UFC GREATEST HITS

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In our third and final installment of the 15 most memorable matches of the first 15 years of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, we look at the modern era. (In part 1, we looked at the company’s intitial surge of success in the 1990s, and in part two, we reviewed the bright spots during the period in which the UFC nearly went out of business.)
Unlike the boom period of the mid-1990s with its underground feel, and the struggling early years of the Zuffa LLC era before getting on cable television, the following five fights were huge pay-per-view and live events.
(One note on this list. We didn’t include the Brock Lesnar’s UFC heavyweight championship win over Randy Couture, because it technically came a few days after the actual 15th anniversary).

May 27, 2006: Royce Gracie vs. Matt Hughes

When the UFC started in 1993, its first tournament champion was Gracie, who revolutionized fighting by showing the importance of the ground game, and in particular, submissions, to a public that largely thought a real fight without boundaries would feature two heavy hitters slugging away.
Gracie stopped fighting in the UFC after his 1995 rematch with Ken Shamrock. He returned in 2000 to fight in Japan, including a legendary loss to Kazushi Sakuraba in a no time limit match that went 90 minutes before Gracie’s corner threw in the towel.
The promotion of the sport’s original legend against Hughes, the dominant welterweight fighter of the era, was among the best jobs UFC has ever done. They made the match seem far more competitive than logically should have been expected.
Commercials in which Gracie talked of UFC being “his house,” and how he was going to take the current star, choke him out, and send him home, were contrasted by Hughes saying Gracie’s style was out of date. The hype made for the first UFC show to crack 600,000 buys on pay-per-view.
While most insiders recognized Gracie, 39, stood little chance in the fight, fans hotly debated the issue. Most had not only never seen Gracie’s fights in Japan where it was clear his days of domination were long over, but had never even heard of them. Most thought that nobody had ever beaten Gracie, and he was billed in the commercials as undefeated in the octagon, which wasn’t a straight-up lie, but was misleading, as the Sakuraba fight was in a ring.
Then-welterweight champion Hughes, while dominant, had at least proven beatable, leading people to think Gracie had a chance in their Los Angeles fight.
But it was a different game, with better, more skilled and further evolved athletes. Hughes caught Gracie in a straight armbar early, but when he saw Gracie wouldn’t tap, he got his back, and fired punch after punch. After 17 of the blows, ref John McCarthy stopped the fight in 4:39. This match showed that the days of dominating with Brazilian jiu-jitsu and no other skills were over.

December 30, 2006: Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz

In many ways, this fight was the single event popularity peak of UFC. Ortiz had just set an MMA pay-per-view record and then an MMA television ratings record in two easy wins over Ken Shamrock. Nobody was neutral about Ortiz. Some loved him for his charisma. Others hated him for his brashness and wanted to see Liddell, the light heavyweight champion, shut him up. Most expected that result, since Liddell had knocked Ortiz out the first time they met.
The match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas did just over 1 million buys. With the exception of boxing matches involving Oscar De La Hoya, Mike Tyson or Evander Holyfield, more Americans purchased this pay-per-view than any othyer sporting event in history. It was a buzz in Las Vegas that UFC has come close to a few times, but never quite matched.
The key was whether Ortiz would be able to take Liddell down, because standing, Liddell had the distinct edge. In round one, Liddell got the mental edge when Ortiz couldn’t take him down. Late in the round, Liddell struck, opening up two cuts with punches, and knocking Ortiz down late in the round, and nearly finished him. Ortiz finally got a takedown and Liddell’s back in round two, winning the round.
In the third round, Liddell opened the cuts worse, and then as Ortiz decided to trade, Liddell knocked him down, with a rapid flurry of punches on the downed Ortiz, referee Mario Yamasaki stepped in. UFC had its biggest spotlight in history shined down on this night, and Liddell emerged, indisputably, as its brightest star.

