Top MMA stories of 2009
In an industry that has featured rampant changes annually since hitting it big in North America in 2006, the mixed martial arts scene seems strangely calm as we approach 2010.
With the exception of the industry-leading Ultimate Fighting Championship, the story of the sport over the past few years seemed to be a race to see which companies can spend themselves out of business. But with Affliction closing its doors just eight days before its second scheduled 2009 event, and the Japanese Sengoku promotion seemingly on its last legs, joining up with rival Dream for the country's annual New Year's Eve event, the year ends with the industry largely dominated by three groups. And none of the three seem in any danger of closing up shop.
Zuffa LLC, which runs UFC and the smaller World Extreme Cagefighting, remains the worldwide market leader. In 2009, Zuffa continued to expand television into new countries and pursued new revenue streams, such as merchandising and licensing, most notably a successful video game that sold in the neighborhood of 3 million units. The year saw the company debut in Germany, and next year is set for inaugural shows in both Australia and likely Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
After spearheading legislation to get regulated in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, UFC debuted in the former with UFC 101 in Philadelphia on Aug. 8, and ran two shows in Tennessee, on April 1 in Nashville and Dec. 5 in Memphis.
Before the year was out, the company successfully lobbied for regulation in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Massachusetts, with major events scheduled for June 12 in Vancouver and Aug. 28 in Boston.
The company has in particular set its focus on New York state and Ontario, two of the final holdouts, hopeful of running in Madison Square Garden as well as the Rogers Centre in Toronto. The latter, which could hold 60,000 fans, would undoubtedly set the sport's all-time attendance record in North America.
Strikeforce ends the year as the most solid No. 2 brand in the history of MMA. Scott Coker's former San Jose, Calif.-based regional promotion, owned by Silicon Valley Sports, the parent company of the San Jose Sharks and HP Pavilion, made its big move early in the year when it finalized a three-pronged deal. It purchased contracts and certain assets from Pro Elite, Inc., the parent company of the defunct Elite XC group, for $3 million. They also signed television deals with Showtime and CBS, and it boasts some of the best-known names in the sport, including Fedor Emelianenko, Dan Henderson and Gina Carano.
Dream remains the last remnant of a once-strong Japanese market. What is unique is Strikeforce and Dream plan to exchange talent, with Dream's welterweight champion, Marius Zaromskis, headlining the first Strikeforce show of 2010 against Nick Diaz.
10. Georges St. Pierre dominates rematch with B.J. Penn: Billed as the rare occasion of seeing two of the most gifted fighters of their generation meet while both were in their prime, the story at the end was that size mattered. Welterweight champion St. Pierre dominated lightweight champion Penn for four rounds on Jan. 31 in Las Vegas before the match was stopped. The two previously met in 2006, with St. Pierre winning a far more competitive fight.
The match, which drew an estimated 925,000 buys on pay-per-view, the second largest of the year, remained controversial long after it ended. The Nevada Athletic Commission caught St. Pierre's cornermen putting Vaseline on his upper back during the fight, and made them wipe it off. Penn protested the loss on those grounds, but his complaints fell on deaf ears. By the end of the year, Penn's trainer, Rudy Valentino, was throwing steroid accusations at St. Pierre while Penn talked of wanting a third match.
9. Death of Charles "Mask" Lewis: Lewis, one of the founders of the Tapout clothing brand, passed away on impact after his Ferrari was hit by a Porsche driven by a drunk driver, crashed into a light pole and demolished on March 11 in Newport Beach, Calif. Lewis, 45 was a well-known MMA celebrity with his painted face on television commercials, his own TV show and at ringside at most major events. Along with business partners Dan "Punkass" Caldwell and Timothy "Skyscrape" Katz, Lewis started selling T-shirts out of the back of their cars at MMA shows in 1997 and built their brand to a $100 million per year merchandise line. During the summer, Lewis was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame along with his good friend Chuck Liddell.
8. Kimbo Slice leads "Ultimate Fighter" to record ratings: After Kimbo Slice, who had set the Showtime MMA ratings record with Tank Abbott and had the most-watched MMA fight ever in North America with James Thompson on CBS, was knocked out in 14 seconds by Seth Petruzelli, people wrote him off like the gimmick was exposed.
As a fighter, he was, but as a personality, he clearly had a lot left in the tank. UFC signed Slice to be the star of Season 10 of "The Ultimate Fighter" reality show, built around an all-heavyweight cast with Slice and a few ex-NFLers.
The show averaged a series record 2.22 rating, up 78 percent from the previous two seasons, including the seven highest rated episodes of the series in history, and was, with the exception of Monday Night Football, the most-watched cable television show of the season among adult males. When Slice lost to eventual season champion Roy Nelson on a show that aired Sept. 30, the 3.7 rating was the largest for any MMA broadcast in U.S. history. Slice will likely never contend for a championship, but his record as a television draw is unmatched, with three of the four fights in history that have topped 6 million viewers.
