The day is nearly upon us. Five-time world champion in the WWE CM Punk is finally, finally going to step into the Octagon at UFC 203 on Saturday.
Nearly three years removed from professional wrestling and two years removed from his initial s…
The day is nearly upon us. Five-time world champion in the WWE CM Punk is finally, finally going to step into the Octagon at UFC 203 on Saturday.
Nearly three years removed from professional wrestling and two years removed from his initial signing with the UFC, the man also known as Phil Brooks has had a long, difficult journey. There have been mysteries, there have been pitfalls, there have been lawsuits and there have been nonstop questions.
With that in mind, it’s worth taking a look at how Punk has gone from a top star in professional wrestling to one of the most divisive figures in MMA. Here is the definitive timeline of the long road to his UFC debut.
UFC on Fox 21’s Demian Maia is turning 39 in just over two months. His first professional MMA fight was 15 years ago. He heads into his fight against former welterweight contender Carlos Condit, seeking his 18th UFC victory.
Maia is an anomaly in the w…
UFC on Fox 21’s Demian Maia is turning 39 in just over two months. His first professional MMA fight was 15 years ago. He heads into his fight against former welterweight contender Carlos Condit, seeking his 18th UFC victory.
Maia is an anomaly in the welterweight division; his MMA career has lasted longer than the nine-year average, which isn’t especially remarkable. What’s remarkable is, Maia, pushing 40, is the No. 3 welterweight in the UFC, routinely beating top-ranked, younger fighters with undeniable dominance. Of the UFC’s top 15 welterweights, Maia has fought and bested five.
The Brazilian came into MMA an especially proficient Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt with rough striking. With 23 of his 29 fights under the UFC banner, we’ve had the opportunity to watch Maia evolve over nine years.
Prior to squaring off with No. 4 welterweight Condit, we take a look at Maia’s arduous journey and how he’s managed to stay so adept after all this time. Maybe it’s because his preferred M.O., as stated on his UFC profile, is this:
“My favorite technique is to submit my opponent without him hurting me or me hurting him.”
With one title shot under his belt and an overall record of 23-6, Maia is once again nearing a pinnacle of his career. He just has to get through Condit first.
Brock Lesnar has been in the spotlight for 14 years now. He’s won championships, he’s broken streaks, he’s conquered opponents, he’s dominated foes and he’s battled back from adversity. Now, after four memorable years in the WWE, he is set to return to…
Brock Lesnar has been in the spotlight for 14 years now. He’s won championships, he’s broken streaks, he’s conquered opponents, he’s dominated foes and he’s battled back from adversity. Now, after four memorable years in the WWE, he is set to return to the Octagon at UFC 200 to face veteran slugger Mark Hunt.
With that in mind, it’s worth taking a look at Lesnar’s greatest hits over the years. To commemorate the occasion, the Bleacher Report MMA crew is coming together with the Bleacher Report WWE team for a special piece about the Beast’s best moments, both in the ring and in the cage.
So what are those moments? And what made them so special? Read on and find out!
The UFC is home to a number of amazing athletes, but few have captured fans’ imaginations in any serious way. There have been exceptions over the years, of course (particularly Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey), but for the most part, MMA is thoroughly …
The UFC is home to a number of amazing athletes, but few have captured fans’ imaginations in any serious way. There have been exceptions over the years, of course (particularly ConorMcGregor and Ronda Rousey), but for the most part, MMA is thoroughly homogenized.
Shaved head, maybe cornrows. Too many tattoos. Black and white trunks.
Not many fighters stand out in the cage or on camera. Even fewer have that “it” factor that stops a building dead as soon as their music hits.
Cris “Cyborg” Justino, though, has never had any trouble getting people to pay attention.
Competitively, she long stood alone as a knockout artist in a women’s MMA landscape comprised almost entirely of grapplers. Historically, she holds a special place as both one of the first women to compete on a televised MMA card and the first woman to headline a major MMA event. Promotionally, she’s one of the only women to gain serious recognition based entirely on her in-cage accomplishments rather than “sexy promos” or a NSFWInstagram account.
