Nov. 12, 1993. Denver, Colorado. The scene: 8,000 bloodthirsty fans squeezed into the McNichols Sports Arena, not a single one knowing what will happen when the cage door closes for the first time in UFC history.
Eight mixed martial artists have gathered from around the globe to test their skills in the Octagon, the “ultimate proving ground for martial arts.” That’s how UFC 1 came about.
This Saturday night, to cap the UFC’s first 25 years, the promotion is holding a show back where it all started in Denver, nearly a quarter-century to the day later.
On paper, UFC 1 was something out of a Jet Li or Jean Claude Van Damme movie. The UFC was flying by the seat of its pants. NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown was an “MMA analyst,” for goodness’ sake.
Before and after MMA’s birth in the early 1990s, martial arts garnered the public’s attention just from the question of: What if? What if you put one of combat sports’ greatest showmen, boxing champion Muhammad Ali, against Japanese pro wrestler Antonio Inoki, as happened in 1976? What if you pitted the best boxer of his generation against an MMA fighter who’s never had a professional boxing match? The “what if” factor brings eyeballs and big business to these generational events.
When Conor McGregor, a UFC champion in multiple weight divisions at the time, boxed Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017, it felt like time stopped. To see the karate-style McGregor actually land punches through Mayweather’s “impenetrable guard” was surreal. The fight was such a success from a business perspective (4.3 million pay-per-view buys), the UFC has tried to lure Mayweather into an MMA bout. Though the 41-year-old Mayweather loves money, he loves his orbital bones a lot more.
Mayweather-McGregor was criticized with some of the same reductive reasoning that haunted early UFC events: “What if McGregor forgets the rules and kicks Floyd? What if he decides to tackle him!?!”
But Teddy Atlas, the legendary boxing trainer and pundit (and author of many of those complaints) still watched with bated breath, along with millions of others. Because what if McGregor landed that one punch that put McGregor to sleep? Or what if Mayweather embarrassed the MMA fighter in Round 1? It’s easier to be critical than to be creative, and UFC battled many skeptics along the way.
John McCain labeled the UFC “human cockfighting” in 1996. Though the late Senator’s words hit home for many state governments, which slowed down the legalization of MMA, the momentum behind the UFC was too great.
Once MMA was established and started to market itself to a bigger audience, the goal was to develop superstars and avoid controversy. The UFC grew fast behind cornerstones such as Vitor Belfort, Bas Rutten, Mark Coleman and Ken Shamrock — badasses who looked the part.
In 2001, young entrepreneur and fight enthusiast Dana White joined Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta to purchase the UFC for $2 million. Once the trio, along with legendary match-maker Joe Silva, got going, the UFC developed stars such as Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture and BJ Penn. During this era, the UFC unveiled the hit reality show "The Ultimate Fighter” on Spike TV. The UFC proved it had staying power and a loyal niche audience.
Following the Spike TV era, the UFC cracked a top TV platform when it joined forces with FOX Sports in 2011. This era helped spotlight big-name foreign draws such as Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre, and skyrocketed personality-driven fighters such as Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor to mainstream stardom.
McGregor is the UFC’s golden goose. His brass attitude along with his knockout style helped bring MMA into the money-fight era. McGregor has set and reset every MMA pay-per-view record. He helped get MMA legalized in New York in April 2016, and he headlined the UFC’s first event at Madison Square Garden in November 2016. UFC 205 stands as the highest gate in MSG history. The Irishman is also a big reason why the Fertitta brothers were able to sell the the UFC to Ari Emanuel and WME-IMG for an estimated $4 billion in the summer of 2016. The biggest credit to McGregor isn’t all the pay-per-view revenue (2.4 million buys for UFC 229 a few weeks ago), though, it’s how he single-handedly pushed the promotion into its next era: UFC on ESPN.
In hindsight, it’s more difficult to understand why MMA faced so much resistance. Combat sports are in our DNA, and MMA is a thrilling expression of that, a fighter’s livelihood hinging on every movement and reaction he or she makes inside the cage. The next 25 years for MMA will depend on fighters’ pay. If fighters can approximate what NBA or NFL athletes make, we’ll get the next LeBron James of MMA, knocking his opponent through the cage.