MMA: The Splintering of a Sport

In the year 2000, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was sold to Zuffa, owned by Lorenzo & Frank Fertitta III. The brothers had a long history in the sport of boxing, with Lorenzo serving as the commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission from November 1996 to July 2000. At the time, the small and loyal fan base cheered the change of ownership. As a fan of the sport, I feared that the "boxing men" would turn my beloved sport into another version of boxing. I guess it is only ironic that I now feel that Zuffa is our greatest hope in bringing organization and structure to Mixed Martial Arts. Let me explain....

When Zuffa purchased the UFC in 2000, MMA was a sport on the brink of extinction. In the United States, it was impossible to even purchase a UFC PPV unless you owned a dish. In Japan, Pride Fighting Championship was just becoming a popular entity with the famous 2000 Grand Prix taking place and the memorable 90-Minute legendary fight between Kazushi Sakuraba and Royce Gracie. Over the next few years, Pride continued to gain poplarity and the UFC struggled to attraction a mainstream audience.

In 2005, the sport completely changed. The debut of The Ultimate Fighter Reality Series brought in a legion of casual fans, and gave the UFC mainstream access through the cable station SpikeTV. It was a great time for fans of the sport. Over the next 18-Months, the landscape of the MMA scene has changed internationally. The two major companies are now going in completely opposite directions. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is pulling in 500,000+ PPV buys and is trying to break into the international markets in countries like Brazil & United Kingdom. Pride FC's future is in doubt after being removed from free TV in Japan. At the same time, we are starting to see a SPLINTERING OF THE SPORT like has never been seen before. These new organizations are typically being created by non-MMA people who have a lot of money and see an opportunity to cash in on a now popular entity. Here is the list of the bigger MMA organizations that have attempted to break into the sport recently:

• Bodog Fight: Started by Calvin Arye, the billionaire who earned his riches through an online gambling site. It has been reported that Bodog Fight has signed Fedor Emelianenko, the #1 Heavyweight in MMA.
  
• International Fight League: The first MMA "Team Fight League" featured on FSN.
  
• World Fighting Alliance: PPV oriented company, featuring Quinton Jackson, Matt Lindland, Heath Herring, and Ryoto Machida. Rectently postponed the December 9th PPV event.
  
• Strikeforce: California based MMA promotion featuring Paul Buentello, Frank Shamrock, Cung Le, & Josh Thomson.
  
• Showtime TV: Coming in February 2007, fans will now have 4 to 6 fight cards a year on this station.
  

How can this be bad for the sport? It's very simple. These newer organizations are splintering the sport. More than ever, we have Top 10 Level fighters competing with exclusive contracts to a variety of organizations. Based on past history, the majority of these companies end up going out of business over time. Look at the World Fighting Alliance as proof for this. The WFA signed "big fight deals" to fighters like Quinton Jackson, Ryoto Machida, Matt Lindland, and others. At first, this seems like a great thing. Fighters earning more money. How can that be a bad thing? Well, it is. The WFA put on one event, and has now postponed their second event. So now we have fighters signed exclusively to a fight organization that isn't even putting on fights. The UFC doesn't even have a chance of signing these fighters. So instead of seeing attractive match-ups like Quinton Jackson vs. Chuck Liddell 2, we get Quinton Jackson not fighting for over 6 months. How is this good for the sport? And don't blame the UFC for this. It has been reported that Rampage's agent might not have been getting all of the offers to his client (including Zuffa's).

A the end of the day, I find myself rooting for these new organizations to fail. I want to unify the sport. Not splinter it like a cheap boxing knockoff. It is for this reason that I find myself rooting for the Fertitta Brothers and the UFC. I hope they dominate the majority of the competition. I hope these want-a-be MMA organizations lose their money and stop splintering the sport I love. I want to be able to say that we have one World Champion for each weight class. That shouldn't be too much to ask for as a fan of Mixed Martial Arts.