Her popularity and uniqueness have made her conspicuously absent from the UFC…until now.
In just a few days, Cyborg will finally set foot into the Octagon. With the who (Leslie Smith), when (May 14) and where (Curitiba, Brazil) of her UFC debut known, there are two questions worth asking: How did she become one of the biggest stars in women’s MMA, and why did it take so long for the UFC to bring her aboard?
Rise to the Top
Women’s MMA in the Western Hemisphere was different in 2006. The North American scene was comprised of just a couple dozen women. Weight classes pretty much didn’t exist. For promoters, the contests were little more than regional showcases or sideshows meant to turn heads with the absurd notion of two women cage fighting.
There was one fast-growing promotion built around head-turning sideshows, though: EliteXC.
A strange organization for its time, EliteXC attracted hardcore UFC fans with recognizable names like Frank Shamrock, Robbie Lawler and Nick Diaz while reaching a more mainstream audience with stranger matchups made purely to generate headlines. One of the fighters brought in for that purpose was Gina Carano.
Carano gained notoriety by competing in the first sanctioned women’s MMA bout in Nevada and quickly caught the attention of television and movie producers with both her knockout power and her striking good looks. While she was initially a bit player in EliteXC, the promotion ran with her rising celebrity and built an entire division around her.
One of the fighters brought in to complement Carano was Cyborg. Debuting in 2005, she mauled her way to a 4-1 record, earning a reputation on the Brazilian circuit for her sheer savagery in the ring. EliteXC picked her up after she defeated Marise Vitoria by beating her into a fetal position and stomping her until the referee stopped the fight.
On July 26, 2008, Cyborg proved that her style would hold up against high-level competition by steamrolling Shayna Baszler in her EliteXC debut.
After weathering a number of submission attempts, Cyborg landed uncontested shots for minutes on end, beating the veteran until she collapsed. The fight was aired live on network television, garnering an audience of 2.6 million. With that, Cyborg instantly became one of the promotion’s bigger attractions.
With Carano already a star and Cyborg quickly gaining momentum, the promotional plan for EliteXC became obvious: build up Carano and Cyborg side by side for an epic showdown for the title. With that in mind, they were booked in separate fights on the next card, EliteXC: Heat, to set up the biggest fight in women’s MMA history. While both women won their bouts, EliteXC collapsed, sending much of its roster to Strikeforce.
With a dream match dropped in its lap, the Scott Coker-led promotion pulled out all the stops in hyping it. Carano vs. Cyborg was booked as the first women’s bout to headline a major MMA card and held the top spot over two men’s title fights.
The leading ladies of women’s MMA faced off, at long last, at Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg on August 15, 2009. Once again, people wondered whether Cyborg’s steamroller-like fighting style would hold up against a similarly talented athlete. Once again, Cyborg proved that nobody could stop her.
The action was back-and-forth, but Cyborg made Carano feel her power right from the get-go, and that set the tone of the fight. While Carano did not allow herself to be outmuscled, Cyborg was quicker to the punch and had the better all-around clinch game. Time went on, and Cyborg’s pure power physically and mentally wore Carano down until a deluge of ground-and-pound led to the stoppage in the final seconds of the first round.
In less than five minutes, Cyborg established herself as one of the scariest finishers in the sport and became the new standard-bearer of women’s MMA. Carano would never be seen in the cage again.
Fall from Grace
On March 12, 2011, the UFC’s parent company, ZuffaLLC, purchased Strikeforce. The news was sudden but not especially surprising. Over the years, any rise in UFC activity was preceded by the UFC buying out a competing promotion, absorbing its contracts and eventually dissolving the company. It happened in 2006 with the World Fighting Alliance, in 2007 with Pride FC and in 2010 with World Extreme Cagefighting.
UFC President Dana Whiteinsisted that Strikeforce would “continue to run business as usual,” but MMA fans knew what “business as usual” meant. Strikeforce was functionally dead, and women’s MMA seemed doomed to sink with the rest of the Strikeforce ship.
