When WWE became the dominant promotion in pro-wrestling, most fans could point to one pivotal moment that cemented them at the top – the buyout of rival WCW in March 2001. With WCW gone, Vince McMahon’s company could rule the wrestling world on its own.
The UFC has had almost equal dominance in the world of MMA, but unlike WWE – who only really had to deal with one competitor in the modern era – they’ve had to battle many competitors during their rise to the top. By hook or crook, though, the UFC has always come away victorious.
Here are the five pivotal moments – either triggered by the UFC or their parent company Zuffa, or by matters that were out of their hands – that allowed them to establish the dominance that we see from them today.
#1 The Yakuza scandal hits PRIDE and sinks the ship
Prior to the TUF explosion in 2005, the top MMA promotion in the world was centred in Japan.
PRIDE Fighting Championships had the lion’s share of the world’s best fighters under their banner and although the promotion wasn’t quite run like a US-based organisation would’ve been, for the most part, they put on epic events.
By 2006, MMA’s rise in popularity in the US had allowed the UFC to make some headway in terms of roster strength, but despite the promotion pulling huge PPV buyrates, many of the world’s top fighters were still signed with PRIDE.
That was about to change.
In a story far too complex to explain in a few words, it was revealed in 2006 that PRIDE’s parent company, Dream Stage Entertainment, were, in fact being bankrolled by Japan’s infamous Yakuza gangs.
The word was that the Yakuza had put pressure on a rival promotion – Inoki Bom Ba Ye – to prevent them from using PRIDE star Mirko Cro Cop on their 2003 New Year’s Eve event.
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Arrests were made regarding the scandal as early as February 2006, and soon, the Japanese press began printing stories linking PRIDE execs such as Nobuyuki Sakakibara to the Yakuza. In June, the pressure of the scandal became too much for the promotion to handle.
Backers Fuji TV dropped PRIDE from their programming, and while the promotion continued on for the rest of the year it was clear that they were in trouble.
As 2006 came to an end, a lot of star fighters (Rampage Jackson, Heath Herring, Mirko Cro Cop, Fabricio Werdum) began to abandon the PRIDE ship.
In early 2007, with the promotion now toxic to Japanese TV stations. DSE sold PRIDE – the full video library, the rights to the PRIDE name, and a handful of fighter contracts – to the UFC’s parent company Zuffa.
While not all of the top fighters migrated onto the roster, this was the first pivotal moment for the UFC in terms of market dominance – their biggest rival was absorbed in a similar way to how WWE had absorbed WCW, and now nobody could argue over which was the world’s top MMA promotion.
The UFC was now the only answer.
#2 Zuffa wins the Versus contract with WEC
While the PRIDE buyout was the big story of 2007, Zuffa actually bought a pair of promotions before they purchased the Japanese powerhouse. The World Fighting Alliance (WFA) and World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) were bought out in late 2006 and at the time, it was the WFA buyout that made the most noise.
The WFA had attempted to compete with the UFC in 2006, but after one show, financial difficulties kicked in and Zuffa swooped in to clean up, shutting the promotion down instantly and moving their top fighters – including Rampage Jackson and Lyoto Machida – to the UFC.
The WEC buyout was a quieter one, as the promotion was far smaller than the WFA had been and actually had a strong working relationship with the UFC with regards to talent exchange anyway.
It didn’t seem to make much sense, in fact.
Things became much clearer when it was announced in 2007 that the WEC had struck a deal to be broadcast on the re-branded Outdoor Life Network, renamed as Versus. Starting in June, WEC’s events would now be broadcast live on the upstart network, which also had rights to the NHL and the Tour de France.
Word soon got around MMA websites that another rival promoter, the International Fight League (IFL) had been in talks with Versus to broadcast their shows on the network, which had worried Zuffa greatly as the promotion was trying to take its own slice of the UFC-dominated MMA pie.
Unable to broadcast UFC shows anywhere other than Spike TV due to their contract with that channel, Zuffa had then decided to buy out the WEC and offer it to Versus, and the network had gone with the now-sister promotion of the UFC rather than the IFL.
It proved to be a stroke of genius, as the WEC gained cult popularity on Versus, making stars of the likes of Urijah Faber and Miguel Torres, while the IFL languished on the smaller HDNet channel.
The IFL never managed to make up any ground and quietly folded in 2008, while Zuffa kept the WEC running separately until 2011 – the dawning of the Fox era – before it was folded and its fighters were introduced to the UFC.
While not as memorable as the PRIDE buyout, this was still a pivotal moment for the UFC as it showed the lengths Zuffa would go to in order to undercut their competitors – a move Vince McMahon himself would’ve been proud of.
