Like all highly-publicized professional sports, UFC fighting is not without its own set of controversies. Some controversies, like steroid use, are common among different professional sports but the UFC also had to overcome pressure from political leaders who tried to shut it down. Let’s look at some of the famous controversies that UFC fighting has had to overcome throughout its history.
In the early days, political pressure was placed upon the UFC from Senator John McCain. John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, described UFC fighting as “human cockfighting” and led a campaign to get it off of the pay-per-view cable networks. He was successful at getting several states in the US to ban the sport and even today MMA is not allowed nationwide but you can still watch the fights on mma videos blogs. There was a legal battle in the courts of Detroit up until just before the event of UFC 9 and McCain’s letter writing campaign to ban the sport had influenced it. The event was allowed to go on but with modified rules, the most notorious being the no closed fist rule. However, the no closed fist rule was for the most part ignored in UFC 9.
The profit margin was killed in UFC 12. The original UFC 12 was to be held in New York as the state’s legislature had legalized it. But there was so much negative press just before the event that the legislature reversed their decision in spite of protests by the UFC and Governor George Petaki endorsed their decision. The company had to find a new venue for the event and ended up in Dothan, Alabama, USA, a small town close to Birmingham.