) that allow fingers to grab. These gloves enable fighters to punch with less risk of an injured or broken hand, while retaining the ability to grab and grapple.
Originally the attire for UFC was very open if controlled at all. Many fighters still chose to wear tight-fitting shorts or boxing-type trunks, while others wore long pants or singlets. Multi-time tournament champion Royce Gracie wore a jiujitsu gi in all his early appearances in UFC.
Match outcome
Matches usually end via:
-Submission: a fighter clearly taps on the mat or his opponent or verbally submits.
-Knockout: a fighter falls from a legal blow and is either unconscious or unable to immediately continue.
-Technical Knockout (TKO): If a fighter cannot continue, the fight is ended as a technical knockout. Technical knockouts can be classified into three categories:for instance a KO is a different thing completely. American bookmakers do not pay out on a TKO.[controversy is still arising to this gambling flaw]
o referee stoppage: (the referee determines a fighter cannot "intelligently defend" himself; if warnings to the fighter to improve his position or defense go unanswered—generally, two warnings are given, about 5 seconds apart)
o doctor stoppage (a ringside doctor due to injury or impending injury, as when blood flows into the eyes and blinds a fighter)
o corner stoppage (a fighter's own cornerman signals defeat for their own fighter)
-Judges' Decision: Depending on scoring, a match may end as:
o unanimous decision (all three judges score a win for fighter A)
o majority decision (two judges score a win for fighter A, one judge scores a draw)
o split decision (two judges score a win for fighter A, one judge scores a win for fighter B)
o unanimous draw (all three judges score a draw)
o majority draw (two judges score a draw, one judge scoring a win)
o split draw (one judge scores a win for fighter A, one judge scores a win for fighter B, and one judge scores a draw)
Note: In the event of a draw, it is not necessary that the fighters' total points be equal (see, e.g., UFC 41 Penn vs. Uno, or UFC 43 Freeman vs. White). However, in a unanimous or split draw, each fighter does score an equal number of win judgments from the three judges (0 or 1, respectively).
A fight can also end in a technical decision, disqualification, forfeit, technical draw, or no contest. The latter two outcomes have no winners.
Judging criteria
The ten-point must system is in effect for all UFC fights; three judges score each round and the winner of each receives ten points, the loser nine points or fewer. If the round is even, both fighters receive ten points. In New Jersey, the fewest points a fighter can receive is 7, and in other states by custom no fighter receives fewer than 8.
Fouls
The Nevada State Athletic Commission currently lists the following as fouls:
1. Butting with the head.
2. Eye gouging of any kind.
3. Biting.
4. Hair pulling.
5. Fish hooking.
6. Groin attacks of any kind.
7. Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.
8. Small joint manipulation.
9. Striking to the spine or the back of the head.
10. Striking downward using the point of the elbow.
11. Throat strikes of any kind, including, without limitation, grabbing the trachea.
12. Clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh.
13. Grabbing the clavicle.
14. Kicking the head of a grounded opponent.
15. Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.
16. Stomping a grounded opponent.
17. Kicking to the kidney with the heel.
18. Spiking an opponent to the canvas on his head or neck.
19. Throwing an opponent out of the ring or fenced area.
20. Holding the shorts or gloves of an opponent.
21. Spitting at an opponent.
22. Engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct that causes an injury to an opponent.
23. Holding the ropes or the fence.
24. Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area.
25. Attacking an opponent on or during the break.
26. Attacking an opponent who is under the care of the referee.
27. Attacking an opponent after the bell (horn) has sounded the end of a round.
28. Flagrantly disregarding the instructions of the referee.
29. Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury.
30. Interference by the corner.
31. Throwing in the towel during competition.
When a foul is charged, the referee in their discretion may deduct one or more points as a penalty. If a foul incapacitates a fighter, then the match may end in a disqualification if the foul was intentional, or a no contest if unintentional. If a foul causes a fighter to be unable to continue later in the bout, it ends with a technical decision win to the injured fighter if the injured fighter is ahead on points, otherwise it is a technical draw.
Match conduct
-After a verbal warning the referee can stop the fighters and stand them up if they reach a stalemate on the ground (where neither are in a dominant position or working towards one). This rule is codified in Nevada as the stand-up rule.
-If the referee pauses the match, it is resumed with the fighters in their prior positions.
-Grabbing the cage brings a verbal warning, followed by an attempt by the referee to release the grab by pulling on the grabbing hand. If that attempt fails or if the fighter continues to hold the cage, the referee may charge a foul.
-Early UFC events disregarded verbal sparring / "trash-talking" during matches. Under unified rules, antics are permitted before events to add to excitement and allow fighters to express themselves, but abusive language during combat is prohibited.