March 3, 2007: Tim Sylvia vs. Randy Couture

If Ortiz vs. Liddell was the UFC’s business peak, Sylvia vs. Couture was the emotional peak. Held in Columbus, Ohio, Couture had retired one year earlier after being knocked out by Liddell.
UFC was in a quandary at the time. Brandon Vera, who was being groomed to be the next heavyweight star, was in a contract dispute and turned down the shot at the 6-8, 265-pound Sylvia. UFC was looking at disastrous pay-per-view numbers if they put Sylvia in with Gabriel Gonzaga, which seemed the alternative. Instead, Couture, who had been knocked out in two of his previous three fights as light heavyweight, and was a few months shy of his 44th birthday, agreed to come out of retirement.
Couture was giving away 13 years in age, eight inches in height, 12 inches in reach, and at least 41 pounds.
At the seven-second mark, Couture came over the top with the hardest overhand right of his career, and Sylvia went down to the loudest crowd reaction in UFC history. While Couture never came close to finishing the fight, he dominated all five rounds, and with time running out, the crowd counted down like New Year’s had come early. They took their celebration to the streets after the match like no UFC bout in history.

December 29, 2007: Wanderlei Silva vs. Chuck Liddell

For years, this was the dream fight that never happened. Silva dominated Japan, with an unprecedented six-year reign as 205-lb. champion with the PRIDE organization, where he headlined several events that sold out the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome. Liddell was UFC’s biggest star. Dana White tried to put the match together in 2003, putting Liddell in a PRIDE tournament, but Liddell lost in the semifinals to Quinton Jackson, who Silva then finished in the finals.
In the summer of 2006, PRIDE promised the match of champions to UFC, but the deal fell apart as PRIDE instead decided to run in the U.S. in opposition to UFC. Then PRIDE fell into financial disarray, and was about to sell to UFC, and White was salivating at putting together his personal dream match.
But before the sale went through, Silva fought Dan Henderson on a PRIDE card in Las Vegas, and got knocked out, losing his championship. UFC president White was furious, thinking the biggest match in history had been ruined. Then Liddell got knocked out by Jackson at UFC 71 and lost his title.
In September of 2007, with Silva signed to UFC and watching at ringside and the dream match ready to be announced, Liddell lost via decision to Keith Jardine.
White was distraught, thinking the match would never happen, but then decided to make it anyway. Both men were coming off two straight losses, and Silva’s losses were by brutal knockout.
But the match at UFC 79 in Las Vegas was everything people had hoped for years to see. Both men went a fast-paced three rounds, trading crisp, brutal shots. Unlike the usual, predictable Liddell who would sit back and look for the knockout shot, on this night Liddell combined kicks and takedowns, keeping Silva off balance.
The second round, in particular, was one of the year’s best, and Silva scored one clear knockdown and Liddell went down a second time from a combination slip and punch. But Liddell took over in round three, and scored a takedown with 20 seconds left to ice the fight.

April 19, 2008: Matt Serra vs. Georges St. Pierre

This was a night where what seemed like a disaster for St. Pierre a year earlier, ended up in storybook fashion.
Serra, a tough UFC journeyman lightweight fighter, barely won a tournament on The Ultimate Fighter reality show, in the welterweight class. An 8-to-1 underdog against St. Pierre, he seemed to be one of the few people on Earth who thought the idea of the match being for the title wasn’t a joke. Then he knocked St. Pierre out at UFC 67 in Houston and claimed the title.
The rematch came at UFC’s Canadian debut, at the Bell Centre in Montreal, not far from St. Pierre’s home just outside the city. The show sold out immediately, with a UFC record 21,390 fans coming from all over the country, as well as setting Canadian records for the most pay-per-view buys of any event in history.
Serra may have done the best job in promoting an event in UFC history, hamming up his “bad guy” role to the hilt, but once the cage door locked, St. Pierre dominated, winning with hard knees to the body on the ground, and the fight was stopped with 15 seconds left in round two.