Strikeforce put minimal effort into promoting any women other than Cyborg. Outside Zuffa, Bellator FC was dissolving its stacked strawweight division, and no other prominent organizations were regularly promoting women’s bouts.
Cyborg was the lone draw in women’s MMA and the sole hope for keeping the sport going. Then, she failed a post-fight drug test for anabolic steroids.
The California State Athletic Commission fined her and suspended her for 12 months. She was stripped of her title, and the women’s featherweight division was disbanded in her absence. It was a devastating blow to women’s MMA, as Michael David Smith of MMA Fighting described:
This is bad news for Cyborg, Strikeforce, Showtime and for all of women’s mixed martial arts. Cyborg has been the most dominant female fighter in the sport and one of the few women who draws fans to Strikeforce broadcasts on Showtime. It also calls into question whether her accomplishments in the cage have always been tainted by the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Women’s MMA, which is struggling just to survive, just saw one of its highest-profile fighters get a major black eye.
By the time Cyborg’s suspension ran its course, the sport was radically different.
Strikeforce was done, limping to its final show on January 12, 2013. Women’s MMA had a new face in Rousey, who became an overnight celebrity after taking the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title from Miesha Tate with an elbow-snapping armbar.
Most importantly for Cyborg, the sport was embroiled in a massive scandal because of the controversial testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), a treatment that allowed athletes to work with a doctor to obtain testosterone (which is banned by nearly every governing body in sports).
The UFC was being heavily scrutinized by fans and pundits for allowing fighters previously caught using PEDs to use TRT in fights booked outside the United States, something that then-Nevada Athletic Commission head Keith Kizertold Bleacher Report would otherwise not be allowed.
Speculation ran wild that the UFC was helping fighters like VitorBelfort abuse TRT.
Its official explanation, that the situation was a coincidence brought about by the demands of Brazilian broadcast partner Globo, did little to silence the whispers. With the heat steadily rising, White added another layer to his company’s defense. They may not be perfect…but at least they’re not dealing with that dirty, no-good Cyborg.
“She got busted for drugs,” White told the media seven days after Belfort turned in a sample that would result in his second flagged drug test due to TRT abuse. “I mean, really look at this thing. You guys want to kick VitorBelfort in the [groin] every [expletive] second of every day at every press conference and everything else. And you want to ask me if [expletive] Cyborg is going to fight Ronda.”
It was an odd, off-base defense on multiple levels, but White and the rest of the UFC were all-in and tore into Cyborg regularly for years.
“When I saw her at the MMA awards, she looked like Wanderlei Silva in a dress and heels,” White said in a later interview.
“This girl has been on steroids for so long and [has been] injecting herself for so long that she’s not even a woman anymore. She’s an ‘it,'” Rousey said.
“Her dick,” UFC commentator Joe Rogan said on his podcast when asked what could be discussed at a hypothetical roast designed to haze Cyborg out of the UFC (h/t Stephie Haynes of Bloody Elbow), a remark he later apologized for.
In reality, the UFC was never especially tough on PED users. What’s more, a number of the imported fighters from the UFC-Strikeforce merger had failed drug tests to their names, including Rafael Cavalcante, Nate Marquardt (who failed two) and Josh Barnett (who failed three).
Still, the UFC’s message was clear: Cyborg is the dirtiest player in the game. No matter how much time passes, no matter how many random drug tests Cyborg takes without incident and no matter how many fighters there are with worse histories, Cyborg is irredeemable.
It isn’t true, obviously, but repeating the same thing enough times has always been enough to convince many people. A look at social media or the comments section of any article that mentions Cyborg shows that the UFC’s years-long efforts to tear down Cyborg achieved the desired results.
Her in-cage skills, however, remained unquestionable.
Continued Dominance
Shortly after Cyborg’s suspension ended, she signed a multi-fight deal with all-women’s promotion Invicta FC. With a chip on her shoulder, Cyborg entered the cage against Fiona Muxlow looking to win and win big. Boy, did she ever.
Six seconds into the fight, Cyborg knocked down Muxlow with a single right hand and began a prolonged, sadistic beating that seemed to drag on for an eternity. Muxlow tried to limit Cyborg’s power by keeping her in the clinch or working for takedowns but never managed to slow Cyborg down.
