(“The world, chico. And everything in it.”)
BY MATTHEW “THE FIGHT NERD” KAPLOWITZ
The more I think about it, the less faith I have in it. “Business as usual” seems to be the motto for the UFC after their historic purchase of Strikeforce. It came as a surprise to all of us when Ariel Helwani held the mic under Dana White’s chin to reveal an acquisition that made many MMA fans’ stomachs tie themselves into knots.
Some fans reacted positively to Zuffa’s latest splurge, citing that the best talent would now be under one roof and that all the fights we have been dying for can finally come true. Older fans like myself were more than skeptical; we had seen this before and we knew the chances of this situation being any different were as slim as Gina Carano making weight for a fight on her first attempt.
Let’s take a quick jump into the way-back machine and look at the previous transactions of Zuffa and see what has happened to other companies that were scooped under its umbrella, starting with their most important purchase…
Zuffa buys the UFC – 2001
Station Casino owners Frank Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta joined forces with young entrepreneur (and former aerobics-instructor) Dana White in 2001 to make a purchase that would end up changing the course of sports history. White convinced the Fertittas to buy the assets to the UFC, which in 2001 was still black-listed from television and seemingly on its last legs.
Bob Meyrowitz, owner of the UFC, along with Semaphore Entertaintment Group, sold Zuffa the rights to all of the intellectual properties of the UFC for $2 million. At the time, it was a risky investment at that price, but now, it’s more than a bargain. Nonetheless, Zuffa pushed on and begun the battle to legalize MMA around the country and get the sport back on pay-per-view. They finally returned to PPV with UFC 33, which turned out to be disastrous, as the show cut off during the main event.
The company pushed on and began to find success with stars like Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. Things took a turn in the right direction in 2005 when Spike TV aired the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. The reality show introduced a whole new audience to the sport (for better or worse, to many hardcore fans), and opened up opportunities that were once unfathomable for the company. With ‘UFC’ quickly becoming the household name for MMA, it was time for the strategic acquisitions to begin, along with the rest of our sordid tale.
The WFA Purchase – 2006
The first company to be devoured was The World Fighting Alliance, which was originally run by former UFC fighter John Lewis. The WFA was one of the first officially sanctioned MMA shows in the state of Nevada, and initially ran shows in Las Vegas nightclubs. This plan did not work too well, and the company was thought to have gone extinct in 2005.
Instead, a new batch of investors came on board, and in 2006 the WFA ran their comeback show, titled “King of The Streets.” The pay-per-view event was headlined by Quinton Jackson against Matt Lindland, and the comeback fight of Bas Rutten, who had not fought since he won the UFC heavyweight title at UFC 20. The show was enough of a success to warrant a sequel event, but plans were changed on December 11, 2006, when Zuffa acquired the assets of the company and select fighters contracts.
Who were those fighters? Well, the most notable at the time was Quinton Jackson, whose WFA appearance was his first since his long stint in Pride FC. The UFC also grabbed a young Lyoto Machida, as well as Martin Kampmann, Marvin Eastman, and Heath Herring to name a few of the 30 contracted fighters who were up for grabs.
Who was not absorbed by the UFC? Number one was Matt Lindland, who has had a tense history with Zuffa since 2005. Other fighters who were on the outs included Ricco Rodriguez, Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Bas Rutten, although Bas returned to retirement after his comeback fight. The UFC also acquired the WFA tape library, which was used to promote Jackson’s UFC debut but has never been seen since then.
When you look at the history of Zuffa’s future purchases, the WFA seems like a drop in the bucket. Most speculated that the company was acquired solely to gain Jackson’s contract so they could eventually promote a rematch with Chuck Liddell. Another motivator was probably that Pro Elite was slowly on the rise and the UFC wanted to prevent them and Showtime from joining forces and becoming competition.

The WEC Purchase – 2006
Around the same time, Zuffa also grabbed California’s World Extreme Cage Fighting, originally run by Scott Adams and Reed Harris. Since 2001, the promotion was building young fighters that would turn into future stars, such as Urijah Faber, Leonard Garcia, Cole Escovedo, Glover Teixeira, Rob McCullough, and Rich Crunkilton to name just a tiny smattering of their talent pool.
Zuffa gobbled up select contracts and assets the same as they did with the WFA, but instead of eliminating the WEC, they kept the company alive as a way to showcase the lighter weight classes. The original plan was to use the WEC as a developmental company, allowing new fighters a place to get their feet wet before being added to the big show. Certain fighters who were poached from the WFA purchase also found themselves in the WEC, such as Rob McCullough (who was in the WFA by the time this transaction occurred) and Lodune Sincaid.
The classic WEC pentagonal cage was changed into the UFC’s trademark octagon cage, only blue, and Zuffa dissolved their heavyweight division as well. Two years later, their light heavyweight and middleweight divisions were also eliminated, with specific fighters being added to the UFC roster instead. Another year later and the welterweight division was also cut.
Finally, on October 28, 2010, the UFC announced that it would absorb WEC completely and eliminate the brand, with their last show set to take place on December 16. Since the purchase happened, only one DVD has ever been produced by Zuffa of the promotion, and only featured fights during Zuffa’s ownership. No highlight shows have featured any older WEC fights either and much like the WFA, footage was only used early on to promote these new fighters’ arrivals in the Zuffa-run organization.
The Pride FC Purchase – 2007
The biggest rival of the UFC was Pride FC, and it was always debated among MMA fanatics (and still is) as to which company was truly the best. Pride FC began in 1997 and survived for a decade, and would have probably lasted longer had their ties to the Yakuza not been made public.
