Ultimate Fighting Championship

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a mixed martial arts promotion company. It is the largest in the world and features most of the top-ranked fighters in the sport. Based in the United States, the UFC produces events worldwide that showcase ten weight divisions and abide by the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. The UFC has held over 300 events to date. Dana White serves as the president of the UFC while brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta control the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, LLC.

The first Ultimate Fighting Championship event was held on November 12, 1993 at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. The purpose of the early Ultimate Fighting Championship competitions were to identify the most effective martial art in a fight, with minimal rules, between competitors of different fighting disciplines, including boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Sambo, wrestling, Muay Thai, karate, judo, and other styles. In subsequent competitions, fighters began adopting effective techniques from more than one discipline, which indirectly helped create an entirely separate style of fighting known as present-day mixed martial arts.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

Floyd Joy Mayweather, Jr. (born Floyd Joy Sinclair; February 24, 1977) is an American retired professional boxer. Undefeated as a professional and a five-division world champion, Mayweather won twelve world titles and the lineal championship in four different weight classes (twice in the welterweight division). He is a two-time winner of the Ring magazine Fighter of the Year award (1998 and 2007); a two-time winner of the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) Fighter of the Year award (2007 and 2013); and a six-time winner of the Best Fighter ESPY Award (2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014).BoxRec currently rates Mayweather as the fifth greatest pound for pound fighter of all time, and the greatest pound for pound welterweight of all time.

Many sporting news and boxing websites rated Mayweather as the best pound for pound boxer in the world twice in a span of ten years, including The Ring, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, BoxRec, Fox Sports, and Yahoo! Sports. Mayweather topped the Forbes and Sports Illustrated lists of the 50 highest-paid athletes of 2012 and 2013, and the Forbes list again in 2014 and 2015, listing him as the highest paid athlete in the world. In 2007, He founded Mayweather Promotions, his own boxing promotional firm after defecting from Bob Arum's Top Rank.

Conor McGregor

Conor Anthony McGregor (born 14 July 1988) is an Irish mixed martial artist who competes in the featherweight and lightweight divisions of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He is the current UFC Featherweight Champion and the former Cage Warriors featherweight and lightweight champion. As of 14 December 2015, he is No. 3 in the official UFC pound-for-pound rankings and ranked as the No. 1 featherweight and No. 5 pound-for-pound fighter in the world by Sherdog. He is currently on a 15-fight win streak, 14 of which have not made it past the second round.

Early life

McGregor was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was raised in the South Dublin suburb of Crumlin and attended a Gaelscoil and Gaelcholáiste at both primary and at secondary level in Coláiste de hÍde in Tallaght where he also developed his passion for sport playing association football. In his youth, he played football for Lourdes Celtic Football Club and supported Manchester United in the English Premier League.

In 2006, McGregor moved with his family to Lucan in west Dublin, attending Gaelcholáiste Coláiste Cois Life. Following that, he commenced a plumbing apprenticeship. While in Lucan, he began sparring with future Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter Tom Egan who taught McGregor how to grapple and ignited his passion for mixed martial arts. McGregor's walking weight is around 170 lbs.

Michael Bisping

Michael Bisping (born 28 February 1979) is an English mixed martial artist who competes in the middleweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He is a former Cage Rage Light Heavyweight Champion, and The Ultimate Fighter 3 Light Heavyweight Tournament winner. As of 8 October 2015, Bisping is ranked #7 in official UFC middleweight rankings.

Early life

Bisping was born on a British military base in Nicosia, Cyprus, and was raised in Lancashire, UK. There he began training Jujutsu at the age of 8. In 1994, at the age of 15, he competed as an amateur in Britain's first "no holds barred" competition, a precursor to modern MMA, called Knock Down Sport Budo (KSBO).

At the age of 18, Bisping decided to abandon his martial arts training "to pursue real life". Less than a year later, Bisping began training in boxing, kickboxing and karate on the advice of Allan Clarkin, owner of Black Knights Kickboxing, who saw potential in the young fighter. Bisping enjoyed a short but successful kickboxing career, winning the North West Area title and later the Pro British light heavyweight kickboxing title. After again briefly quitting competition in 1998, Bisping returned to kickboxing to take the Pro British light heavyweight title for a second time. Soon after winning his second kickboxing title, Bisping was forced to abandon his full-time training for a "real job". Bisping worked at factories, slaughterhouses and demolition companies; he was an upholsterer, postman, tiler, plasterer and salesman.

TMZ

TMZ is a celebrity news website that debuted on November 8, 2005. It was a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. The name TMZ stands for thirty-mile zone, the historic "studio zone" within a 30-mile (50 km) radius centered at the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

TMZ's managing editor is Harvey Levin, a lawyer-turned-journalist who was previously a legal expert for the Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. The site claims that it does not pay for stories or interviews; however, Levin has admitted that TMZ does "sometimes pay sources for leads on stories". Levin has stated that "everything is researched and vetted for accuracy." A companion television series, TMZ on TV, debuted on September 10, 2007.

Development

Seven months prior to the official launch of TMZ, America Online (AOL) had hinted that it was planning to launch a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site that would be produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions and had shown interest in launching a website featuring a focus mainly on celebrities. At the time of the launch, AOL confirmed that the site would primarily feature and consist of Hollywood gossip, including interviews, photos and video footage of celebrities and information pertaining to industry news on movies, television shows, etc. The site was described as "an effort to further feed the current American obsession with celebrities". Mike Shields of MediaWeek.com wrote, "the site also boasts of an expansive collection of archived star photos and videos", allowing fans to "trace changing hairlines and waistlines of their favorites performers over the years".