Time and again, she muscled her way into an advantageous position and either poured on punches or landed devastating knees in the clinch.
Cyborg earned the stoppage at 3:46 of the first round and set up a title shot at Invicta FC 6. Muxlow would never be seen again.
On July 13, 2013, Cyborg faced old foe MarloesCoenen for the inaugural women’s featherweight championship. Coenen had given Cyborg one of her toughest challenges to date when Coenen challenged for the Strikeforce featherweight title in 2010, but the rematch was not an especially great challenge for Cyborg.
After a back-and-forth opening minute, Cyborg took complete control of the fight and dominated Coenen on the ground, in the clinch and at range. Coenen survived longer than anyone but did little more than that. At 4:02 of Round 4, Cyborg earned the stoppage and became a champion again.
She has defended the title three times since then, defeating Charmaine Tweet, Faith Van Duin and Daria Ibragimova in a combined six minutes, 29 seconds. All of those wins came via brutal knockout.
UFC Debut and What Lies Ahead
Over the last three years, Cyborg’s persistent exclusion from the UFC has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in MMA.
The official UFC explanation is straightforward: Cyborg is a featherweight, and her only way into the UFC is if she can drop to bantamweight. “[Rousey] wants to fight her in a minute if she makes 135 pounds. She wants to fight her,” White said in March 2015. He continued later: “[Ronda’s] the 135-pound champion and breaking all these records. Cyborg has to make the weight, and this fight is going to happen.”
Educated fans knew that a drop to 135 was next to impossible. Cyborg visibly had a difficult weight cut to 145 pounds, and asking her to shave off another 10 pounds was unrealistic. On the flip side, Cyborg repeatedly teased a drop despite previously indicating that it carried enormous health risks, but she never went through with it.
Regardless, for years on end, it felt like the UFC’s feverish obsession with keeping fighters in defined weight classes would doom Cyborg’s chances of ever joining the UFC. Then, UFC 196 happened.
The welterweight bout between featherweight champion McGregor and former lightweight contender Nate Diaz posted smashing numbers at the box office and on pay-per-view. This apparently served as a wake-up call to UFC brass that fans don’t care about weight classes; they just want to see fun fights between interesting fighters.
A few weeks after UFC 196, the UFC finally, at long last, accepted Cyborg into the fold, something she credits McGregor for. “I think McGregor opened the door for this,” Cyborg told FoxSports.com‘s Damon Martin. “He’s fighting at different weights. I think he opened the door to make this fight happen.”
Her debut comes this Saturday at UFC 198 in her hometown of Curitiba, Brazil, where she will face Leslie Smith in a 140-pound catchweight fight.
Cyborg is an enormous -1200 favorite in the fight, via Odds Shark, and rightly so. While Smith is a steely, battle-hardened competitor, she is at a massive size disadvantage (Smith actually challenged for the Invicta 125-pound title) against Cyborg and doesn’t have the pure striking chops to contend with her at range.
If Cyborg can get through Smith unscathed, her ceiling in the UFC is limitless. It’s uncertain whether the UFC will continue pressuring her to drop down to bantamweight or if it will simply handle her as a special attraction.
Either way, women’s MMA fans need to rejoice. Cris Cyborg, if only for one night, is a UFC fighter. It’s been a long time coming.
Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor is already a big deal.
Aldo has been seemingly unstoppable since joining the UFC in 2011 but McGregor is a stylistically troublesome opponent for him, though. Add in a steady stream of smack talk and you have a main e…
Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor is already a big deal.
Aldo has been seemingly unstoppable since joining the UFC in 2011 but McGregor is a stylistically troublesome opponent for him, though. Add in a steady stream of smack talk and you have a main event that speaks to both casual and hardcore fans.
But what if I told you that there’s more to it than that? What if I told you that there are names like Norifumi Yamamoto, Urijah Faber, Alexandre Franca Nogueira and Gilbert Melendez that were a part of the Aldo vs. McGregor discussion? What if I told you that the build to Aldo vs. McGregor has been going on for 25 years?
