Founded on January 2001, Zuffa is an American sports station that primarily focuses on mixed martial arts. After Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was purchased from the Semaphore Entertainment Group, Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III became the owners of Zuffa as part of the Station Casinos in Nevada, Las Vegas.
The CEO's name is Lorenzo Fertitta but Dana White runs the majority of the operations who owns 9% of the company. Many say that Zuffa is responsible for bolstering the awareness of UFC and mixed martial arts in America and having a more broad global outreach as well. Today, there are plenty of international popular events and there are a lot of regional competitions as well.
Zuffa is a word derived from Italian that simply means scuffle. Zuffa and the IFL (International Fight League) were not on good terms with each other as rival networks up until 2008. Zuffa sued IFL for using proprietary information illegally and IFL responded by stating that Zuffa was threatening IFL partners not to do work with them.
IFL was closed on July 31, 2008, not long after rumors of the purchase of the UFC. It was rumored that Zuffa purchased the IFL and ended the long standing beef.