#3 Seth Petruzelli knocks out Kimbo Slice and Elite XC at the same time
While UFC’s Fox shows have made MMA on national broadcast TV a regular occurrence these days, back in 2008, despite becoming a PPV juggernaut, MMA had never penetrated mainstream television to that level.
It was actually Elite XC – a new promotion fronted by boxing’s Gary Shaw – that changed all that.
Buoyed by the popularity of their star attraction, former street fighter and YouTube sensation Kimbo Slice, Elite XC signed a deal with CBS in early 2008 to broadcast their shows live in prime time on Saturday nights.
Their first live show, main evented by a fight between Slice and British brawler James Thompson, was a massive ratings hit.
The only problem was that Kimbo wasn’t exactly a world-beater. In fact, he was totally unproven at the top level no matter how hard EXC tried to push him as MMA’s answer to Mike Tyson. And while he’d beaten Thompson eventually, he struggled in the fight due to a limited gas tank.
When the follow-up show – without Kimbo on the card – did a much weaker rating, it was clear that for the time being, EXC still needed to rely on their former street brawler, as despite their best efforts, they’d been unable to woo any top fighters away from the UFC.
The third CBS special was booked for October 2008 and with ratings in mind, EXC booked Kimbo to face UFC legend Ken Shamrock. Ken hadn’t won a meaningful fight in years but it didn’t really matter, he was still a big name who could draw eyeballs to the promotion.
It wasn’t to be.
On the night of the show, Shamrock suffered a cut during his warm-up that sidelined him. EXC replaced him with former UFC fighter Seth Petruzelli - a journeyman, but a very tough fighter too. Kimbo was still being pushed as a world-beater, and that was about to change.
After using a couple of front kicks to gauge the distance, Petruzelli hit Kimbo with a jab that dropped him face-first. A few follow-up punches landed and the fight was over in just 14 seconds.
EXC’s cash cow was thoroughly exposed as a fraud, but somehow the worse was still to come.
The following week, Petruzelli revealed on a radio show that EXC had paid him extra money in order to stand with Kimbo, rather than looking to take him to the ground. While EXC’s executives denied this, the Florida Athletic Commission were concerned enough to launch an investigation immediately.
With the stench of an attempted fix hanging over them – as well as Kimbo’s aura being totally shattered – Elite XC announced that they would cease operations just sixteen days after the fateful event.
For once, Zuffa and the UFC didn’t have to lift a finger to kill one of their competitors – Elite XC had loaded the barrel, pointed the gun and pulled the trigger at themselves.
No other promotion – until the UFC in 2011, with one brief exception that we’ll get to later – would make it as far as national broadcast television, making this one of the most pivotal moments in the story of the UFC’s dominance.
#4 Affliction taps out
While Elite XC had been unable to prise any top fighters away from the UFC, the same could not be said for clothing company Affliction in 2008.
Not only were they able to sign two of the UFC’s top Heavyweights, former champions Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia, but they also brokered a deal with Zuffa’s great white whale – former PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko, the consensus top Heavyweight in the world.
How was this possible? The power of the almighty dollar.
Basically, Affliction were paying purses that were almost unheard of at the time.
Fedor – although most of his wage was undisclosed – was supposedly making millions of dollars per fight. Arlovski’s disclosed pay (on their second card) was $1m. Sylvia was making $800k per fight and even non-draws like Matt Lindland and Ben Rothwell were being paid huge, six-figure sums.
For the fighters, it sounded too good to be true.
As soon as rumours of Affliction branching into promotion leaked out, the UFC struck back, banning any mention of the company on their broadcasts. The once-popular t-shirts were suddenly nowhere to be seen at UFC events.
It didn’t stop the “t-shirt guys”, as Dana White would call them.
They scheduled their first event in July 2008, booked a Fedor vs. Sylvia headliner, and even went as far as subtitling it ‘Banned’. Rumours were flying around that they were on the verge of signing star fighters like Georges St-Pierre and Sean Sherk.
The UFC struck back again by scheduling a free-TV card featuring Anderson Silva on the same night as the inaugural Affliction PPV, but Affliction’s show still drew relatively well for a non-UFC MMA event – 100k buys – and it seemed like Zuffa had a real competitor on their hands.
What sunk Affliction in the end, though, was the same thing that allowed them to rise in the first place – those massive salaries.
While a 100k buy rate sounded nice, it wasn’t anywhere near enough to sustain Affliction’s monstrous wage bill and after their second event – main-evented by Fedor vs. Arlovski – didn’t do as well on PPV, it became clear that the promotion was in trouble.