Well buckle in, boys and girls, for this dive into the depths of MMA history. Get ready for a look back to the days before McGregor and Aldo, before the WEC, before Zuffa, before the UFC…all the way back to the days where MMA existed only in whispers and imported VHS tapes. Back to the very beginning of the featherweight division.
What Are Lineal Titles?
Lineal titles are championship lineages that transcend the barriers of individual promotions. They ignore the physical belt and are instead decided purely on wins and losses, regardless of where the fight happened.
Look to the original UFC heavyweight title, which was first held by Mark Coleman and later worn by Randy Couture. When Couture decided to leave the promotion to compete in Japan, the UFC stripped him of the physical belt and later named Bas Rutten as its heavyweight champion. However, the “lineal” title remained with Couture until he lost to Enson Inoue in Vale Tudo Japan.
The lineal title would eventually find its way to Pride legend Fedor Emelianenko, who held it until 2010, when he lost to Fabricio Werdum in Strikeforce. It would not return to the UFC until Alistair Overeem joined the promotion to face Brock Lesnar in 2011 and would not be unified with the official UFC title until 2013 when at-the-time UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez defeated lineal titleholder Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva at UFC 160.
Need a more recent example? Look to Georges St-Pierre, who went on an indefinite hiatus while still holding the UFC welterweight title or Dominick Cruz, who had the title stripped due to repeated injuries. While neither man is officially the UFC champion today, they remain the lineal champions of their divisions to this day.
While lineal titles are more frequently discussed in the context of boxing, where pugilists can more easily bounce between weight classes and promotions, they still hold relevance in MMA.
In addition to providing a more objective, more pure progression for MMA’s historic championships, lineal titles help to preserve the legacy of great fighters and pioneer promotions that fans may not remember. Historic titles like those from Shooto and Pancrase, both Japanese promotions that predate the UFC, endure to this day through fighters that one would not expect, and early greats like Mamoru Yamaguchi, Masakatsu Ueda and Dokonjonosuke Mishima achieve enduring relevance as the forerunners to Demetrious Johnson, Rafael dos Anjos and the other champions of today.
Which Titles Matter?
Not all titles are created equal. The prestige of a promotion, depth of a division, historical relevance of the championship and pound-for-pound greatness of the champions can add to or subtract from the value of any given title.
Determining which titles are worth being traced across decades’ worth of fights is rarely an easy task and is a highly subjective endeavor. The Pride heavyweight title, for example, can be looked back on as one of the top prizes in MMA history, given the size of the promotion, the strength of the division and its link to the legendary Fedor Emelianenko. The Dream light heavyweight title, on the other hand, is forgettable by comparison, due to the lack of prestige attached to the promotion and the relative shallowness of its 205-pound division.
That in mind, there are just two featherweight titles worth tracking at this point; the WEC/UFC featherweight title and the historic Shooto featherweight title.
While those are the only two titles worth much weight today, that may change in the future. Bellator MMA, for example, has a deep featherweight division that may pan out to be a great one. That, however, will be determined in the future.
Kickin’ It Old School: The Shooto Lightweight Championship
Eight years before the UFC became a reality and 16 years before WEC put on its first show, there was Shooto. Founded in 1985 by the legendary Satoru Sayama (better known as the original Tiger Mask), the Japanese promotion was the first true MMA organization and was introduced as an unscripted alternative to professional wrestling.
Shooto started promoting amateur bouts in 1986 before featuring professional bouts in 1989 and began introducing titles not long after. On September 8, 1990, it belted its first 145-pound champion, Kenichi Tanaka (note: Shooto refers to its 145-pound division as its lightweight division). While the distinction of the first 145-pound champion is an accomplishment that will live on, however, the title did not become a legitimate prize until it was held by Noboru Asahi.
Asahi isn’t a recognizable name for most MMA fans, but his tree-trunk legs, hyperactive guard and massive arsenal of submissions made him as one of the top fighters of MMA’s formative years. On paper, his reign as Shooto champion from 1992 to 1999 is the longest in MMA history with any promotion, checking in at 2,718 days (Anderson Silva’s run as UFC middleweight champion, by comparison, was 2,457 days).
