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The UFC is a giant today in the world of MMA, with not a close second in terms of competition. The popularity of the promotion is such that the company's name has become synonymous with the sport.
UFC stands for the 'Ultimate Fighting Championship'. The multi-billion dollar fight promotion was started in 1993 by Art Davie and Rorion Gracie. Davie came up with the idea of 'War of the Worlds', an eight-man single elimination tournament to find out the supreme or ultimate fighting style. Gracie bought into the idea and the two devised a plan for WOW Promotions to bring the tournament to TV.
In May 1993, WOW Promotions partnered up with Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) to develop the tournament into a television property. It was SEG who then came up with the name 'Ultimate Fighting Championship' for the show.
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UFC 1, the first event, took place on November 12, 1993, at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner and Rorian Gracie's younger brother, Royce Gracie, won the inaugural tournament.
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SEG was on the brink of bankruptcy when in 2001, Dana White and the Fertitta brothers (Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III) stepped in with an offer. They bought the promotion for $2 million and went on to create Zuffa LLC, UFC's parent company.
From thereon, the organization started to grow and went on to become a multi-billion mammoth in the world of combat sports.
The conversation Lorenzo Fertitta had with his lawyers prior to buying the UFC
The decision to buy a fighting organization for $2 million from a company about to go bankrupt was not easy.
In an interview with Fighters Only magazine, Lorenzo Fertitta revealed that his lawyers were against the idea of buying the fight promotion as they did not see any value in it.
Fertitta argued with his lawyers that the letters U-F-C held significant value as a brand and were thus worth spending the money for:
"I had my attorneys tell me that I was crazy because I wasn't buying anything. I was paying $2 million and they were saying, 'What are you getting?' And I said, 'What you don't understand is I'm getting the most valuable thing that I could possibly have, which is those three letters: UFC. That is what's going to make this thing work. Everybody knows that brand, whether they like it or they don't like it, they react to it.'"
