The UFC's product, and perhaps even the sport on the whole, can be divided into the pre-“Ultimate Fighter” and post-“Ultimate Fighter” eras. Ask Dana White, and he'll tell you that the hopes of Zuffa and the UFC, and as a result, North American MMA, were all-in on the success of “The Ultimate Fighter” series.
While we remember the inaugural TUF season most for bed urination, door breaking, fatherless bastards and asparagus (among other things), its larger design was to promote the rematch between Chuck Liddell (Pictures) and Randy Couture (Pictures) for the light heavyweight title -- the biggest fight the UFC could muster at the time.
When discussing TUF and the current climate of the sport, the 205-pound finale between Forrest Griffin (Pictures) and Stephan Bonnar (Pictures) is considered the ultimate moment, the JFK where-were-you-when, the moment when MMA was forced into the mind of the mainstream. It lived up to its purpose, making it possibly the best infomercial in history. However, if Griffin-Bonnar I was what fixed the public's eyes to MMA, something else would have to glue them there.
Seven days later at the MGM Grand, the Couture-Liddell rematch raked in a $2.57 million gate and an estimated 280,000 PPV buys, smashing previous North American MMA marks. While the rest of the card was crackling, Couture and Liddell's second go-around did not live up to the sustained action and drama of their first encounter of June 2003 that Couture had won. Instead, just six ticks past the two-minute mark, Liddell turned Couture's lights out with a brutal right-hand counter, culminating Liddell's seven-year odyssey to become a UFC champion.
While Liddell would duplicate his KO victory over Couture in their rubber match 10 months later, his capture of the UFC light heavyweight crown stands as his finest hour.
His first victory over Tito Ortiz (Pictures) made him a star and his second made him a cultural superstar, but it's his title victory over Couture that paved the road in between, marking his transition from perennial contender to champion and putting a face and a fist to the new era in MMA -- a far cry from the dream-in-the-dark the sport had when Liddell first stepped into the cage.