A third event was scheduled for August 2009 and was set to feature a main event of Fedor vs. Josh Barnett. The event was subtitled ‘Trilogy’, which immediately raised questions for the promotion. Was this the final Affliction event?
It turned out that in fact, we’d already had the final one.
When the California State Athletic Commission announced that Barnett had failed a drug test and would not be licensed for the event, after a day or two of scrambling for a replacement, the bombshell was dropped.
Affliction would cease operations immediately and would return to the Zuffa fold as an official sponsor. In turn, the UFC would absorb chosen Affliction contracts, bringing the majority of the big names back onto their own roster.
People like to blame Barnett for the end of Affliction but the reality was that the promotion couldn’t sustain itself anyway. From all sources, the deal with the UFC was being brokered prior to the drug test and would’ve gone ahead after the third show regardless.
The lesson learned was that despite accusations of underpaying their fighters, the UFC’s pay structure was actually the only solvent one in the MMA world. The crash of Affliction showed that you couldn’t just throw big money at fighters and make a successful promotion.
While we see some UFC fighters ending their contracts and going into free agency today, the reality is that since Affliction closed shop, no promotion truly has the ability to outbid the UFC for any fighter – unless the UFC allows it.
By the dawn of 2010, the UFC’s dominance of the MMA world was practically complete.
#5 The Strikeforce buyout ends the era of competition
With both Elite XC and Affliction gone before the end of 2009, the UFC’s position at the top of the MMA world had never been stronger. One more competitor remained, though, and it was an unlikely one at that.
Scott Coker’s Strikeforce promotion had been going for many years and had actually been the first MMA organisation to put on an event in California, back in 2006. Dana White had even praised Coker for being a “smart promoter” who didn’t attempt to muscle in on the UFC’s territory at the top of the tree.
In 2009, that all changed.
Not only did Strikeforce pick up the Showtime contract that had been left open when EXC closed shop, but they also began to sign some of the big free agents left out there when Affliction went under.
Andrei Arlovski, Robbie Lawler and Gilbert Melendez all found themselves under Coker’s banner, but the promotion really got onto the UFC’s radar when they swooped in to sign Fedor Emelianenko from under Zuffa’s nose in the summer of 2009, right after Affliction closed down.
Suddenly Dana no longer called Coker a smart promoter. Strikeforce was now ‘StrikeFarce’, and UFC star Dan Henderson hadn’t chosen to sign with them, it had only happened because Dana had allowed it. Or so Uncle Dana said.
By 2010, the future of StrikeForce seemed bright, but there were signs that things were going slightly awry – a deal with CBS in the same vein as Elite XC was torpedoed by the infamous ‘Nashville Brawl’, when the Diaz brothers jumped Mayhem Miller after Jake Shields’ fight with Dan Henderson.
And not long after, Fedor Emelianenko finally lost, submitted by Fabricio Werdum, to end his massive winning streak.
In general, though, the promotion seemed to be in good shape. People still cared about Fedor despite the loss and there was a big Heavyweight Grand Prix planned for 2011 that would possibly pit him against Alistair Overeem. And fighters like Overeem, Nick Diaz, and King Mo were looking like legitimate stars.
It was a total left-field surprise then when in March 2011, a low-key interview between Dana White and Ariel Helwani appeared online to announce that Zuffa had purchased Strikeforce.
The word was that the promotion was in some debt, and Coker’s financial backers Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment simply wanted out of the MMA business and sold to the highest bidder.
In all honesty, I’m still not too sure of the details of the deal – I don’t think anyone is, as it came literally out of nowhere and took everyone by surprise.
At any rate, with the purchase, the chance of any other promotion toppling the UFC from their pedestal was dead; within two years of the purchase, Strikeforce was closed down, the promotion’s roster was amalgamated with the UFC’s, and MMA would no longer be broadcast by Showtime.
This one was maybe the most pivotal moment of all for the UFC.
Despite its deficiencies, Strikeforce was a genuine competitor for the UFC and since then, while Bellator seems to be picking up some momentum now, it doesn’t look like any other promotion can come close to the juggernaut, not even with some of the questionable decisions being made today by new owners WME-IMG.
March 12th, 2011 then goes down as perhaps the most important date in UFC history.
It’s strange that it would come almost ten years to the date when the then-WWF bought out WCW, because it signalled the same shift in the MMA world as that event did in the wrestling world – the moment when one promotion became impossible to topple from the peak of the mountain.
What other pivotal moments would you say lead to the UFC’s dominance? Tell us here.
Until next time...
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