Affliction started as a clothing company in 2005. Their clothing line is primarily inspired by a look of skull, crossbones, and death. It is heavily tied to the sport of Mixed Martial Arts as some of their shirts have the logos of the world’s top ranked fighters. Some of these fighters include Georges St. Pierre GSP, Quinton Jackson, Karo “The Heat” Parisyan, and Randy Couture. Randy Couture and his wife Kim even started a spin-off of Affliction, called Xtreme Couture.
Affliction: Banned MMA
Many fighters wore Affliction clothes in the UFC as they walked to their theme song and on to the ring. It was really popular among the fighters in the Ultimate Fight Championships UFC. But UFC banned the Affliction clothes in 2008 because they heard that Affliction was going to start becoming an MMA fight promoter and compete against UFC. This bitterness was why the first event from Affliction Entertainment was named Affliction: Banned.
This first event featured two big name fighters: Fedor Emelianenko and Tim Silvia. Emelianenko was the Pride FC Heavyweight Champion before Price FC was shut down (Read more about Pride FC in the other article). Tim Silvia was a former UFC Heavyweight Champion. The first main event generated a lot of buzz since these were two of the top Heavyweight MMA fighters in the world.
Using Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu techniques, Emelianenko submitted Silvia in only thirty-six seconds in the first round to win the title. The first Affliction event was held on July 19, 2008 with over 14,000 in attendance (exactly 14,832).
Affliction has promoted two Pay-Per-View events with the second one on January 24, 2009 featuring Emelianenko defending his title against Andrei Arlovski. This event was called Affliction: Day of Reckoning.
There is a scheduled event named Affliction: Trilogy on August 1, 2009 featuring a match-up between Fedor Emelianenko versus Josh Barnett. It will be held in the Honda Center in Anaheim, California just like the previous two events.
