How big is the UFC really!

(St-Pierre vs. Penn 2 at MGM Las Vegas Jan 30th 2009)

So the UFC aka "Ultimate Fighting Championship" is a U.S.-based mixed martial arts (MMA) organization, currently recognized as the largest MMA promotion in the world. The UFC is owned and operated by Zuffa, LLC, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In January 2001, the Fertittas bought the UFC for $2 million and created Zuffa, LLC as the parent entity controlling the UFC. The UFC broke the pay-per-view industry's all-time records for a single year of business, generating over $222,766,000 in revenue during 2006, surpassing WWE and boxing. (although no source was found for this if you tally up the pay-per-view numbers its close). One must assume that that number have at least maintained as the sport continues to hold good pay-per-view numbers into 09. (source)

So lets take this weekends past Saturday fight; Top fighter (Picture left) Georges St. Pierre (Good old Canadian Boy) earned a reported $400K of the $1.1 million payroll. Challenger B.J Penn, earned $125K and was badly beaten by GSP to earn it. (source)

When I think of UFC, I think Tito Ortiz, who's last fight was on May 24th 2008, a decision loss to Lyoto Machida- but Tito has moved on to better things, Jenna Jameson for starters (who is now pregnant with twins) and he has recently joining Affliction Entertainment being apart of the broadcast team for the upcoming Affliction: Day of Reckoning event.

Here is a recent picture of Tito outside the NASDAQ (Jan 20th 2009) where he opened the markets with Tom Atencio, VP of Affliction Entertainment, and Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko, heavyweight mixed martial artist and current World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts heavyweight champion.

So ya, I would say this UFC and MMA has grown into a major business & will continue to be a much talked about, event driven sport-