7. Injury and illness rate skyrockets: Just as UFC seemed poised to close out the year with a series of monster shows, the company ran into a near-incomprehensible level of bad luck. Of the company's five champions, four were on the shelf, with heavyweight Brock Lesnar (diverticulitis), Lyoto Machida (surgery on his broken hand), Anderson Silva (elbow surgery) and Georges St. Pierre (torn abductor muscle). In addition, Quinton Jackson, expected to face Rashad Evans in what would have been one of the most anticipated fights of the year, pulled out after being hired to play B.A. Baracus in "The A-Team" movie. The injuries continued to the point of being almost comical by the end of the year with major contenders such as Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (staph infection), Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (fractured ankle) and Shane Carwin (knee) heading the list.
6. Strikeforce signs Fedor: After spurning a multimillion dollar UFC offer, Strikeforce and Fedor Emelianenko's parent company, M-1 Global, reached a complicated co-promotional agreement. Under the agreement, M-1 gets 50 percent of the proceeds from any card the Russian heavyweight appears on. The agreement covered not only Emelianenko, but M-1's Gegard Mousasi, who quickly won Strikeforce's light heavyweight title. Emelianenko, who hasn't lost since 2000 and is generally regarded as the greatest MMA fighter in history, knocked out Brett Rogers on Nov. 7 in Chicago in his first match with the new promotion.
5. Affliction bites the dust: The T-shirt company that tried to compete with UFC by spending huge money on fighter contracts found the pay-per-view business much more difficult than expected. After substantial losses on its first two shows, the company threw in the towel eight days before a scheduled third event that was to be held on Aug. 1 in Anaheim, Calif. The card unraveled when Josh Barnett, scheduled to face Emelianenko in the main event, failed a pre-event steroid test taken weeks before the fight, and the California State Athletic Commission refused to license him.
Affliction claimed it would not be allowed to hold a show because the main event advertised wouldn't take place, but the UFC regularly has changed main events due to injuries. In reality, Affliction wanted out after heavy losses and made a deal with UFC, which got contracts with the fighters it wanted from the Affliction stable, such as Vitor Belfort and Ben Rothwell, in exchange for Affliction sponsorship of UFC events.
4. UFC 100 sets records: A triple main event with Brock Lesnar retaining the heavyweight title beating Frank Mir, St. Pierre retaining the welterweight title beating Thiago Alves and Henderson (in his final UFC match before signing with Strikeforce) finishing Michael Bisping became the biggest UFC event in history. Doing an estimated 1.6 million buys on pay-per-view, the July 11 show in Las Vegas became the fourth biggest event of its kind, trailing only boxing blockbusters Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. (2.4 million), Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield (1.99 million) and Tyson vs. Lennox Lewis (1.97 million). The show also aired live on Televisa in Mexico, with the Lesnar vs. Mir fight doing a 13.3 television rating.
3. Lesnar's future in question: After establishing himself at UFC 100 as not just the biggest money draw in the sport's history, but the sport's most controversial and polarizing figure in a post-fight interview that put UFC atop sports headlines like never before, Lesnar found his future in jeopardy not long afterward. The UFC heavyweight champion, 32, who made his name first as a star with World Wrestling Entertainment, pulled out of his Nov. 21 fight with Shane Carwin due to an illness that had left him run down and unable to train properly. First diagnosed with mononucleosis, Lesnar then collapsed weeks later while visiting his brother in rural Manitoba and was diagnosed with diverticulitis, an intestinal infection.
As the year comes to a close, there is no timetable as to when he would be able to fight again or even the certainty that he would fight again.
2. Strikeforce becomes solid No. 2 promotion with CBS and Showtime contracts: The promotion, which once had less than 20 fighters under contract, now has nearly 150. Strikeforce began on Showtime on April 11, with a show headlined by Frank Shamrock vs. Nick Diaz, and then broke Kimbo Slice's ratings record on the network with an Aug. 15 show headlined by Gina Carano vs. Cris Cyborg, by leaps and bounds the biggest women's fight in the sport's history, doing a 2.17 rating. The CBS debut was Nov. 7, with Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers, doing a 2.45 rating, a number at least good enough for CBS to agree to an April second date. Between CBS and Showtime, Strikeforce plans 20 televised events in 2010.
1. UFC sets all-time pay-per-view record: Despite the challenges presented by injuries to top fighters in the second half of the year, the increase in pirated signals on the Internet, and those who believed the pay-per-view model is a dinosaur with so much product on free television, UFC is estimated at doing approximately 7.7 million buys at $44.95 on pay-per-view on 13 shows, smashing the estimated 6.4 million buys record it set in 2008. UFC does not release its pay-per-view numbers so they are derived from cable industry estimates. For the fourth straight year, the top 10 charts on pay-per-view in North America consisted of seven UFC events, two boxing events and WWE's annual WrestleMania. Besides the expected big numbers from Lesnar vs. Mir and St. Pierre vs. Penn, the big surprise of the year was UFC 101, headlined by Penn vs. Kenny Florian and Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin, doing an estimated 850,000 buys.
The year also marked the first in which UFC, not boxing, had the year's most purchased event, as UFC 100 (1.6 million) topped boxing's biggest event, Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto (1.25 million).
