With UFC about to present its deepest and possibly most lucrative show in history for its maiden voyage to Madison Square Garden in New York on Nov. 12, few modern fans realize that this will not be UFC's first journey to the Empire State.



In fact, one of the major changes in the sport's evolution came from the main event of UFC 7: The Brawl in Buffalo on Sept. 8, 1995, at the old and legendary Memorial Auditorium, known locally at the "Aud."



At the time there was no significant political opposition to such a show, likely because it was geographically about as far away from New York City as you could be while still being in the state. It was the UFC's next show, held in Denver, where political opposition started being a major national news story.



That isn't to say the show went smoothly, because it went anything but.



There was a power failure in the building that lasted 23 minutes. Then, the main event, a singles championship match, billed for the World Superfight title -- the title that later morphed into today's UFC heavyweight belt -- between Ken Shamrock against Oleg Taktarov, went 33 minutes without a finish. In those days, with no judges, the fight had to be ruled a draw.



This left the show behind schedule. The finals of the eight-man, one-night tournament, featuring Marco Ruas, a Brazilian who was perhaps the first truly well-rounded fighter in UFC history, against Paul "The Polar Bear" Varelans, a 6-foot-7, 320-pound native of Alaska who more recently had been a San Jose State University football player, started at 11:50 p.m.



The problem was, UFC had only reserved three hours for the pay-per-view, which ended at midnight. Unless a cable system had someone paying attention to the show, which most systems didn't, this would turn into a real-life Cinderella fairytale where something bad was going to happen if they didn't get out of there before the clock struck 12.



That wasn't thought to be an issue as Ruas and Varelans started their fight. Most felt the more skilled Ruas would finish Varelans off in less than 10 minutes, given few UFC fights up to that point in time lasted past the seven-minute mark. In fact, the first eight fights of this show lasted barely 17 minutes combined.



But Ruas' strategy was to keep his distance from his much bigger opponent and concentrate on low kicks. Varelans, a high school wrestling champion, didn't want to go to the ground with Ruas, who was well versed in submissions. But he was too slow to land anything on the Muay Thai practitioner. Varelans had no defense for the low kicks. But, if nothing else, he was durable. It was the proverbial human lumberjack match, with Ruas' low kicks chopping down the big tree until Varelans could no longer stand. When Varelans went down, Ruas quickly finished him with punches on the ground. Unfortunately, the ending came at 12:03 a.m., meaning the show went off the air in most of the country with the tournament final still going on.



The show did 190,000 buys on pay-per-view, a strong total for an entity that had no television whatsoever. But parent company Semaphore Entertainment Group had to give back significant refunds to irate customers.



It was the beginning of a long, painful period, as major political opposition started with the next show. Legal battles became the norm rather than the exception, and eventually all the major cable providers refused to carry UFC shows.



As a live event, UFC 7 looked like it was going to be a major success. It drew 9,000 fans, at the time, the company's largest crowd ever. Buffalo proved to be a great location, in particular due to the proximity to Toronto, where the UFC shows were doing big pay-per-view numbers. The crowd was not only the largest, but the most rabid and most knowledgeable of any UFC audience up to that point. In many ways, it felt like almost a turning point from a fan base that had little idea what they were getting to people who were starting to understand and treat it like a sport.



But whatever momentum UFC had in building an audience would go by the wayside very quickly.



The audience was 90 percent male, with very few kids. It was a heavy beer-drinking crowd with the smell of alcohol permeating throughout the Aud. One of the biggest reactions was in the middle of the Shamrock vs. Taktarov fight, when David "Tank" Abbott, who was originally set to be in the tournament but suffered a sprained wrist in training, got up at ringside and started playing to the crowd. The crowd paid more attention to him than the two fighters in the championship match.



The fans that came to see blood got their fix early, which quickly became uncomfortable.



In the first fight of the night, 200-pound Joel Sutton of Buffalo, billed as an expert in Praying Mantas Kung Fu, took on 296-pound pound pro wrestler Geza Kalman Jr., also known as Krom, the name he used on independent pro-wrestling shows in Michigan and Ontario. Everyone was instructed not to use the term pro wrestling, even though Kalman himself asked to be introduced as representing pro wrestling.



Kalman had no real combat background before he started his pro-wrestling training under the Malenko family in Florida. But for about a year he trained in real fighting as a protege and training partner of Dan Severn.



Sutton rushed across the ring and headbutted Kalman. Head-butting, like just about any other form of attack, was still legal at this point. Kalman had a lot of scar tissue since he came from the era of pro wrestling where the grapplers used slivers of razor blades to cut their foreheads to produce blood. Sutton, who was also cut from the headbutt, saw Kalman's blood, and stuck his fingers in Kalman's cut and started making it larger and deeper.



When UFC was conceived, the idea was to have almost no rules; basically, almost anything was legal except gouging the eyes, biting, and attacking the fingers. Very quickly, fish-hooking the mouth and low blows were added to that list. Up until that point, nobody had stuck their fingers in a cut to widen it, so nobody thought to ban it. The early history of UFC was very much people learning from each show, and then creating new rules based on what had happened.



This turned into the real-life version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In a matter of seconds, it went from the blood fans wanted to see, to something uncomfortable. Seconds later, it was completely revolting.



And then, Kalman reversed position and got on top and got a forearm choke on Sutton and appeared to be near victory. Referee Tai Mak, a martial arts actor, pulled him off and stopped the fight due to the copious amounts of blood. This all took 51 seconds.



