UFC 1

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (later renamed UFC 1: The Beginning) was the first mixed martial arts event by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), held at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado, United States, on November 12, 1993. The event was broadcast live on pay-per-view and later released on home video. Although the event was the lowest profile by the contemporary standards (the venue was less than half-packed, the grand prize of the tournament was as big as a regular sparring partner biannual salary, major martial arts observers and columnists did not bother to show up, the press in general neglected the event, Black Belt first mentioned it only several months later, big-name fighters turned down the offers to participate or to make a guest appearance in the audience), it pioneered the interstylistic match-ups between the practitioners of different martial arts, and set the pattern for the future sporting events of the kind, and introduced the octagon. Background UFC 1 was co-created by Rorion Gracie and the Torrance-based UFC promoter Art Davie, who decided to take locally famous Gracie Garage Challenge fights versus California's martial artists to a new level, televised nationally, with the opponents picked internationally. They did not come up with a 16-man tournament, as the big-name martial artists, mainly kickboxers, namely Dennis Alexio, Benny Urquidez, Jean-Yves Thériault, Rick Roufus, Stan Longinidis, Maurice Smith, Bart Vale, Hee Il Cho, George Dillman, Gene LeBell, Rob Kaman, Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost, Masaaki Satake, were among the others "publicly invited" by Art Davie, but had shown no interest in participating. Davie placed advertisements in martial arts magazines to recruit fighters. He found less than a dozen who answered the call. The promoters came up with an eight-man tournament format, with the winner receiving $50,000.