Issue 058
January 2010
What makes an MMA event truly great? Is it a night of fantastic fights? Is it a massive crowd? A huge TV-rating? Monstrous success on pay per view? Epic main events and an action-stuffed undercard? Legitimate historic importance? Any of the above will make an event memorable, but to make it a truly great one an event needs a combination of least a few of those measures of success. This month Andrew Garvey considers which MMA events fulfil all the criteria and earn their status as five of the very best MMA events of all time.
1 UFC 40: Vendetta
November 22, 2002, MGM Grand Arena, Las Vegas
Smashing existing UFC attendance and gate records, UFC 40 was headlined by the (apparent) climax to the several-year-long feud between Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock. A truly pivotal event, the success of this one convinced UFC owners Zuffa to stay in the game after an exceptionally difficult run of money-losing shows. Without UFC 40, MMA in 2009 would look very, very different. And beside its historical importance it was a superb event, particularly for those who like their fights to end in decisive and mostly violent ways. Whether it’s Tito’s epic bludgeoning of his old rival, Chuck Liddell practically kicking ‘Babalu’ Sobral’s head off, or the destructive showings from then-UFC stars Andrei Arlovski, Robbie Lawler and Carlos Newton, UFC 40 was a truly superb show.
2 Pride: Final Conflict
November 9, 2003, Tokyo Dome
Packing well over 50,000 fans into the Tokyo Dome (the official attendance of 67,451 is, like all announced attendances in Japanese MMA, just not true), the semifinals and finals of the 2003 Pride Middleweight Grand Prix was, in every way imaginable, an overwhelming success. Two excellent semifinal matches saw Quinton Jackson hammer Chuck Liddell to a second-round defeat and Wanderlei Silva score a decision win over a very competitive Hidehiko Yoshida. Silva’s TKO win over ‘Rampage’ in the tournament final was 6:28 of sheer, epic violence and the other main event – Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira’s incredible, come-from-behind win over Mirko Cro Cop – was one of the greatest fights in MMA history. One of the biggest and best MMA events ever held by the sadly missed Japanese super-promotion.
3 Pride: Bushido 9
September 25. 2005, Ariake Coliseum, Tokyo
Normally, 14 fights crammed into a four-hour pay-per-view event would just be mind-numbing overkill – especially an event featuring the quarterfinals and semifinals of two separate tournaments – but Bushido 9 was a truly exceptional event. With several Fight of the Year candidates (Gomi-Kawajiri, Pulver-Sakurai and Gomi-Azeredo), some lightning fast submissions (Suda-Bustamante and Mishida-Bennett) and brutally quick KOs (Henderson-Chonan and Azeredo-Kotani), Bushido 9 delivered more than enough bell-to-bell action to ensure its place in history as one of the most incredible, action-packed MMA events of all time.
4 UFC 66: Liddell vs Ortiz II
December 30, 2006, MGM Grand Arena, Las Vegas
The first UFC event to crack the magical (and once thought to be impossible) million pay-per-view buys barrier, UFC 66 kicked off and cemented the now-traditional year-end show while delivering the goods at the gate (a whopping $5.4 million in tickets sold) and inside the Octagon. In addition, UFC 66 boasted a very entertaining undercard but will be forever remembered for Chuck Liddell’s second destruction of Tito Ortiz (despite a crippling knee injury) and Keith Jardine’s shocking annihilation of bookies’ and fans’ favourite, Forrest Griffin.
5 UFC 100: Making History
July 11, 2009, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas
Pulling in a record-shattering 1.6 million pay-per-view buys, a near-instant sell-out crowd, tens of thousands of fans to the accompanying Fan Expo, a monster TV-rating in Mexico and a $5.1 million live gate, UFC 100 (neither the 100th UFC show, or the 100th pay per view, by the way) more than earns its place on this list for its gigantic business success. It also featured the greatest post-match freak-out in history: Brock Lesnar’s adrenaline fueled antics after his visceral destruction of Frank Mir. That was just one third of a triple main event that saw Dan Henderson settle his grudge with fellow TUF 9 coach Michael Bisping and a peerless Georges St Pierre brilliantly defend the UFC welterweight title against Thiago Alves.