Severn and Kalman were furious. Kalman was used to having his own blood spilled regularly and by choice, and felt he was seconds away from victory. The crowd felt the same, chanting "bullsh*t!" at the stoppage, seeing that Kalman was about to win, even though Sutton was from the Buffalo area.



Later that night, Kalman was a lot less angry. He was taken to the hospital, where he needed about four dozen stitches and was told Sutton had gouged his cut dangerously deep, and he was left with a massive scar. Still, he felt they should have at least waited a few seconds to stop the fight, either to allow him to finish his choke or until Sutton gained some sort of an advantage.



There was also a notable first-round tournament fight. Fighting and martial arts were still the world of legends and myths. UFC was less than two years old at that point, but was quickly exposing the world of martial arts with the breaking board karate experts, kung fu masters, pressure points, death touches, and death grips.



The martial arts magazines and schools, which were a huge business based on fantasy, were starting to be exposed when none of those techniques seemed to work well in UFC fights, where wrestling and submission grappling was becoming the dominant force of the day.



At first, the arguments were that none of the magazine legends and real top practitioners of the different styles were in UFC, and the real masters would walk through the competition. Of course, none would enter, because they had everything to lose.



However, Ryan Parker, an expert in Okinawan Karate, became the first martial arts magazine cover boy superstar to enter the UFC. He faced Remco Pardoel, a former junior national champion in judo from Holland. Parker had claimed he was going to show that the real martial arts experts would clean up on the UFC fighters.



He failed miserably in making his point. Pardoel took him down with a headlock and started punching his face. Pardoel held him down and finished him with a forearm choke in 3:05. The crowd, expecting to see crazy flying kicks and strikes, were disappointed by the fact he could execute nothing.



Meanwhile, the title fight had its own storylines. Shamrock had become the UFC's top star with the departure of Royce Gracie from the company a few months earlier. Taktarov was both a good friend of Shamrock's, and a sometimes training partner who frequently spent time at Shamrock's gym near Lodi, Calif. Shamrock had gotten Taktarov booked for Pancrase, the Japanese promotion that at the time was that country's pioneer of something that was still years away from being called MMA.



Taktarov, a Russian sambo expert who later became a Russian villain in dozens of movies, most notably "Air Force One," had become one of the UFC's early stars. He came from behind to choke out Abbott in the UFC's most exciting fight up to that point in the finals of an eight-man, one-night tournament two months earlier, earning him the title shot.



Taktarov and Abbott, both men in their first UFC appearances, had run through the tournament that night, Taktarov with slick submissions, and Abbott with quick and brutal butchery of two men who both weighed more than 320 pounds. Each was exhausted after a few minutes of fighting in each other's third fight of the night, battling both their opponents and the altitude in Casper, Wyo. Taktarov took a terrible beating, but never quit.



The idea was that Shamrock would face someone who was his equal in his specialty of submissions, but who was also nearly his size and a much bigger man than Gracie.



The fight itself was rather unremarkable. Most of the match saw Shamrock keep top position while Taktarov held guard. Shamrock connected with a lot of short punches and headbutts. Taktarov, off his back, threw some rabbit punches early, but then, after hurting his hands, went to palm blows behind the head from the 10-minute mark of the fight. After the 20-minute mark, Taktarov played almost nothing but defense, except for one late flurry.



Taktarov was billed as having not tapped out in competition in 10 years. Shamrock never attempted a submission, while Taktarov was never in position to threaten. Shamrock's goal seemed to be to open a cut, and then get a stoppage. Taktarov was an easy bleeder, and at the 13:30 mark, he was cut over the left eye. Shamrock went to work on the cut.



Referee John McCarthy ordered several standups, but Shamrock would continue the same strategy of taking Taktarov down and working on him while in Taktarov's guard. Taktarov's lone offensive flurry came at the 27:00 mark, where, after a standup ordered by McCarthy, Taktatov bloodied Shamrock's nose and split his lip.



The original rules were for a 30-minute time limit. This was the era before rounds were part of the UFC. If there was no winner, they would have a five-minute overtime. Because of officials concerned about timing due to the power failure putting the show behind schedule, the overtime was cut to three minutes. Fans in the building were aware of this and booed the announcement of the shorter overtime.



Shamrock took Takatarov down again and continued punches and head-butts to Taktarov's left eye. By this point, Taktarov was having trouble seeing out of the eye, but Shamrock couldn't finish him.



Had there been judges, Shamrock would have easily won the decision.



Because of what happened in this fight, the UFC implemented judging after bouts that went the distance starting with the next show. The fans in Buffalo recognized that Shamrock should have won the fight, and booed the announcement of the draw. Then they gave both Shamrock and Taktarov huge ovations after the fight was over.



The UFC blamed the building for the power failure and didn't want to return. In early 1997, the UFC scheduled a return to the area, this time running in Niagara Falls.



Over that 17-month period, everything had changed. New York became the first state in the country to have a law that specifically legalized UFC under the athletic commission. The New York Times, and the New York media in general, reacted vehemently. Article after article critical of the state's lawmakers for allowing UFC into the state came out, to the point that panic ensued. The law meant that the state's officials, not even Gov. George Pataki, who was dead set against it, had the authority to where they could stop the show.

But they were able to get UFC to pull the show. Pressure was put on the athletic commission to make sure the event never happened. The commission created a rule book, essentially to run them out, banning tons of techniques, mandating headgear, and creating rules at the last minute for an Octagon so large that one simply couldn't be built in time.



The UFC went to court, feeling that there was no way this could be fair. They lost the case and had to move the show the night before to Dothan, Ala. The lawmakers, embarrassed by the press, quickly moved to create laws banning UFC in the state -- laws which weren't overturned until 19 years later.