Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
Fight Club , a movie about a fictional organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp, has provoked more than its share of media hand-wringing, particularly diatribes about Hollywood's infatuation with violence and Faludi-esque ruminations about the emasculated American male. Fight Club , however, has not sparked an iota of interest in a real organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp: the Ultimate Fighting Championship. UFC's flameout from national sensation to total irrelevance is a tragedy of American sports, a cautionary tale of prudishness, heavy-handed politics, and cultural myopia. UFC began in 1993 as a locker-room fantasy. What would happen if a kickboxer fought a wrestler? A karate champion fought a sumo champion? Promoters built an octagonal chain-link cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles fights. "There are no rules!" bragged an early press release. Contestants would fight till "knockout, submission, doctor's intervention, or death." UFC allowed, even promoted, all notions of bad sportsmanship: kicking a man when he's down, hitting him in the groin, choking. Four-hundred-pound men were sent into the Octagon to maul guys half their size. Only biting and eye-gouging were forbidden. UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting. Nursed on boxing and Hollywood, Americans imagine fights as choreography, a dance of elegant combinations, roundhouse kicks, clean knockouts. The UFC punctured this. Boxers floundered. Experts in striking martial arts such as karate and tae kwon do, who fancied themselves the world's greatest fighters, found themselves pretzeled by jujitsu masters, who pulled them to the ground and slowly choked or leg-locked them. "UFC immediately debunked a lot of myths of fighting, of boxing, karate, kung fu. It showed the reality of what works in an actual fight," says Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer . The UFC spawned a new breed of "mixed martial artists." World-class wrestlers learned to kickbox. Champion kickboxers learned to grapple. (The karate experts learned to stay home.) They became, without doubt, the best fighters in the world. (Click for more about the fighters.) Mike Tyson wouldn't last 30 seconds in an ultimate fighting match. When Olympic gold medal wrestler Kevin Jackson came to the UFC, a fighter named Frank Shamrock KO'd him with a submission hold in 16 seconds. Ultimate fighting schools began sprouting up all over the country, replacing the stylized gestures of the Eastern martial arts with techniques that actually work. UFC's promoters predicted that it would supplant boxing as America's martial art. Instead, it fell apart. The collapse began in 1996, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saw a UFC tape. McCain, a lifelong boxing fan, was horrified at the ground fighting, kicks, and head butts. It was "barbaric," he said. It was "not a sport." He sent letters to all 50 governors asking them to ban ultimate fighting. The outcry against "human cockfighting" became a crusade, and like many crusades, it was founded on misunderstanding. UFC fell victim to cultural determinism about what a fight is. In countries such as Brazil and Japan, where no-holds-barred fighting has a long history, it is popular and uncontroversial. But Americans adhere to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. A fight consists of an exchange of upper-body blows that halts when one fighter falls. When I tell people I'm an ultimate fighting fan, they invariably respond: "Don't people get killed all the time doing that?" But no one has ever been killed at the UFC--though boxers are killed every year. No one has even been seriously injured at the UFC. On the rare occasions when a bout has ended with a bloody knockout, the loser has always walked out of the ring. But logic has not served the UFC well. Where McCain led, a prudish nation followed. George Will opined against UFC. The American Medical Association recommended a ban. New York state outlawed ultimate fighting, as did other states. The Nevada Athletic Commission refused to sanction UFC bouts, barring the UFC from the lucrative casino market. (One public TV station refused a UFC sponsorship ad. The only other organization the station ever rejected was the Ku Klux Klan.) Lawsuits blocked or delayed UFC events all over the country, forcing the promoters to spend millions in legal fees. The UFC was exiled from mega-arenas to ever-smaller venues in ever more out-of-the-way states: Louisiana, Iowa, and Alabama. The match I attended in October 1997 was held in the parking lot of a small Mississippi casino. The cable TV industry struck the fatal blow. In early 1997, McCain became chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the cable industry. In April 1997, the president of the National Cable Television Association warned that UFC broadcasts could jeopardize the cable industry's influence in Washington. Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision Systems, Viewer's Choice, and other major operators stopped airing UFC events, saying they were too violent for children. Never mind that 1) UFC only aired on pay-per-view, so children could not see it unless their parents paid for it and 2) the same cable outfits carried boxing matches, R and NC-17 movies, and professional wrestling shows far more violent than UFC. The UFC's "addressable audience"--the potential number of PPV subscribers--shrank from 35 million at its peak to 7.5 million today. "It was a very cheap way for the cable companies to portray themselves as anti-violence. It did not cost them much and it made them look good in Washington," says Carol Klenfner, spokeswoman for UFC's parent company, SEG. The ultimate fighting industry did little to help its own cause. The UFC promoted itself less as a serious sport than as a circus of carnage. Its early ads emphasized extreme fighting's potential for death. UFC folks accused McCain, without any evidence, of opposing the sport as a favor to campaign contributors. Extreme fighting was tarnished when fighters from the other ultimate fighting operation, the now-defunct Battlecade, were arrested for violating Canadian prizefighting laws when they fought on an Indian reservation outside Montreal. In the past two years, an increasingly desperate UFC has been trying to assuage its critics. The competition, which had been gradually adding safety rules since the first fight, imposed even more. It institued rounds and a "10-point must" scoring system. It banned head butts and groin strikes. You can no longer kick a downed man or elbow someone in the back of the head. Fighters are required to wear thin martial arts gloves (a purely cosmetic change). The UFC imposed weight classes, ending the David-and-Goliath mismatches that made early fights so compelling. None of this soothed the cable operators, who have kept UFC off the air. The pay-per-view audience has plunged from 300,000 per show to 15,000. UFC can no longer afford its best fighters: Some are fighting overseas. Others, notably Ken Shamrock (Frank's brother), have become pro wrestlers. Fights have deteriorated. UFC is limping along, but it has been reduced to scheduling events in Japan and Brazil.

<question>:
What or who was a determining factor in prompting the beginning of UFC's decline in popularity?

<options>:
A The UFC's grotesque use of a chain-link fence surrounding the octagon.
B The UFC's lack of boxing gloves.
C Senator McCain.
D The cable TV industry.

<answer>:

C