EGN NEWS DESK
Twenty years in the past, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was on life help. Broadcasters scoffed on the thought of televising half-naked males pummeling one another inside a caged octagon, engaged in a sport the place damaged bones and dislodged tooth have been widespread. Venues closed their doorways and advertisers their wallets.
The excessive violence meant there was no solution to monetize the blended martial arts promotion, Kevin Kay, who was then an govt at Spike TV, defined to the U.F.C.’s house owners and its president, Dana White, in a 2004 assembly.
“I actually prefer it however I don’t see how I’m going to get Budweiser to place their brand on the mat when there’s blood on it,” Kay recalled saying.
This weekend, T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip will host U.F.C. 300, a pay-per-view milestone for a sport that was as soon as successfully banned from tv. And it has tv to thank for its longevity.
After being spurned by networks giant and small, the U.F.C. management devised a last-ditch plan to develop into worthwhile: a actuality TV present during which 16 athletes would reside collectively in a Las Vegas home, coaching and combating each other with a six-figure contract on the road.
If it didn’t work, the U.F.C. would crater.
But the primary season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which aired on Spike TV in 2005, succeeded in humanizing the athletes as precise individuals as a substitute of senseless punching luggage. Viewers appreciated the behind-the-scenes appears to be like at coaching regimens and chopping weight.
“It gave the game a face and an emotion that most individuals didn’t realize it had,” mentioned Craig Piligian, an govt producer on “Survivor” who helped the U.F.C. refine its premise for “The Ultimate Fighter.” “That’s what actually turned the tide.”
The U.F.C. is now a profitable reside occasion and leisure entity — it was bought for $4 billion in 2016 — and has offered out arenas like Madison Square Garden and the O2 in London. It is anticipated to command billions of {dollars} in negotiations subsequent yr as its media rights settlement with ESPN expires. ESPN will start airing the thirty second season of “The Ultimate Fighter” in June.
It was an extended journey to U.F.C. 300, nevertheless, for a sport that was as soon as the scourge of politicians and regarded too dangerous for tv networks.
In 1996, three years after the U.F.C.’s first occasion, Senator John McCain referred to as blended marital arts “human cockfighting” and despatched letters to all 50 state governors imploring them to ban it. Most states instituted bans, and lots of main cable suppliers refused to air the fights. The U.F.C. withered because it relied on venues in smaller metros like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Lake Charles, La.
Nearing chapter in 2001, its house owners offered the corporate to Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who grew rich as on line casino operators, for $2 million. They gave White, their longtime buddy and a former boxing manager, a ten % possession stake and put in him as president.
Later that yr, New Jersey adopted a unified rule set, banning blows to the again of the top and backbone or strikes to the throat, forward of different states following swimsuit. The Fertittas estimated that their funding within the firm was almost $40 million, but it remained unprofitable. Television networks nonetheless turned up their noses.
“It simply was seen as various, over-the-top and never the same old conservative stick-and-ball motion we had been accustomed to airing on our platforms” mentioned Mark Shapiro, an govt at ESPN within the early 2000s who’s now the president of TKO, the U.F.C.’s father or mother firm. “It wasn’t prepared for prime time. It wasn’t essential mass.”
Quickly dropping choices, the Fertittas and White met with Spike TV, a distinct segment channel whose programming focused male viewers. White was energetic throughout an hourlong assembly, Kay mentioned, “pounding on the desk” and saying that the U.F.C. can be larger than the N.F.L. But they left and not using a deal.
Frustrated, the U.F.C.’s management enlisted Piligian, who had labored with the Fertittas on the Discovery Channel collection “American Casino.” He had mentioned a combating actuality present idea with them up to now and helped develop a format just like “Survivor.”
The contestants would reside collectively in shut quarters for almost 60 days, and compete in challenges like impediment races earlier than combating each other. Two of the U.F.C.’s largest stars, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture, would function coaches.
“These guys get up within the morning and are throughout the desk from one another consuming Rice Krispies, after which they need to battle within the afternoon — that’s tough,” mentioned Piligian, now the managing director of Lionsgate’s various tv division. He added, “It was a tried-and-true format we knew can be a stress cooker.”
Piligian and U.F.C. management pitched the revised thought to Spike TV executives in Los Angeles. Kay mentioned the format was interesting to the community as a result of it will train the viewers about blended martial arts, which mixes unarmed fight varieties like boxing, wrestling and jujitsu.
“They’ll see that it’s not simply guys in a cage beating one another and blood everywhere,” Kay mentioned.
But funds constraints prevented Spike TV, which has since rebranded as Paramount Network, from instantly beginning manufacturing. The Fertittas supplied $10 million to cowl prices, however determined they’d now not spend money on the U.F.C. if the season failed.
The present was successful, averaging at the very least 1.9 million viewers weekly from its inception by way of 2008. Some fighters inside the house drunkenly bickered with one another, just like actuality reveals corresponding to “The Bachelor.” Contestants fought on a blue canvas devoid of sponsorships, a stark distinction to the Monster Energy, Modelo and DraftKings logos now emblazoned inside U.F.C. octagons.
Forrest Griffin had stop his job in regulation enforcement to affix the primary season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and gained the ultimate battle towards Stephan Bonnar in a unanimous determination. White nonetheless gave each males contracts, and Griffin participated within the U.F.C. till 2012.
Although he turned a light-heavyweight champion in 2008, he says a very powerful battle of his profession was the finale of “The Ultimate Fighter.”
“That night time I gained that battle, I used to be an expert fighter,” Griffin mentioned. “I wasn’t a part-time bouncer. I wasn’t a police officer who simply occurred to battle.”
In a parking zone subsequent to manufacturing vehicles exterior the battle enviornment, Spike TV executives and the Fertitta brothers entered a handshake settlement for a second season. The community would pay the manufacturing prices and shortly started broadcasting different U.F.C. fights.
White declined to remark for this text, however he has beforehand credited the finale of the primary season of “The Ultimate Fighter” because the second that salvaged the U.F.C. On a podcast final month, White referred to as it “essentially the most good battle on the most good time.”
The bout catapulted the enlargement of the U.F.C., which quickly purchased rival corporations and in 2011 signed a $700 million contract with Fox Sports. The U.F.C. aggressively lobbied state politicians to control the game, and in 2016, New York turned the final state to carry its ban on blended martial arts. Two years later, ESPN signed a $1.5 billion settlement with the U.F.C.
Matt Kenny, the vice chairman of programing and acquisitions for ESPN, mentioned in an electronic mail that the community partnered with the corporate to bolster its younger ESPN+ streaming service, and to capitalize on the U.F.C.’s “various, prosperous and digitally native” fan base.
Decades earlier, that fan base was irrelevant to the identical tv channel.
