Martial Art Mecca

By: Sarah Aswell

Some of the companies accomplish this by focusing on up-and-coming fighters that might eventually move up to the UFC. Others focus on different concepts of the sport, such as the International Fight league, which puts on team MMA competitions. Still others, like M-1, might sign a popular fighter and then rent him out, so to speak, to other organizations.

WEC: World Extreme Cagefighting is a sister company to the UFC and also run by Zuffa LLC. Although originally started by Scott Adams and Reed Harris in 2001 and aired on HDNet, The WEC was purchased in December 2006 and now airs on Versus. This promotion tends to be a minor league for the UFC with one main difference: there is no heavyweight division while they do have bantamweight and featherweight divisions. All WEC events under Zuffa ownership have thus far taken place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

IFL: The International Fight League was founded at the beginning of 2006 by long-time friends Kurt Otto and Gareb Shamus. The IFL holds team-based bouts that focus on pitting fighters from different prominent MMA camps around the world against one another. The coaches of these teams are mostly semi-retired MMA legends, such as Renzo Gracie, Ken Shamrock, Matt Lindland, and Pat Miletich, while the fighter roster is made up of lesser-known, up-and-coming future talent. Their bouts take place around the country and are aired on Fox Sports Net and MyNetwork TV.

M-1 Global: M-1 Global is perhaps the newest MMA promotion – notable because of their recent signing of Fedor Emelianenko, who many believe to be the best heavyweight fighter in the world. Although they have yet to announce an official event of their own, they have been vocal about cooperating with other organizations who would like to “borrow” Fedor for their own events. This pattern may be a look into the future of how MMA organizations are run.

EliteXC: This Los Angeles-based MMA organization was formed in December of 2006 through a partner ship between Showtime and ProElite (a more general MMA company). Elite XC has been successful at forming partnerships with other smaller MMA companies, but has not successfully gotten their independent bouts off of the ground. They have been successful at netting talent left over from the dissolved PRIDE Championship – from fighters to play-by-play announcers.