The next two years the gradual introduction of rules and the attempts to rebrand from spectacle to sport. At UFC 14, gloves became mandatory, while UFC 15 banned headbutts, hair pulling, groin shots and strikes to the back of the head and neck. The introduction of shorter five-minute rounds at UFC 21 and the later introduction of referees to the contests began to slowly change people's minds about the sport.

However, MMA remained niche in the USA until 2005 when UFC launched the Ultimate Fighter reality TV series on Spike TV.

The year before had seen parent company Zuffa make losses of 34 million dollars on UFC. Four years earlier Zuffa had purchased a nearly bankrupt UFC for just two million dollars.

From the financial struggles, UFC was now placed directly into the mainstream, with a primetime slot immediately after the conclusion of Monday Night Raw - the flagship show for the immensely popular WWE. All of a sudden, millions of eyes were on the product and UFC finally had lift-off.

In the decade that followed the overnight success of The Ultimate Fighter, UFC grew exponentially. Soon the company would move away from Spike TV and onto the platform of media giants Fox Sports, while events that were restricted to small towns in the southern states of the USA due to bans in other states, were now staged across the world. From Madison Square Gardens in New York City - the city that once banned them on the eve of UFC 12, to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil - the spiritual home of modern MMA and BJJ, to Tokyo, Japan - the center of the MMA world only ten years earlier, to Shenzhen, China.

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