In the brawl for the hearts and wallets of young male fans, ultimate fighting has boxing and wrestling on the ropes.
Sometimes success hinges on the little things. Outlawing the eye-gouge, for instance, or banning the crotch kick.
Such rule changes have helped to turn mixed martial arts from a virtual outlaw operation into one of the fastest growing sports in the country, muting critics, enticing advertisers, and taking on its rivals—boxing and professional wrestling—for both fans and market share.
The sport Senator John McCain once famously branded as “human cockfighting” rakes in more than $200 million in pay-per-view loot, has broadcast deals with Spike TV, Fox Sports Net and MyNetwork, and has spawned a reality series, The Ultimate Fighter, which along with the fights grabbed more 18- to 34-year-old male eyeballs than either Nascar or the N.B.A. playoff games.
Robert Jacobson, president and C.E.O. of In Demand Networks, which provides about 90 percent of the cable industry’s pay-per-view content, notes that mixed martial arts accounted for virtually no revenue on his network in 2004. “Now it’s neck and neck with boxing, and is a little ahead of wrestling,” he says.
The current leader in the M.M.A. business, Ultimate Fighting Championship, went from $45 million in pay-per-view revenues in 2005 to $222 million in 2006 and appears to have held that number for 2007, according to Deana Myers, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan. U.F.C.’s revenue numbers are close to, and at points have exceeded, those reported by HBO, the main boxing pay-per-view provider, and those of 
World Wrestling Entertainment, the dominant force in professional wrestling.
Mixed martial arts (M.M.A.) has grown in popularity despite having had less financial backing and nowhere near the distribution network of boxing or wrestling to publicize its matches. Newspapers ignore M.M.A. events M.M.A. and the major networks eschew them. Both New York And Massachusetts, two of the most important states from a marketing and distribution standpoint, ban the matches altogether.
Marc Ratner, the Ultimate Fighting Championship vice president of government and regulatory affairs, says the problem is the long shadow cast by the bad-old days of the sport—“when it was advertised as no-holds barred,” and often left a pool of blood on the mat to prove it.
But momentum is building in M.M.A.’s favor. Thirty-two states have sanctioned the sport, with 10 of them coming on board over the last 14 months alone.
Ratner’s own conversion is telling. Back in 1995, he called the sport “barbaric,” and, as the respected head of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, he helped Senator McCain lead a largely successful charge to outlaw ultimate fighting across the country.
Then, in 2000, members of the sport and the athletic commissions in Nevada and New Jersey hammered out medical and judging standards, weight limits, and restrictions on fighting techniques for M.M.A. Nevada hosted its first M.M.A. fight the next year. “It became something you could regulate,” says Ratner, who joined U.F.C. in 2007.
