In anticipation of July's landmark UFC 100 event, CBSSports.com will be running a weekly, eight-part UFC retrospective series, looking back at some of the pivotal moments, events and figures that shaped the sport. This is Part 3. Next week will focus on the pay-per-view explosion of 2006.
In early 2001, mixed martial arts was a sport with a lot of business potential but little actual revenue. When current ownership group Zuffa LLC purchased the company, it was up to new UFC president Dana White to find a way to convert potential into real success. While the UFC would eventually achieve those goals, it was a bumpy road in the early going for Zuffa.
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| Ortiz was the early poster boy for Zuffa-era UFC. (Getty Images) |
UFC embarked on a major publicity campaign, focused on reintroducing the sport and its top fighters to the general public. The early poster boy for the company was the charismatic Tito Ortiz, UFC's top drawing card from the time Zuffa purchased the company until his second loss to Chuck Liddell in December 2006.
In addition to an advertising campaign focused on the UFC's top fighters, the company also attempted to use outside celebrities to bring in fans. In retrospect, the move looks rather tacky. Today, major celebrities frequently attend the UFC's events on their own. At that point, UFC was paying the likes of Carmen Electra to serve as a celebrity spokesperson.
The first Zuffa UFC event was UFC 30, but the UFC's campaign was designed to lead toward UFC 33: Victory in Vegas. It was the company's first event in Las Vegas, and had significant pay-per-view clearance. It was intended to be a memorable first chapter to a reawakening of the sport. It ended up being quite memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.
Victory in Vegas was supposed to be headlined by a showdown between Ortiz and Vitor Belfort, two of the company's top stars. But Belfort was injured before the event, and UFC had to substitute in Vladimir Matyushenko, a little-known wrestler from Belarus. The switch was a negative for the show's box office appeal.
The show itself was a disaster. The top five fights all went to a decision. While that made for a dull card, there was a bigger problem: UFC only had a three-hour block for the pay-per-view, and the Ortiz/Matyushenko main event went beyond that allotted time. Many pay-per-view providers cut away without providing viewers the conclusion.
| UFC Retrospective Series | |
|---|---|
| By Todd Martin | |
| An eight-part weekly series on the history of the UFC, leading up to UFC 100. | |
| Part 1 | The Pioneer |
| Part 2 | The Dark Days |
| Part 3 | The New Ownership |
| Part 4 | The Explosion of '06 |
| Part 5 | The TUF Credibility Rise |
| Part 6 | The Comedian |
| Part 7 | Most Notable Cameos |
| Part 8 | The Next Generation |
The events that doomed UFC 33 were mostly a simple matter of bad luck. Injuries happen, and some cards are more exciting than others. The one preventable problem was addressed: UFC has since run fewer fights per live card to ensure no pay-per-view will run over the scheduled three hours. But bad luck or not, UFC 33 served as a major step back for the company. The event drew 75,000 pay-per-view buys, a number it would take 15 months to reach again.
While Victory in Vegas did serious damage to future pay-per-view revenues, it did little to hurt MMA in Las Vegas. It quickly became the UFC's top market, and eventually would become the world's top market for MMA. Zuffa utilized its Las Vegas roots to promote the shows successfully. UFC gradually lost faith in the Northeastern markets and gained faith in Vegas, and the biggest shows more and more took place in Nevada.
2001-2002 was a period of experimentation as UFC sought to figure out what would work and what wouldn't in the promotion of MMA. Some of its early experiments foreshadowed later company moves, while others were abruptly dropped.
At UFC 35, UFC headlined a pay-per-view for the first time with 155-pounders, Jens Pulver and B.J. Penn. The show did sub-par business, and Pulver left the company afterward. Following a lightweight title tournament that failed to produce a champion (the final between Caol Uno and B.J. Penn was judged a draw), UFC all but abandoned the division for a number of years.
In hindsight, that decision looks shortsighted. The lightweight division wasn't likely to make as much money at that time as other divisions would, but by ignoring it, it limited the number of lightweights the public viewed as major stars. Today the division is deep with talented fighters, but few have the ability to draw a large pay-per-view buy rate. UFC is still making up for the stunted growth from 2002 to 2006.
While today UFC is known for its hostile interactions with competitors like Affliction, EliteXC and the IFL, that wasn't always the case. At UFC 36, UFC brought in a fighter contracted to another organization, Shooto star Hayato Sakurai, and gave him an immediate welterweight title shot against Matt Hughes. Hughes dominated, and Sakurai hasn't fought for the UFC since.
Today, the UFC is in a position where it doesn't want or need to bring in outside fighters, but there was cooperation in the early days. It was in fact Japanese-based Pride FC that likely soured UFC on such cooperation. UFC provided fighters including Chuck Liddell to Pride but never received any Pride stars in return.
UFC 38 also provided a harbinger of things to come as UFC ran for the first time in the United Kingdom. The London-based event demonstrated Zuffa was interested in targeting the European market from very early on. UFC would not return to the United Kingdom until UFC 70, but it is now a regular stop and a strong MMA market.
While Spike TV would eventually become the cable home for the UFC, Dana White searched high and low for a television partner after gaining control of the company. Discussion of a potential television deal was an early staple at Zuffa's UFC pay-per-view events, and UFC entered into agreement with Fox Sports Net to air a bout from UFC 37.5 in 2002. Ultimately, the money wasn't there to make the deal work, and UFC continued to search for a few more years before reaching the agreement with Spike TV that would change the landscape of the sport.
One of the most problematic features of the early days of Zuffa ownership was frequent contractual disputes. Fighters knew more money was being made and available, while management knew that the company was deep in the red and couldn't afford an inflated salary structure. As a result, fighters butted heads with management and a number of champions left the organization to fight in Japan.
The UFC managed to lose a champion in three consecutive events in 2002. Lightweight champion Jens Pulver left following UFC 35. Heavyweight champion Josh Barnett left following UFC 36 (Barnett was later stripped of the title for a positive steroids test). Middleweight champion Murilo Bustamante left following UFC 37. Contractual problems with champions have been a rarity since.
While 2001 and 2002 were a turbulent period for the UFC, the end of 2002 provided a light of hope for the future. Zuffa scored its first major hit with UFC 40, headlined by a grudge match between light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and early UFC star Ken Shamrock. The show drew what was then a very strong 150,000 buys and a live gate of over $1.5 million. The toughest times had been traversed, and big things were on the horizon.
Todd Martin has covered mixed martial arts for the Los Angeles Times, Wrestling Observer, SI.com and CBSSports.com. He can be reached at toddmartin4l@aol.com.
