It was announced last Thursday that former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva will continue to delight UFC fans for another fifteen fights as laid out by UFC President Dana White and owner Lorenzo Fertitta. The first of these events will be against Nick Diaz at UFC 183 in January 2015. In addition to this bit of news Silva announced that his business partnership with Nike has officially ended as he picks up a new sponsorship deal with Adidas. Check out his UFC 183 press conference here:
We now have a main event for UFC on FOX 12! UFC President Dana White announced on Twitter this afternoon that Matt Brown vs Robbie Lawler will headline the card set for July 26th in San Jose. The winner of the fight will earn a shot at welterweight champion Johny Hendricks.
The card also features Anthony Johnson vs Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Clay Guida vs Dennis Bermudez, and Josh Thomson vs Michael Johnson.
In the early days of MMA and the UFC in America it was met with a lot of criticism and opposition. One of the sport’s biggest opposers back in the 1990’s was Senator John McCain. McCain spearheaded an effort to ban all UFC and MMA events in the United States calling it, “human cock fighting.” In a recent UFC documentary where the organization’s history is chronicled there is a segment where John McCain appears and finally gives his seal of approval by stating, “Yes, it’s a sport now, I like the changes and I like what they’ve done.” In the early days when the UFC was first appearing on cable TV and PPV the event was a true tournament style event with practically no safety regulations or rules. This meant no required gloves, no weight classes, and just about everything was allowed from a striking stand point. With the UFC finally achieving a milestone in the organization’s 20th year, being followed by millions of fans world wide, legitimized as a sport by being picked up by major sports networks like FOX, it seems that Senator John MaCain has finally joined the masses and publicly recognized the sport for what it is today. CEO and Chairman of the UFC, Lorenzo Fertita stated, “It’s a story about the business of the UFC over the past 20 years. But it’s also a story about people. Without the guys who step in there and deliver the action in the Octagon, the UFC wouldn’t have become what it’s become.”
NAME: ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP
FOUNDER: ART DAVIE, RORION GRACIE, BOB MEYROWITZ
FOUNDED: 1993 [MMA]
HQ: LAS VEGAS, NV
PARENT COMPANY: ZUFFA LLC
WEBSITE: WWW.UFC.COM
HISTORY:
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the largest mixed martial arts promotion company in the world, which hosts most of the top-ranked fighters in the sport and produces events worldwide. Based in the United States, the UFC has eight weight divisions and enforces the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. Dana White serves as the president of the UFC while Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta control the UFC’s parent company, Zuffa, LLC.
The first UFC event was held in 1993 in Denver, Colorado. The purpose of the event was to identify the most effective martial art in a real fight between competitors of different fighting disciplines, including boxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, wrestling, Muay Thai, Karate, Jujutsu, and other styles. In subsequent competitions, fighters began adopting effective techniques from more than one discipline, which indirectly helped create an entirely separate style of fighting known as present-day mixed martial arts.
Controversy due to lack of fighter safety regulations in the early days of the UFC when their slogan was, “There Are No Rules!”, caught the eye of Senator John McCain who went on a personal quest to dismantle the UFC organization sending letters to all governors of the fifty U.S. states urging them to ban the sport. MMA in the early days was a lot more brutal than the MMA of today. John McCain referred to the spectacle as, “human cock-fighting”, and on the eve of UFC 12 New York state enforced it’s regulations against “no-hold-barred ” fighting and forced the event to be relocated at the last minute.
Some milestones in UFC reform on in it’s struggle to be sanctioned included the introduction of weight-classes and elimination of “fish-hooking” in UFC 12, in UFC 14 fighters were forced to wear gloves and kicks to the head of downed opponents was banned. In UFC 15 strikes to the back of the head, hair pulling, and groin strikes, small joint manipulation, and head butting became illegal. UFC 21 saw the integration of the five minute rounds.
After a long and dragged out sanctioning battle, SEG the group who at the time owned the UFC was close to the end, staring bankruptcy in the face. In 2001 casino moguls, the Fertitta brothers along with business partner Dana White bought the rights to the UFC for two million dollars.
With a cable-television deal and expansion into Canada, Europe, Australia the Middle East, Asia and new markets within the United States, the UFC as of 2011 has gained in popularity, along with greater mainstream-media coverage. As of 2001 viewers can access UFC programming on pay-per-view television in the U.S., Brazil, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Italy. UFC programming can also be found on FX, Fuel TV, and Fox in the U.S., on ESPN in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as in 150 countries and 22 different languages worldwide. UFC programming is shown in 130 countries worldwide, and the UFC plans to continue expanding internationally, running shows regularly in Canada and the U.K., with an office established in the U.K. aimed to expand the European audience. UFC has also held events in Brazil, Germany, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, while Afghanistan, Mexico and the Philippines are candidates for future events.
The UFC has also bought and absorbed rival promotions Pride, World Extreme Cagefighting and Strikeforce. Under to direction of present day UFC president Dana White the sport of MMA has exploded into mainstream America and been legitimized as a true sport by media giants such as FOX who currently has a firm grip on America’s most televised and followed sport, NFL Football. Due to Dana White who president of the UFC in 2001 and the new rules and safety regulations as well as fighter weight-classes, the UFC has come from the pits of bankruptcy to multi-million dollar per event enterprise [UFC 129 broke records at $11 million dollars for the Georges St Pierre Vs Jake Shields fight.]
(SOURCE: WIKI)
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS 