question:  What was likely the biggest impact of the lawsuits against the UFC?
context: Fight Clubbed Fight Club , a movie about a fictional organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp, has provoked more than its share of media hand-wringing, particularly diatribes about Hollywood's infatuation with violence and Faludi-esque ruminations about the emasculated American male. 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. Promoters built an octagonal chain-link cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles fights. Contestants would fight till "knockout, submission, doctor's intervention, or death." 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. They tuned in for bloodshed--"the damage," as fans like to call it. UFC fights could be horrifying. Then, before the ref can intervene, Abbott belts the unconscious Matua in the head, sending him into a fit, limbs quivering uncontrollably, blood spurting from his mouth. 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. It showed the reality of what works in an actual fight," says Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer . Instead of being carnivals of gore, UFC fights looked strangely like ... sex.
output:  The cost of the lawsuits drained the resources of the promoters so they didn't have the money for ads, fighters, and venues
options:  Being in a legal battle doesn't look good, and it made the fans distrust the organizations promoting UFC  The cost of the lawsuits drained the resources of the promoters so they didn't have the money for ads, fighters, and venues  The lawsuits took up so much time that fights were delayed long past when the fans were willing to wait until  The UFC's lawyers were tied up in TV network disputes, and were too busy to guarantee good contracts for the fighters