UFC Best Of 2016 Awards

In any other year this one would be a toss-up and there are quite a few viable contenders. But when Zuffa sold the Ultimate Fighting Championship to a group of investors headed by WME-IMG, that was guaranteed to be the story of the year.

The staggering 4-plus billion dollar amount took employees, the media and fans by surprise. The Fertittas cashed out and walked away from the sport that they helped revive off its deathbed and turn it into a massively popular phenomenon, while Dana White remained on as President with a nice buyout package and stock options.

The blowback has been felt, though. Now that a number has been placed on the value of the promotion, fighters are no longer willing to fight for what they consider to be unfair wages, and without that loyalty to the ownership that existed under Frank and Lorenzo, cards are either falling apart or just flat out not getting made.

More and more fighters – even those with very little to no leverage at all – are looking for “money fights” rather than openly taking on any challengers. For people that have earned that clout, that’s a reasonable request. But for others it's pure lunacy. In addition to that, we’ve lost longtime matchmaker Joe Silva and announcer Mike Goldberg, both of whom's absence will negatively impact the product.

It’s difficult to accurately judge the sale as of right now because these things normally don’t play out fully until several years down the road, but with an ownership group desperate to recoup on their four billion and a promotion struggling to maintain any superstars outside of a certain Irishman (who is gaining leverage by the day) fans have every reason to be slightly nervous.

Honorable Mentions: The return of Ronda Rousey, the rise, fall and rise of Conor McGregor, the return of Brock Lesnar, the UFC's New York debut and the various USADA suspensions.