The Top 10 Stories of the Past 10 Years

4. Mark Kerr (2001)

Sports from basketball to boxing have had the benefit of provocative documentaries made about their personalities: it's impossible to view collegiate athletics -- and the passing smoke of NBA potential -- quite the same after "Hoop Dreams," and it's difficult to fully understand Ali's cultural imprint without a viewing of "When We Were Kings."

It's far from perfect, but John Hyams' "Smashing Machine," which premiered on HBO in January 2001, was the first sternly critical look of what men do in order to compete at the highest levels of violent spectacle. Mark Kerr, who had been feared in Brazil, the U.S. and Japan for years, trusted Hyams enough to bare his soul for cameras. He shot in painkillers, collapsed in emotional agony after losses and eventually found himself near-comatose in a hospital bed, sobbing as friends begged him to stop polluting his body with under-the-counter courage. “Machine” was the first real proof this sport would make its share of monsters.

3. Bob Sapp (2002-2009)

Both Kimbo Slice and Brock Lesnar proved to have appeal far outside the normal fan circles, bringing in millions in revenue that might otherwise be lost to other outlets. (That UFC 100 pay-per-view just happened to be the cost of a video game -- and yes, some consumers need to make that choice.) And there is danger in omitting them from a list like this one. But in crunching hard numbers, no one -- not Lesnar, not Slice, not even the mighty Jose Canseco -- can compare to the elevation of Bob Sapp in Japan.

Sapp, who spun a well-worn story about being an NFL benchwarmer who once blacked out his windows out of depression, played to that country's bare instincts: They were absolutely in awe of a 375-pound giant who snarled at cameras, had shoulders like bowling balls, forearms like pins and an affected laugh -- Hah, Hah, HAH!" -- that tickled everyone in diapers to dorms.

Sapp's celebrity became exaggerated to the point that he couldn't cross the street without congesting traffic. He recorded albums. Hundreds of products bared his image: You could lose your paycheck on a Sapp slot machine, cry into your Sapp pillow, then take a Sapp multivitamin to snap out of it. Accounting for size and cultural context, it is not much of an exaggeration to call him the fifth, sixth and seventh Beatle.

At his height, 54 million viewers tuned in to watch Sapp exchange with the top-heavy Akebono in 2003. But that level of audience euphoria had a price: Publicity demands siphoned from Sapp training time, and later encounters with real, hungry professionals frequently ended with him getting hurt. Today, the sun is setting on that insane appeal. He's down to a few dozen people following him on the street.

2. The Death of Pride (2007)

There is something strictly mercenary about the absorption of the competition. Driving a rival company into bankruptcy is fine, but to seize their assets and control their future -- however short -- is a different kind of achievement.

In a war fought primarily on message boards, Zuffa’s UFC product in the first half of the decade was largely found lacking against the talent pool and spectacle of Dream Stage Entertainment’s Pride brand. 10,000-seat arenas in Vegas? Pride could pull 20,000 or 30,000. The best fighters in the world? Chuck Liddell was squashed by Quinton Jackson in an attempt at synergy. Observers delighted in painting a picture of the UFC as the hayseed product to Pride’s polished chrome.

While a good bit of Pride’s legacy has been lost to excessive nostalgia -- the promotion had its share of brutally boring, brutally stupid fights -- there was no mistaking it for anything other than a big-budget celebration of martial arts at the highest levels. But when newspapers began beating drums over alleged Yakuza involvement in the promotion, TV contracts evaporated; Zuffa, on solid financial footing thanks to “The Ultimate Fighter,” digested it whole.

No one is likely to miss some of Pride’s silliness -- I’m reminded of Wanderlei Silva fighting a 0-0 Kyokushin karate stylist -- but the demise of the foreign attraction was really the last gasp of MMA as a well-kept secret. The UFC was becoming as ubiquitous as the NFL, and if you didn’t like it, you were officially out of options.