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Somewhere, presidential hopeful John McCain is eating his words.
Mixed martial arts and its flagship organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, just got a little more mainstream.
In town for UFC 82: Pride of a Champion, President Dana White announced Thursday afternoon that Anheuser-Busch has jumped aboard as a sponsor beginning at UFC 84 in May.
Chalk it all up to sweet revenge for a sport that stared death in the face, thanks to McCain and the witch hunt he led to ban the sport from American airwaves.
On the heels of recent advertising by Harley-Davidson, White and the UFC are helping the sport gain the mainstream status they’ve been working years to find.
The Anheuser-Busch sponsorship is just another notch in the proverbial belt.
Considering the target audience of the organization downs beer like it’s air, the partnership is a match made in heaven and a perfect stepping stone for the UFC.
They went a long way in building that path in the Midwest, as a 2007 event at Nationwide Arena set records for attendance and live gate and merchandise sales thanks to a North American MMA attendance record of 19,079 fans.
Saturday’s UFC 82: Pride of a Champion event only adds to the legitimacy of the sport as it coincides yet again with the annual Arnold Sports Festival. A fitting match seeing as fighters have been appearing at the expo regularly in the years leading up to the 2007 event.
It marks the third Ohio event in 12 months as the UFC made its way to Cincinnati in October, 2007 for UFC 77: Hostile Territory.
The Buckeye state and MMA are a fitting pair considering the organization has housed four former Ohio State wrestlers, a number of Ohio’s finest MMAs and targets an audience of college-aged males.
Thursday’s deal gives the UFC the blue-chip sponsor they’ve been looking for.
Saturday looks to be one of the biggest nights of the year for the organization as middleweights Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson square off in a unification match.
Silva, the UFC middleweight champion, is fighting for the first time since October in Cincinnati, where he defeated the Queen City’s own Rich Franklin.
Henderson, the Pride FC middleweight champion, is returning after losing his Pride Fighting Championships light heavyweight championship belt to the UFC’s Quentin Jackson in September.
If the fans show up Saturday like they did a year ago, you can bet there will be many more sponsors knocking on White’s door to make a deal.
With appearances on ESPN and Fox Sports growing each month and a Sports Illustrated cover already in the books, the sport is reaching a point of exposure it’s never seen before.
Now just a day away from UFC 82 and four days from the Ohio primary, there’s a beast in town drawing more attention than the Arizona senator himself.
Funny how things work out.
Zack Timmons can be reached at [email protected].