Asahi would retain the lineal title until 1998, when he was defeated by Alexandre Franca Nogueira. He would then lose the physical belt to Nogueira in 1999.
Shooto, at this point, had adopted a pro wrestling-like approach to its titles, where its champions were as active as any other fighter but were allowed to compete in non-title bouts, with fighters earning a title shot by either beating the champion or fighting him to a draw. While Nogueira stumbled on a few occasions, he would hold the lineal title fairly steadily from 1999 until 2005.
Nogueira would leave Shooto and later vacate its featherweight championship, taking the lineal title to K-1’s MMA sister promotion, Hero’s. His career would hit the skids from there, losing to Hideo Tokoro in his debut. That sparked a chain reaction that saw the lineal title slingshot across the Japanese scene before settling down with Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto.
Yamamoto would hold the title for two years, but the closure of Hero’s would coincide with the end of his athletic prime. While Yamamoto established himself as the best Japanese fighter of that era, and one of world’s best fighters under 170 pounds at the time, his promising career was derailed by a catastrophic knee injury in early 2008. He would return in spring 2009 a shadow of his former self and would give the lineal title over to future Bellator champion Joe Warren.
Warren would hold the lineal title for just four months, dropping it to Bibiano Fernandes and while Fernandes has since proved himself as an elite fighter, he would drop it to Hiroyuki Takaya not long after that. It was through Takaya that the lineal Shooto title would reach American shores and through Robbie Peralta, who defeated Takaya in what seemed to be a throwaway featherweight fight in Strikeforce, that it would stay there.
Peralta would be moved from Strikeforce to the UFC and would hold the lineal title for two years before losing to Akira Corassani. Corassani would promptly give the title to Dustin Poirier and Poirier, at long last, gave it over to Conor McGregor.
Cyanopsia: The WEC Featherweight Title
WEC was a special promotion in many ways. It housed a slew of amazing fighters, delivered more than a few of the greatest fights in MMA history and served as the first steady home for Western fighters under 170 pounds.
WEC history, and the lineal flow of its featherweight title, can be split into two eras; before the Zuffa buyout and after.
The first WEC featherweight champion was Cole Escovedo, who was belted in 2002 when he defeated Phillip Perez at WEC 5. Because WEC was functionally a regional promotion at that point, the promotion had few exclusive contracts, and that resulted in many of its fighters, including Escovedo, taking fights in other promotions.
Escovedo would lose to journeyman Bao Quach in 2003 and the lineal title would be taken to Japan from there, eventually finding its way to at-the-time Shooto 145-pounder Gilbert Melendez. That, unfortunately, ended up being a dead end. Melendez would leave Shooto in 2005 to join Strikeforce, where he would compete at 155 pounds, and he has been there ever since.
While that was the official end for the lineal title, there is no unofficial workaround that sees it return to the 145-pound division. Melendez would remain undefeated until 2007, when he lost to Mitsuhiro Ishida at Yarennoka!. The lineal title would then make its way to Dream, eventually winding up with Joachim Hansen before landing on Shinya Aoki. Aoki would give the lineal title back to Melendez at Strikeforce: Nashville, who would keep it until losing to Benson Henderson, which folded the unofficial lineal WEC featherweight championship into the existing UFC lightweight championship.
As John Cena would say, however, the title does not make the man…the man makes the title. While Escovedo was solid for his time, the title (and arguably WEC as a whole) did not gain true credibility until the rise of Urijah Faber.
Faber’s success speaks for itself, and his reign as WEC featherweight champion was defined by impressive finishes over enduring names. From there, thanks to Faber making his relationship exclusive with the now-Zuffa-owned WEC, the lineal history is clear. Faber would lose to Mike Brown, Brown would lose to Jose Aldo and Aldo has been perfect ever since.
A Fight 25 Years in the Making
Come Sunday morning, lineal titles will become a thing of the past for the foreseeable future. The previously divergent histories of classical Japanese MMA and the booming regional days of American MMA that followed the sport’s legalization in California will come together and be folded into framework of the UFC.