In March 27, 2007, Nobuyuki Sakakibara announced that Zuffa had purchased Pride FC, but would continue to operate as Pride FC Worldwide Holdings, LLC. The deal transferred Pride’s assets to Zuffa, including certain fighter contracts, video library and trademarks. In an interview ESPN conducted with Lorenzo Fertitta, the deal had taken over 11 months to complete and all of the assets were reportedly purchased for under $70 million, although the exact amount was never officially released. Not every Pride fighter wound up in the UFC, and some (like Mark Hunt) took a long time to get there.
White said he would retain Pride’s Japanese employees and that the company’s planned April show would go on as planned, which it did, and that their top priority was to get a new TV deal in Japan. However, on October 2007, the remaining staff members were laid off and Pride was forced to close up shop for good. White also had promised to hold a “super bowl” card between the UFC and Pride fighters, co-promoting under the Zuffa umbrella. Some of those super fights did happen, except they were all in the UFC cage as Pride was completely killed off. White later went on record and said that the acquisition was “the worst deal ever done in the history of business,” and said it was nearly impossible to revive the franchise in Japan.
The UFC has made the most out of this Pride purchase, which included airing a one-hour series beginning in January 2010 on Spike TV called, “The Best of Pride FC”. As for the former employees of Pride who were laid off, they joined forces with FEG to form DREAM, which currently is on an extended hiatus and in limbo.
Incidentally, Sakakibara, and Dream Stage Holdings sued Pride FC Worldwide — both the Nevada and Japanese corporate entities, as well as Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta individually — on April 2, 2008 in response to a suit filed against them by Zuffa which alleged 14 claims for relief, based on the alleged failure of Pride’s former owners to cooperate with background checks and drug tests as required by the agreements, as well as failure to provide “account information from April 2007 to the present” and the rights to their Pride music. Pride’s counter-suit was that the UFC misrepresented their original plans and that Zuffa never intended to continue to let Pride keep promoting fights in the first place.

The IFL kicks the bucket- 2008
The IFL had a broken relationship with the UFC from day one, with many legal battles during their lifespan (partly based on Randy Couture’s involvement with them). Contrary to a popular conspiracy theory, Zuffa did not secretly buy out the IFL, which was run by Kurt Otto and Gareb Shamus. The IFL essentially died of natural causes, which in big business terms means lack of investors and funding. The most obvious ploy that showed their financial troubles was the promotion of their six-sided ring, “The Hex”, which never had an official debut.
While many IFL fighters ended up being signed by the UFC or WEC, others later found themselves in Affliction’s MMA shows. But the assets of the company were actually purchased by Mark Cuban of HDNet in October, 2008. Cuban bought all the intellectual properties of the company, which included their tape library, trademarks, and TV deals for $650,000.
Not much exists from the IFL anymore other than a terribly outdated Youtube page that reminds us of how awesome the company was, even with the team-based concepts. Besides, without them we would never have known about Roy Nelson, Dan Miller, Jay Hieron, Wagnney Fabianno, Chris Horodecki, Bart Palaszewski and many others.
The Affliction debacle – 2009
Everyone’s favorite high-end T-shirt company and clothing trendsetter, Affliction had a falling out with the UFC in early 2008, which led the apparel brand to throw their hat into promoting MMA, beginning in July 19 with “Affliction: Banned”, a blatant poke at their sour relationship with Zuffa.
For what they were worth, Banned and its sequel, “Day of Reckoning”, were good events, even if they were marred with poor TV productions. Their roster included many UFC alumni such as Andrei Arlovski, Tim Sylvia, Matt Lindland, and Vitor Belfort, Pride FC outcasts like Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett, and others who had suffered from the death of the IFL and Pro Elite like Savant Young, Jay Hieron, Vladimir Matyushenko, and Paul Buentello.
Affliction’s third and final show — which to be fair wasn’t actually their finale since it did not even happen — turned into an epic disaster. With Barnett testing positive for steroids and being forced out of the main event against Fedor Emelianenko, and the promoters not being confident they would have enough time to promote a new main event in a week, the show was cancelled at the eleventh hour. Many of the fights that were booked wound up in other companies as the fighters quickly found new homes elsewhere.
Affliction and the UFC soon announced their intent to work together again, with Affliction no longer promoting MMA events and becoming an official UFC sponsor once again.
Neither of Affliction’s two MMA shows were ever released on DVD or seen beyond their intial pay-per-views runs, although the UFC did run a snippet of Belfort’s fight against Matt Lindland to promote his return to the octagon at UFC 103. And that brings us to the present day…
The Strikeforce Purchase – 2011
On March 12 of this year, the news broke that Zuffa had acquired Strikeforce. “Strikeforce is going to continue to run — business as usual.” White told Ariel Helwani, “There are contracts in place, and we honor contracts. These guys pull good ratings on Showtime, and all of those contracts are going to be honored. These guys are going to remain Strikeforce fighters.”
As of now, there will be no co-promoting between the two leagues, and Zuffa will honor Strikeforce’s current TV deals. If Strikeforce remains successful, the company will allegedly live on. From a business perspective, this would make little sense even with Zuffa owning both entities. The goal is to brand UFC as the leader in MMA, and having another company vying for top talent works against them. In reality, Strikeforce became a viable option to add to Zuffa’s portfolio, being its most successful competitor since Pride FC.
The future is still very uncertain, and we are now forced to just wait and see how things turn out. Are hardcore fans just being bitter and pessimistic, or are newer fans simply being naïve? Could be a little of both, but for the time being it really is “business as usual,” and we should enjoy it while we can.