Co-founder Bob Meyrowitz named to UFC Hall of Fame

One of the men who helped create the UFC will soon take his place in the company's Hall of Fame.

UFC co-creator Bob Meyrowitz was named to the Contributors Wing of the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, the company announced. He'll be inducted during the UFC Fan Expo on July 10 in Las Vegas.

Meyrowitz was an executive with the Semaphore Entertainment Group, a Hollywood company which specialized in pay-per-view television. He worked with fellow SEG exec Campbell McClaren, Art Davie, and Rorion Gracie to put on UFC 1 on Nov. 12, 1993 in Denver.

The one-night tournament, won by Royce Gracie, was initially meant to be a one-off event, but when the show did an unexpectedly large buy rate of 80,000, it became clear the UFC wasn't going away.

"Given what we saw, given the numbers, we knew we had something big on our hands," Meyrowitz told The MMA Hour in 2013. "We had to do it really right and had to work at this."

Meyrowitz's SEG ran the UFC until 2001, when, after a well-documented string of legal issues, the company was sold to current owners Zuffa.

Meyrowitz joins the legendary Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in the 2016 Hall class. He'll join the late Charles "Mask" Lewis and the late Jeff Blatnick in the Contributors branch.