Senator John McCain (R-AZ), was sent a tape of the first UFC events and immediately found it abhorrent. McCain himself led a campaign to ban Ultimate Fighting, calling it "human cockfighting", and sending letters to the governors of all fifty U.S. states asking them to ban the event.

As a result, the UFC was dropped from the major cable pay-per-view distributor Viewer's Choice, and individual cable carriers such as TCI Cable.