 Why has UFC moved to smaller locations over the course of its history?
UFC's flameout from national sensation to total irrelevance is a tragedy of American sports, a cautionary tale of prudishness, heavy-handed politics, and cultural myopia. UFC began in 1993 as a locker-room fantasy. Promoters built an octagonal chain-link cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles fights. UFC allowed, even promoted, all notions of bad sportsmanship: kicking a man when he's down, hitting him in the groin, choking. Four-hundred-pound men were sent into the Octagon to maul guys half their size. Soon, UFC was selling out huge arenas and drawing 300,000 pay-per-view subscribers for its quarterly competitions. My passion for ultimate fighting (which is also called "extreme" or "no-holds-barred" fighting) began when I saw the finals of UFC IV. UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting. Nursed on boxing and Hollywood, Americans imagine fights as choreography, a dance of elegant combinations, roundhouse kicks, clean knockouts. "UFC immediately debunked a lot of myths of fighting, of boxing, karate, kung fu. Almost all fights ended on the ground, one man mounting the other in missionary position, the pair of them wiggling mysteriously along the canvas for five, 10, even 30 minutes. The referee--yes, there was always a referee--stopped many bouts, and in most others, fighters "tapped out," surrendering to mild-looking but agonizing chokes and joint locks.
 Over time, popularity decreased enough that these are the only places fights can happen
 Over time, popularity decreased enough that these are the only places fights can happen  This way, UFC fits in with public perception driven by movies like Fight Club, which is more true to its roots  The fans are dedicated to their small local stadiums prefer to not have matches televised  It is now illegal to have UFC matches in large stadiums for safety reasons