IFC
From OTMWiki
IFC History
The International Fighting Championships was first founded in 1996, the IFC was the vision of longtime martial artist and kickboxing promoter, Howard Petschler. Howard knew that MMA would finally solve a lot of the problems associated with martial arts as a spectator sport, and sought to establish the credibility it needed to be treated as a sport. Rules were established that allowed for the safety of the fighters, without detracting from the action. Weight divisions for both men and women were developed, and soon the IFC was working with athletic commissions around United States and Canada to bring prominence to this exciting new sport.
In 1997, another dedicated martial artist, California's Paul Smith, joined the IFC team to become IFC Commissioner. With Paul's direction the IFC rules began to evolve and through much effort by Paul the rules are now recognized as the "Unified MMA Rules" which have been adapted by the many state commissions including California, Nevada and New Jersey. This has been a tremendous step for the MMA movement.
Since its first event in Kiev, IFC events have been held in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New York, Colorado, Idaho, Georgia, North Dakota, Hawaii, Minnesota, California, New Jersey, Nevada, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Mexico and Canada. The IFC became the first MMA promotion to enact rules that were recognized by a state athletic commission (Mississippi/1996). These rules have since been adopted by California, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Nevada. In Canada, the country that had once banned these events due to misinformation, the IFC rules are also the official rules for the province of Québec and IFC events have been viewed across Canada. IFC shows on RDS in Canada were the first to be a regularly scheduled MMA weekly network program anywhere in the world.
As the IFC continues to grow, new territories for the MMA market have been established. Through its television network, millions in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa have seen IFC events. IFC videotapes and DVD's can be found in many video stores and on the Internet. The IFC's first major video release joined the WWF and the NBA on Billboards Recreational Sports Video charts as the No. 17 bestseller in the United States.
The IFC has also joined efforts with one of the world's most recognized martial arts sanctioning bodies, the ISKA and helped to establish their MMA sanctioning division. This will serve to hasten the acceptance of the sport worldwide and will see IFC events eventually become regular televised programming. With the ISKA, one of the first major amateur MMA events will took place under IFC guidance at Disney World in July of 2003. The IFC is also actively engaged with the development of a new broadband channel FightTV which can be seen at fighting.com.
In 2003, the IFC joined with Paradise Artists, one of the nations largest entertainment agencies. Also in 2003, IFC MMA became regularly scheduled programming in South Korea. In 2004, the promotion arm of the IFC became IFC Caged Combat,Ltd. and the IFC has expanded it's efforts to Mexico where it is launching a series of events with one of that nation's largest networks. In the summer of 2006, the IFC will begin a regularly scheduled series as part of the newly launched Black BeltTV network which will reach over 50,000,000 homes in the US via Comcast, Time Warner Cable, The Dish Network and others. Sponsers for IFC events have included The House of Blues, Gillette, Jim Beam, DeKuyper, Budweiser, Coors, Miller, The Greek.com and Golden Palace.com.
The IFC, "It’s here and it’s real". IFC Caged Combat
