Who founded the UFC? Here's all about the mega MMA promotion's origin and eventual takeover

The UFC was initially founded to answer the question of which is the most effective form of martial arts.

Entrepreneur Art Davie was intrigued by a Playboy article by BJJ legend Rorion Gracie where he offered to fight anyone for a winner-takes-all prize of $100,000. Davie met up with Gracie and screenwriter-director John Milius and gathered funding from 28 investors to form WOW promotions.

Art Davie, Rorion Gracie, John Milius, Bob Meyrowitz, and David Isaacs were all key founders of the company that would become the UFC that we know today.

WOW promotions, in partnership with SEG, aired their first event on November 12, 1993, which later went on to be known as UFC 1: The Beginning.

While Davie had put advertisements in various magazines, the event was eventually an eight-man tournament format, with a total of $50,000 on the line for the eventual winner. Rorion Gracie's brother Royce went on to win the tournament, establishing jiu-jitsu as the most dominant skillset in the early days of MMA.

While the first event had limited rules and no weight classes, the rules started to rapidly tighten up in later events. Davie and Gracie sold their shares in the franchise to SEG and disbanded WOW Promotions in 1995.

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Dana White and Fertittas' takeover of the UFC

In 1996, Senator John McCain saw a clip from an early UFC event and instantly labeled it "human cockfighting." A campaign led by him resulted in no holds barred fighting being banned in 36 states in America.

The company then started working with state athletic commissioner Jeff Blatnick and referee John McCarthy while hosting events in lesser-known states. By the time the promotion hosted its first sanctioned event in the year 2000, SEG was nearing bankruptcy.

Dana White, along with Station Casinos executives Frank and Loronzo Fertitta, offered to buy the company and secured the deal for $2 million in January 2001 and created Zuffa, LLC as the parent company.

White became president as he was the one who had approached the Fertittas' with the idea of acquiring the promotion. While the company initially survived due to a rivalry between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, it eventually went on to become the world's No.1 MMA promotion by a long way.

In 2016, the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, was sold to a group led by Endeavor for USD 4.025 billion.