case study ( ALFORSAN CLUB)

you can ask dr.hedley about my case study which I save it in CD because it is private content

MY Trip ( NZ)

History of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

 

The largest mixed martial arts sponsorship company, UFC (ultimate fighting championship) was started in the year 1993. The organization is largely seen as Rorion Gracie’s brainchild. As history has it, Gracie desire was to promote his martial art school which centered on techniques applicable in real fights as opposed to show or style.  Prior to the establishment of UFC, Gracie’s family was renowned for the ‘Gracie Challenge’, an open competition between experts in various techniques. These experts would face one member of the family or a student from the school to showcase the prowess of their techniques (Kim, Andrew & Greenwell, 2009). With the help of Arthur Davie, an advertisement expert,  the idea of a martial arts competition/tournament was presented to SEG (Semaphore Entertainment Group).

 In the competitions, experts in various disciplines would compete against one another in a bid to determine which technique was superior. These tournaments led to the formation of UFC with Michael Abramson, an employee of SEG suggesting the name. The first event of UFC (UFC 1) was held in Denver, Colorado in 1993 in the format of a tournament (Bledsoe, Hsu, Grabowski, Brill, & Li, 2006). In the tournament, the winner would move up to face another opponent. Some alternate fighters were designated just in case a fighter was unable to continue fighting. Featured in the tournament were experts in kickboxing, karate, sumo wrestling, jiu-jitsu and boxing. The first winner of the tournament was Royce Gracie, a brother to Rorion.

Following the success of UFC 1, SEG started to plan and organize other events and decided to retain the ‘Ultimate Fighting Champion’ name. Subsequent events were named in a sequential manner. At the beginning, most UFC events differed from the modern ones in that they had no weight classes and fighters were allowed to wear clothing traditional to their style such as the gi for jiu-jitsu.  Furthermore, some of the earlier events had no time limitation. Most of the fights in these earlier tournaments ended on the ground, a disadvantage for many styles in that they had no training in ground fighting. The first three rounds were won by Royce proving the necessity for experience in ground fighting. In the subsequent events, contestants began to adapt and expand their range of styles to encompass aspects of submission and wrestling (Kim, Andrew & Greenwell, 2009). It’s important to note  the fact that the events had fewer black belt fighters as they were considered incompetent in regard to the tournament.

In earlier events, UFC events were held in states that had no athletic commissions in a bid to avoid regulations. Furthermore, these earlier events had no judges and even after introduction, they lacked precise parameters in regard to how a judge could judge a fight. Also, referees could not end a fight and their sole responsibility was to ensure that existing rules were enforced and to act as witnesses to submissions. It was not until later events that referees were given the authority to end a fight in case of a severe injury. Save for UFC 9 which was characterized by a series of single fights, all other events followed the tournament event until the UFC 18 (Bledsoe, et al. 2006). After the latter event and with the exception of UFC 23, all other UFC events featured single fights and fighters no longer worried about participating in multiple fights in one particular day. New rules were gradually added including five-minutes round and judges given a fair way of evaluating a match. Most of the new rules were added to ward off critics and to legitimize martial arts as a sport. Fights in the first tournaments were characterized by all forms of defense including hair pulling, groin kicks, head butts among others. These were meant for making the events as realistic as possible and critics and athletic commissions begun to oppose it. Critics such as John McCain compared UFC events to human cockfighting and argued for the banning of UFC (Spencer, 2013). Following this and with the introduction of a new management, many more rules were introduced to make the events/fights safer for the participants. By the time new rules were being introduced in the game SEG itself faced the danger of being declared bankrupt.

For a long time, UFC was opposed to any partnerships with athletic commissions as this would bring about an overhaul in regard to existing rules. UFC for a long time continued to be promoted as a primal sport creating more troubles and attracting more criticism with some cables refusing to air the show. This limited SEG options and by the time a partnership with New Jersey Athletic Control Board was established, SEG had suffered enough damage to recover (Spencer, 2013).

Presently, UFC matches take place in an octagon as opposed to a ring. Only three referees and the fighters are allowed to enter into the octagon and gates are only opened to let in corner men between the rounds. Strategic advice can then be given by the corner men besides attending to any scrape or cut that a fighter may have sustained during a particular round. There is no formal ranking system despite the fact that there is a champion for each weight class. According to the top management, ranking systems habitually invite corruption and inhibit efforts to put together the best fights. On the contrary, the records and styles of a fighter are analyzed in a bid to determine the most thrilling fight. Once a fighter sufficiently proves himself, he has a chance to earn a title shot against the existing or reigning champion.

 

References:

Bledsoe, G. H., Hsu, E. B., Grabowski, J. G., Brill, J. D., & Li, G. (2006). Incidence of injury in professional mixed martial arts competitions. Journal of sports science & medicine, 5(CSSI), 136.

Kim, S., Andrew, D. P., & Greenwell, T. C. (2009). An analysis of spectator motives and media consumption behavior in an individual combat sport: cross-national differences between American and South Korean Mixed Martial Arts fans. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 10(2).

Spencer, D. C. (2013). Ultimate fighting and embodiment: Violence, gender and mixed martial arts (Vol. 11). Routledge.

flo-jo

Women played an active role for participating in several fields such as sports, education and health. There was a girl named Florence Griffith-Joyner and her nick name was Flo-Jo. She was among the list of the 10 fastest women and she won 5 medals (3 gold medals and 2 silver medals) because of participating in the 100m and 200m events. In addition, she was well known personalities in the world in the sport field and she received the James E. Sullivan Award because she was considered as the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1988. Moreover, she engaged on designing the basketball uniforms for the Indian Pacers

In 1996, she announced that she decided to participate in the 400m. She trained to achieve her goal however; she suffered tendinitis in her right leg that was responsible for stopping her career. In 1998 she died of epilepsy when she was 38 years old. Griffith-Joyner's supporters claimed that she died because she used performance-enhancing drugs. However, the results obtained from the Orange County coroner's office displayed that she didn't use the drugs.