After that, the UFC became a juggernaut. In 2006, they bought out their rival promotion, PRIDE. Suddenly, they had the best fighters on Earth. A guy named Chuck Liddell became a pop culture icon. He had a mohawk and threw massive haymakers.
In 2010, the UFC held an event at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. That’s a stadium. 55,000 people showed up. They broke the record for the largest crowd ever at an MMA event. And it wasn’t even a big fight night. Just a regular Saturday. Unreal.
By 2015, the UFC was selling for $4 billion. Wait, what? Yes. In 2016, the Fertittas sold it to a group called WME-IMG. The price was $4.025 billion. That’s a 2,000x return on that $2 million investment. Talk about a good bet.
A Brief History: How Every UFC Fight Went Down Through the Years
Funny Quirks You Should Know
Here’s a weird one: The first UFC had no time limits. One fight lasted 26 minutes. Another lasted just 18 seconds. The loser of the 18-second fight? He got knocked out by a single kick to the face. His name was Gerard Gordeau. He literally lost his front teeth.
Another goofy fact: For the first 20 events, the cage was not standardized. Sometimes it was an octagon. Sometimes it was a hexagon. Once, it was a messed-up octagon with dodgy seams. Fighters would step on the gap and trip. Safety first? Not really.
And get this: The first ever female fight in the UFC was in 2013. That’s two decades after the promotion started. The fighters? Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche. Ronda arm-barred her in about a minute. She then became the biggest star in the company. The UFC was 20 years old when women finally got a shot. About time.
