Ultimate Fighting Champsionship: On a Crusade for the World

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Ultimate Fighting Champsionship: On a Crusade for the World

The UFC is aiming to eventually spread to the entire world, making MMA the most popular sport under a giant empire controlled by the UFC company. 

Under the Gracie family, UFC was done in the United States with competitors really only from the US and Brazil, with very little foreign competitors from Europe or Asia. 

The UFC had held events in Japan, where MMA was highly publicized,  but Japanese fighters didn't do so well, and no further events were held there.

Even when UFC was brought into mainstream America with Spike TV and the Ultimate Fighter series, there was still a lack of foreign fighters. 

However some foreign fighters did make a splash into the UFC, like Arlovski and several Canadian/UK competitors, forever changing the UFC in the worlds view.

With the arrival of several popular UK fighters, the UFC had events being held in the UK, reaching the new fan base created there, where the events were met with major enthusiam, securing the UFC in the UK for good. 

The UFC then bought Pride, which was seen as their biggest competitor at the time, in 2007 and began to switch many of its greatest fighters from Pride to the UFC, bringing in a larger diversity of fighter ethnicity.

When Many top Canadian fighters began to appear into the UFC like Sam Stout and GSP, UFC took advantage of that and brought an event to Canada, where it was a huge success, breaking records in attendance.

To help bolster the UFC's expansion into the world, as of May 2007, over 36 other countries are now running showings of the UFC, and bases were set up in the UK targeting European Audiences.

With the worldwide programs, many new fighters are joining the UFC from places like southern Europe (Alessio Sakarai), and more Asian fighters are coming from other places besides Japan, like the Korean fighter Dong Hyon Kim. 

When the WEC made it big by getting a regular showing on the channel VS, it became the UFC's biggest competition.

However, seeing a chance to further its holds into the MMA world, on Dec 12th WEC was bought out by Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, further removing its competition.

There are other smaller organizations like DREAM, but if the UFC continues its rapid expansion into the world and take overs of its competition, then is it too rash to say that it will not be long until MMA is dominated by the UFC Empire?

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