Make no mistake, either. While Aldo vs. McGregor is an exciting fight all on its own, we will never again see another fight that brings together two lineages as strong as this.
No title has a history as enduring as the lineal Shooto lightweight title, and it’s unlikely that any future title will remain separate from its respective UFC counterpart for anything near 25 years. While it’s easy to dismiss Shooto based on its iffy modern reputation and the flimsiness of the other titles it introduced in the early 1990s, there is no denying or dismissing the amazing list of fighters that the lineal title flowed through.
Though the WEC/UFC championship doesn’t have the history of the Shooto’s, the fact that two all-time greats have sat atop Zuffa’s mountain speaks for itself. And of course, while MMA history has its unique value, there is no ignoring the prestige attached to that belt.
There will be two distinct lineages converging on Saturday night. While both will ultimately be swallowed up under the UFC letters, it will still be fun to see which wins out.
Once again, a year (and some change) has passed, and as MMA fans we look forward to the second half of 2015—anxious and hopeful as we always are amid so much change.
Whenever another year falls off the calendar, the fan in me cannot help but look…
Once again, a year (and some change) has passed, and as MMA fans we look forward to the second half of 2015—anxious and hopeful as we always are amid so much change.
Whenever another year falls off the calendar, the fan in me cannot help but look back on the past, ever grateful that the sport is still alive. You’ve probably heard it a million times from old-time fans, but you’re about to hear it again.
While the future of MMA is a given these days, it wasn’t always so, and I am both thankful and relieved it has not only survived but grown to a level I never expected.
2014 wasn’t the greatest of years for MMA for many reasons. Be it contractual issues or the injury bug, last year seemed to be more about what didn’t happen than what did, although it wasn’t for a lack of effort.
Now, deep into 2015, Zuffa and other promotions are looking at an old problem that has grown terribly large: performance-enhancing drugs. No one knows for sure how the movers and shakers in the world of MMA are going to handle this over the long haul (or if the UFC will revise its current policy), but it isn’t going away on its own—that much is certain.
Then, of course, there are other problems that come from the UFC growing too big—perhaps for its own britches, as the saying goes. Multiple parties are suing the UFC, and the government is renewing past investigations into the legitimacy of the company’s dominance of the sport.
Additionally, more than a few of fighters are noting their unhappiness with the Reebok deal, and new prospects of note (such as Ed Ruth) are choosing to fight with rival promotions simply because sponsorship monies are greater outside the Octagon. This is a particularly salient point given that this kind of situation—more money being available elsewhere—saw the formation of Pride FC and more than a few big fighters jumping ship to sail overseas (back in October 1997) where the grass was honestly greener and of a shade that only money can be.
Still, it’s a stark contrast to the sport in 2005, when the problems of today would have seemed like dreams come true, simply because times of plenty (even if it is plenty of problems) always look better than times of uncertainty.
And that is exactly what 2005 was: a time of uncertain promise, with the UFC playing the role of demanding midwife to a desperate sport.
So, as Sin City, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Batman Begins and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tried to pull us into the theaters, Dana White and the brass at Zuffa were still doing honest work in 2005, pushing that boulder uphill while trying to find ways to keep their checkbooks balanced, which would prove a wise move in the years to come.
Yet, they were also daring, crossing their fingers as the debut episode of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter aired on Spike on January 17. As they continued to do their best to put on successful pay-per-view events, they were watching the ratings, hoping against hope that two seasons of a reality show could help them break new ground and wrest first place in the sport from Pride FC, which was still going strong in Japan.
Once again, we stand and look back at the sport a decade later—older, wiser and hopefully every bit as excited and entertained now as we were then.
Here is a list of the events from both the UFC and Pride FC in 2005, in order of occurrence, as well as a list of the top fighters for the year and the top promotion and event. Once again, we hope it will bring about a realization and appreciation of what was and, more importantly, what is.
The UFC is home to a number of amazing athletes, but few have captured fans’ imaginations in any serious way. There have been exceptions over the years, of course (particularly