From its initial success as a lawless niche sport, to an organisation selling out arenas (and the odd stadium) around the world - the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has come a long way in just over 20 years.
In 2011 The New York Times labelled the meteoric rise of the company "one of the greatest feats of financial alchemy in the history of sports," and it's only gotten bigger since then.
The first ever UFC event took place in November 1993. There were no judges, no weight classes, and the rules didn't go much further than, 'no biting, no eye-gouging.'
The opening fight pitted a 415 pound sumo wrestler against a lean Dutch kick-boxer - who duly caught him with a kick to the face moments into the competition - bursting open the area around his eye and knocking out three teeth.
The announcer described the fighters as "street tough warriors" and warned the audience that "anything can happen - and probably will."
It was sold as a freak show. 'Cage fighters' appeared in the garb of their base discipline with some taking to the octagon in karate outfits, others with boxing gloves.
This is the product, and promotion, that failed to get licences to hold events in major US states - and that nearly went bankrupt by the time when Dana White convinced his childhood friends, the Fertitta brothers, Frank III and Lorenzo (heirs to a Las Vegas casino empire) to buy the struggling franchise for $2m in 2001.
They loved the idea of the discipline - but hated how it was being marketed. Mr White went from working as a trainer and a bouncer, to being president of the UFC and started to rebuild the organisation.
The UFC faced two immediate problems, a major image issue that they inherited from the previous owners, and a lack of media attention to breathe life into the product.
Once ownership was transferred to the Fertitta brothers, a few basic rule changes were made - like the introduction of weight classes and the banning of head butts, 'fish-hooking' and kicks to the head when fighters are on the ground.
When entering new regions, the organisation still has to defend the safety record of the UFC, and the legitimacy of the sport. It is also still banned in a number of US states today including New York.
On the media front, the UFC started meeting with cable TV stations but they would entertain the idea of taking the product - Lorenzo Fertitta says that it would have been easier to sell them pornography than the UFC.
“It was nuts. I mean this is a free society. They’d put porn on the air but not us,” he told the NYT.
When it did eventually return as a pay-per-view TV product, the uptake was poor - Dana White estimates that $50m was invested in the UFC before it started to turn around.
The company regained a foothold when it tapped into the early noughties reality TV zeitgeist.
It made its own self-financed reality TV series The Ultimate Fighter. The concept of the show is straightforward - a group of fighters live together, and fight week-by-week, with the losers being eliminated - and the eventual winner being given a UFC contract.
Being able to build a narrative around the fights, and capturing the fly-on-the-wall footage of fighters playing pranks on each other, or falling out in the house the show was an immediate hit when it initially aired on Spike in 2005.
Working from that TV platform they got out of the red and started to make inroads into the lucrative pay-per-view market. One million plus paid to watch a live event for the first time in late-2006.
By 2010 it had made a deal with Fox that was reported to be worth $100m a year - and since then it has been consolidating its position, continuing to fight to be recognised as a mainstream, legitimate sport.
While the company is tight with key numbers it is reported to be worth in excess of $3.5bn.
After its initial struggle to get traction in the media - the UFC has never lost sight of itself as a media product.
While detractors compare the sport to the WWE - Lorenzo Fertitta has openly said that the company took cues from the organisation, particularly the need to install narratives around fights to entertain, and draw in audiences.
It also shared the pro-wrestling company's mix of free and paid-for TV content.
As the UFC has come of age, it has taken advantage of changes in technology to grow and engage its audience. It started off by getting rappers, NFL players and pop-stars to tweet about big fights - and evolved to streaming the early fights on cards on Facebook - then the later ones on cable TV - and the final fights on pay-per-view.
By exploiting the explosion of online video the UFC has effectively become its own media organisation. The UFC's official YouTube channel's most-viewed video has more than 43.7 million hits.
On the week of big fight cards, it follows fighters for its own 'Embedded' series - building narratives around the fights in the same way that Ultimate Fighter did. These videos often surpass 300,000 views - videos featuring Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey often attract more than 1 million viewers, this creates an extra revenue stream, and hypes fights.
While all sports broadcasters will build narratives around competitions, its hard to think of one that does it more effectively than the UFC - that's why charismatic fighters like Conor McGregor are so important to the organisation.
While detractors undermine the UFC's sporting credentials or cite drug scandals in the organisation - and it has bought-up rival organisations to the point where it has been accused of establishing a monopoly - it's hard not to be impressed with what Dana White and the Fertitta brothers have achieved for the brand over the last 14 years.
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