UFC Retrospective Series Part 4: The Explosion of '06

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 4. Next week will focus on the credibility rise of Ultimate Fighter stars.

There is a familiar, oft-repeated narrative that describes the rise of mixed martial arts in the United States. In 2005, the Ultimate Fighting Championship began its Ultimate Fighter reality TV competition. The program created a generation of new fans and a group of new stars for those fans to follow, and everything took off from there. The narrative is not without truth. The Ultimate Fighter was of vital importance to the rise of the sport. But it's an oversimplified account of what happened.

Liddell became a smash hit to a new wave of UFC fans in 2006. (UFC)

The key to better fleshing out what occurred is looking at the timeline. The Ultimate Fighter began airing in January 2005. The strong television ratings created a niche for the UFC, but the development that turned the company around financially was a massive rise in pay-per-view buy rates that didn't fully develop until more than a year later.

UFC ran eight different pay-per-views after the start of The Ultimate Fighter series, featuring all the key figures from the show including Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, Rich Franklin, Forrest Griffin and Diego Sanchez. Those shows did better than the general pre-Ultimate Fighter pay-per-view range of 40,000-110,000 buys, but well below the current general range of 300,000-1 million buys.

The success of The Ultimate Fighter a big story, but history is likely to conflate that story more than it should with a second and arguably bigger one, the pay-per-view explosion of 2006. 2005 was a successful year for the UFC, but 2006 was far bigger. The UFC ran 10 pay-per-view events, and five of those events set new UFC pay-per-view records (Liddell/Couture, Ortiz/Griffin, Hughes/Gracie, Ortiz/Ken Shamrock and Liddell/Tito Ortiz).

So what's to explain the delay between The Ultimate Fighter series catching on and UFC's pay-per-view buys exploding? Part of it unquestionably is attracting fans over time. But the strength of UFC's 2006 pay-per-view lineup shouldn't be underestimated. The company promoted the first major trilogy in the UFC's history. It brought back the man who had been its biggest PPV attraction, Tito Ortiz. It brought back the biggest legend of the early days of the sport, Royce Gracie. And it rematched a pair of major grudge matches in Ortiz/Liddell and Ortiz/Shamrock.

The Ultimate Fighter was important in introducing Ortiz, Shamrock, Liddell, Hughes and Couture to more fans. But there was no guarantee they would be consistent box office attractions if UFC wasn't able to put together a series of huge events that got a larger base into the habit of ordering every UFC event.

The success of 2006 was not simply making a few fights people wanted to see. It was teaching a lot of fans that every UFC pay-per-view was a worthwhile purchase. Few have been dissuaded from that opinion since, and UFC events attract significantly more regular purchasers than HBO Boxing or World Wrestling Entertainment.

Perhaps a lost figure in the history will be Ortiz. He was the single most important fighter in the PPV explosion, and without him the landscape of the sport might well look very different. But he is diminished for a variety of reasons.

Ortiz is hated by UFC president Dana White, who isn't interested in glorifying Ortiz's accomplishments. He is also disliked by many fans and fighters, who tire of his posturing and self-promotion. And Liddell passed him as an attraction by defeating him for the second time at the end of 2006. Still, Ortiz was pivotal in setting new standards for MMA pay-per-view success.

It's a testament to the sport's rapidly changing nature that so many of the top stars of the 2006 explosion are just three years later out of the sport or on their way. Because the sport evolves so rapidly, it's imperative UFC continues to keep the brand strong and get what it can out of the stars who do become pay-per-view attractions.

2006 was the turning point year in the history of the UFC. Financial success was no longer a dream on the horizon, and MMA was no longer a cult sport in North America.

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.