How it unfolded
There were no weight classes, no rounds and no judges. The only banned acts were biting and eye-gouging, and a fight continued until someone tapped or a corner threw in the towel. At 175 pounds, jiu-jitsu practitioner Royce Gracie mounted professional boxer Art Jimmerson in the first round without throwing a single strike and took a surrender, then submitted shoot-fighter Ken Shamrock with a rear-naked choke in under a minute in the second. His final opponent, Dutchman Gerard Gordeau, a striker trained in savate and karate, had already broken sumo wrestler Teila Tuli's teeth and forced Kevin Rosier's corner to throw in the towel, becoming the symbol of the night's brutality. Gracie immediately took him down off a clinch, took the back and locked in a rear-naked choke to force the tap in 1 minute 44 seconds. Combined, his three fights took less than five minutes inside the cage. The event sold roughly 86,000 pay-per-view buys, but it was the first night an empirical answer emerged to the question of which style would win.
Why it still matters
For the first time in public, it was proven that technique, and specifically ground grappling, could beat size and strength. This single night spread Brazilian jiu-jitsu around the world and prompted strikers everywhere to start learning submission defense. The now-universal assumption that every mixed martial artist must train grappling began here.