The 8 Worst MMA Promotions Of All Time

When watching the sport of MMA, we only really see the success of promotions which managed to survive and then attempt to build a global brand. Many promotions get stuck at the local level, or get investors money and go too big, too quickly. This often leads to disaster as the original teething problems are never sorted out and the entire event looks unprofessional.

Unforseen circumstances lead to inflated costs and crowds aren’t always as big as they’re expected to be. MMA certainly isn’t an area of business where you can bundle fights together on a card and start printing money. There is a lot of time, effort and organization that goes in to making something work.

As seen with the global state of the sport, there are really not too many stable promotions left compared to the ones which have closed down or gone bankrupt. As of today, there are really not too many promotions in the West which are functional and profitable. These are companies such as the UFC, Bellator, Cage Warriors, KSW and a handful of North American promotions. Granted that Russia and Asia have their own successful promotions too, but these rarely make it out of their home countries and are stuck in a specific region.

It costs such a huge amount of money and risk to create a global fighting promotion that most investors would rather try another business instead.

However, many of the promotions on the list below were destined to fail. They did not handle events professionally, some even refused to pay fighters and in general, it was only a matter of time before they lost everything.

The Worst Mixed Martial Arts Promotions Of All Time

Fame MMA UK

If you don’t know about Polish MMA, then it is somewhat difficult to explain Fame MMA. Essentially, MMA is so popular in Poland that a promotion has been created which sees various celebrities fight each other under standard MMA rules. Surprisingly, this is extremely successful in Poland and has had over 10 events.

However, the creators of Fame MMA attempted to make a show in the UK with various Z-list celebrities fighting one another with a few Polish celebrities on the undercard.

No information could be found online about the event, with the PPV cost increasing over 120% from £5 to £12.99 during the final week of the fight. The event began late, had a crowd of only 5000 people. Empty seats were attempted to be hidden by a curtain, but of course everyone could see this. Fighters were terrible as you would expect – they are celebrities famous for being on TV and have had little to no professional training.

In addition to this, despite being a British event, commentary was only available in Polish. If things couldn’t get any worse Fame MMA UK didn’t pay many of their fighters, so pretty much everyone involved with the event was left with nothing.

Golden Boy MMA

Watch any interview with Chuck Liddell from the past 8-10 years and you’ll be able to see that the damage he took during his career is catching up with him. Words are slurred and it is a lot more difficult for him to form sentences.

This did not bother Oscar De La Hoya one bit who immediately signed him up to face Tito Ortiz in his debut of Golden Boy MMA promotions which would see him fight for the first time in 8 years and receive more brain injuries from another knockout.

Needless to say, the debut of Golden Boy MMA was not successful and only received 40 000 PPV buys. There have been rumours swirling around about another event happening but it looks very unlikely given what happened.

Battlefield FC

An Asian promotion which looks quite high budget on the surface. Battlefield FC had a very nice set layout and production which would rival that of the UFC.

However, this is where the similarities end, since Battlefield didn’t pay any of their fighters for 1 year until they decided it was time to try another event, this time in Macau. The second event was an absolute disaster with fighters not getting paid yet again, referees going on strike since they weren’t paid from the first event some 2.5 years earlier. As a result the main event was botched by an early stoppage from an inexperienced referee and the promotion folded.

Strikebox

Founded by the rather strange Stephane Patry, Strikebox was an absolute mess. The entire premise of this promotion was clearly created by someone who has no idea what MMA is.

Essentially, the rules of Strikebox was MMA but with no ground fighting (pretty much kickboxing). You were allowed to take your opponent to the floor, but you must allow them to get back up. However, these rules were not allowed by Quebec who forced them to either follow boxing or MMA rules, not something in between.

Being the geniuses they were, Strikebox decided that they would get all fighters to perform a gentlemans agreement backstage and shake hands promising they wouldn’t fight each other on the ground. Of course, this didn’t go to plan and the main event ended with a takedown, ground and pound, followed by the crowd throwing beer and chairs in to the cage.

Pentagon Combat

Named Pentagon combat, the cage at the show had 13 sides, so it’s not really clear why this name was deemed appropriate. This alone should be a hint at what is coming next.

A fairly high budget promotion for 1997, Pentagon paid the likes of Oleg Taktarov and Renzo Gracie to compete at their event, which certainly would not have been cheap.

The main event was billed as a bitter rivalry between BJJ and Luta Livre, which it certainly was. During the event, spectators started climbing up against the cage to jeer at opposition fighters. Renzo Gracie had enough of this and decided to punch a fan in the face, which in turn caused a riot and the event had to be abandoned. The aftermath of this also caused MMA to be banned in Rio de Janeiro for almost 10 years.

International Fight League

Astonishingly, the International Fight League had everything it needed to be successful. A publicly traded company, IFL was not a promotion which was funded on a shoestring and had top level talent such as Roy Nelson and coaches such as Ken Shamrock. In addition to this, IFL had a TV deal with Fox Sports and fighters were given salaries and medical benefits.

If you were to look at the IFL from the outside, you would think it was an extremely professional and well run organization. This wouldn’t be an incorrect assumption, but it was the overall strategy of the company that led to its downfall.

Unlike other MMA promotions, the IFL tried to become the next NBA or NFL by dividing fighters in to teams with cheesy color coded uniforms and logos. This coupled with taped pre-recordings made sure that the IFL was doomed to failure.

YAMMA

A great concept which didn’t take off. The idea behind YAMMA was that too many fights ended up slowing down against the cage, where fighters could clinch to stop strikes, whilst using the cage to ensure they didn’t get taken down.

The fact that YAMMA cages had a raised lip, ensured you couldn’t really get stuck against the cage for long periods of time and were usually fighting in open space.

Unfortunately several high profile fighters dropped out just before the event happened and the card was not exciting. Had there been some highlight reel knockouts or crazy submissions, this idea could have taken off and become a legitimately good promotion.

Ultimate Athlete

Ultimate Athlete was really not a bad promotion to begin with. It had solid fighters such as Nick Diaz and was able to put on an event which was both on time, as well as being produced to a reasonably high degree of quality.

Things came to a head when an unfortunate sequence of events took place at only its second event. A Russian fighter suffered a low blow from an American fighter that was in the Mongol biker gang. As the gang were in attendance, they were not too happy with this decision and decided to start throwing bottles, which escalated in to a full scale brawl, which then ended with a member of the audience being stabbed in the chest.

Needless to say, Ultimate Athlete was never able to put on another promotion after this event.