by Nate Lawson, Inside Fights, Special to FOXSports.com

Forrest Griffin's classic with Stephan Bonnar might be the most memorable moment in modern MMA. (Zuffa, LLC / Special to FOXSports.com)

MMA in the United States got a huge jolt with the purchase of the UFC by Zuffa. However, the company's brainchild helped MMA gain a permanent foothold in 2005.

The creation of The Ultimate Fighter reality show put the UFC on cable and featured fighters competing for a six-figure contract, while also broadcasting who they were as people.

The finalists — Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar — staged a battle that made casual MMA observers into die-hard fans. Griffin won the bout, but the biggest winners was the UFC as millions watched one of the greatest fights in the history of the young sport.

While the hit reality show on Spike, along with constant airings of Ultimate Knockouts and others made new fighters like Forrest Griffin popular, they catapulted existing stars like Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell into becoming MMA's big pop culture icons.

UFC 53 followed the first The Ultimate Fighter Finale and featured a rematch between the sports two biggest stars. The PPV buyrate for the event was 280,000 which was the foundation.

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Fast forward to UFC 66, which featured the rematch between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. The UFC did more than 1 million pay-per-view buys. Hard to imagine that Liddell vs. Ortiz 1, at UFC 47, did one-tenth that number.

In 2007, the UFC took over as the world's No. 1 MMA organization by acquiring Pride Fighting Championships.

This doesn't mean that other MMA companies are ceding supremacy to the UFC. In Japan — a MMA hotbed — Dream is the leading company and has many notable stars.

Companies such as Strikeforce and Affliction have also tried to make their claim in the U.S.

Strikeforce purchased some of the assets of Pro Elite, whose EliteXC brand went out of business last year.

EliteXC is a good example of how difficult it is to compete with the UFC. EliteXC had broadcast TV deal and lots of marketing behind it. In less than a year after its first broadcast show it folded.

Affliction has heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko, widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but is the No. 3 MMA promotion in the country.

So why is the UFC No. 1? Smart TV deals help, but it's really the company's ability to capture talent and use them to replace fading stars.

If you think that sounds easy, just ask boxing fans about the heavyweight division.

Liddell, Ortiz and Ken Shamrock are done fighting for the UFC, but they've been replaced by competitors like Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva, and B.J. Penn.

MMA newcomer Brock Lesnar is the heavyweight champion and the three UFC cards he was on last year generated more than 2 million pay-per-view buys.

UFC 100 is next week with the UFC touting it as its greatest card ever. The company has come a long way in a 10-year period — from no-holds barred fighting to UFC notables appearing on Dr. Phil — thanks in large part to reality television.