What are the most IMPORTANT MMA orgs of all time, outside of the main ones?????

World Combat Championship

Was a neat concept separate striker and grappler divisions with the winners of each division tournament fighting in the championship fight.

Rules needed to be tweaked tho because grapplers could use any strike they wanted an could finish fights that way in their division, but strikers weren't allowed to use submissions in theirs. But there was only one event so . . .

Introduced the world to Renzo Gracie and to a lesser extent Erik Paulson.

Also had one of the best fights ever in Bart Vale vs Mike Bitonio (RIP)



Was also funny in the striker division, there was a highly touted Savate fighter named Jerome Turcan who claimed in his introductory video that his opponent will HAVE to knock him out as he'll never give up.

He ended up tapping to strikes to boxer James Warring.
 
UFCFAN18 said:
As far as Canadian MMA goes I think MFC should be noted as well. Lot's of good fighters.

From Wiki

MFC has notable Canadian fighters, such as Ryan Jimmo, Graham Spencer, Tom Watson and Douglas Lima, plus MMA veterans, such as Jason MacDonald, Thales Leites, Jay Silva, Trevor Prangley, and Paul Daley.[3]
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Ben Henderson fought in MFC, Bobby Lashley, Patrick Cote, Sam alvey, Anthony birchak, Ryan Benoit, Emanuel Newton, Ryan ford. I loved that org so much
Am pissed it is gone, a lot of fun fights and the most beautiful ring to ever grace combat sports. That ring was beautiful lol
 
InfinityLens said:
-Produced Maurice Smith

-First use of weight classes

Battlecade!
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First org that popped into my head. The UFC essentially became Battlecade after a time. Extreme Fighting was ahead of the game and produced better talent than the UFC had at the time.
 
The Iron Heart Crown's up there.
It was basically the American Shooto circuit-- it operated under the Shooto commission and followed their rules (2x5/3x5 round fights depending on your license, scoring a round a draw was fairly common, 10-count for knockdowns, the guard was considered a completely neutral position unless you did something with it and guys could actually win rounds off their back, et cetera), the fighters could be considered for the Shooto rankings (which was basically being ranked among the best fighters in the world at the time), there were a lot of amateur bouts and grappling tournaments operated through it to help rear fighters even more-- but it was distinct from it in a lot of ways, much like Shooto: Brazil is from actual Shooto.
It kickstarted interest in the American midwest MMA scene, which's since become a solid breeding ground for many very good fighters [Joe Warren, Ben Askren, Anthony Pettis, Neil Magny, Clay Guida, Erik Koch], built up the careers of a lot of great fighters that not only had gotten to be very highly-ranked due to their accomplishments in the organization, but later went on to reach the pinnacles of this sport and have since become extremely influential figures in it (Miguel Torres, Jeff Curran, Stephan Bonnar.) It also had a lot of great fighters compete in it early in their careers; Antonio Carvalho, Bart Palaszewski, Jeremy Bolt, Raphael Assuncao, Jason Black, JZ Cavalcante, Ricardo Lamas, Joe Pearson (he was a very good fighter at one point), Micah Miller, Dan Hornbuckle, Keith Wisnewski, Thiago Alves, Tom Niinimaaki, Ryan Ackerman, Eddie Wineland, Shonie Carter.

ONE Championship also probably deserves a mention. They've pretty much single-handedly turned Southeast-Asia into a legitimate hotbed for not only training in shootfighting, but for actual competition, and it's growing with each passing month. If 10 years ago anyone had said that Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Yangon of all places would become legitimate venues to have successful, profitable, high-level shows for MMA, I don't think anyone would have believed you (and people still don't really.) Even when ONE first came out people were like, "An MMA organization is holding their events where??? I'm just waiting for them to fold now." But it's been almost 7 years and they're still going strong, and it looks like next year's gonna be their best one yet, since they're sticking with Southeast-Asia instead of trying to reserve a lot of their resources for an expansion into China and failing.
The always-gonna-be-underrated URCC and TPIFC organizations, along with Martial Combat, really laid the foundation for what could be done, so they deserve a lot of credit, too, but ONE took it to the next level. They've got a lot of high-level fighters, too, including a lot of guys they've grown themselves, and they can make a legitimate claim to housing the #1 fighter in a division (Alex Silva), which not too many organizations outside of the UFC can claim.
 
eseseses681 said:
The Iron Heart Crown's up there.
It was basically the American Shooto circuit-- it operated under the Shooto commission and followed their rules (2x5/3x5 round fights depending on your license, scoring a round a draw was fairly common, 10-count for knockdowns, the guard was considered a completely neutral position unless you did something with it and guys could actually win rounds off their back, et cetera), the fighters could be considered for the Shooto rankings (which was basically being ranked among the best fighters in the world at the time), there were a lot of amateur bouts and grappling tournaments operated through it to help rear fighters even more-- but it was distinct from it in a lot of ways, much like Shooto: Brazil is from actual Shooto.
It kickstarted interest in the American midwest MMA scene, which's since become a solid breeding ground for many very good fighters [Joe Warren, Ben Askren, Anthony Pettis, Neil Magny, Clay Guida, Erik Koch], built up the careers of a lot of great fighters that not only had gotten to be very highly-ranked due to their accomplishments in the organization, but later went on to reach the pinnacles of this sport and have since become extremely influential figures in it (Miguel Torres, Jeff Curran, Stephan Bonnar.) It also had a lot of great fighters compete in it early in their careers; Antonio Carvalho, Bart Palaszewski, Jeremy Bolt, Raphael Assuncao, Jason Black, JZ Cavalcante, Ricardo Lamas, Joe Pearson (he was a very good fighter at one point), Micah Miller, Dan Hornbuckle, Keith Wisnewski, Thiago Alves, Tom Niinimaaki, Ryan Ackerman, Eddie Wineland, Shonie Carter.

ONE Championship also probably deserves a mention. They've pretty much single-handedly turned Southeast-Asia into a legitimate hotbed for not only training in shootfighting, but for actual competition, and it's growing with each passing month. If 10 years ago anyone had said that Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Yangon of all places would become legitimate venues to have successful, profitable, high-level shows for MMA, I don't think anyone would have believed you (and people still don't really.) Even when ONE first came out people were like, "An MMA organization is holding their events where??? I'm just waiting for them to fold now." But it's been almost 7 years and they're still going strong, and it looks like next year's gonna be their best one yet, since they're sticking with Southeast-Asia instead of trying to reserve a lot of their resources for an expansion into China and failing.
The always-gonna-be-underrated URCC and TPIFC organizations, along with Martial Combat, really laid the foundation for what could be done, so they deserve a lot of credit, too, but ONE took it to the next level. They've got a lot of high-level fighters, too, including a lot of guys they've grown themselves, and they can make a legitimate claim to housing the #1 fighter in a division (Alex Silva), which not too many organizations outside of the UFC can claim.
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Dolema.png
 
CES MMA has produced a ton of UFC guys
 
In Europe - KSW. Khalidov, Kowalkiewicz, Materla, Carmont, Blachowicz, Atilla Vegh, Mankowski, Gamrot, Narkun, Lipski, Karaoglu, Bedorf, Saidov, Strus...
 
Gustaffson and Oleynik also fought in KSW.
I still think Cage Warriors having the better talents and scouting.
Has also a lot to do with the amount of events and that KSW is focussing on the polish market.
 
LFA is easily the #1 feeder league making new stars for the most part.
 
pancrase
rings
shooto
k-1
inoki - first mma match? him vs ali... ;)
 
WEF is worth a mention. Lots of good names came through there.
 
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