in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles," Cusson said. "We built it and took it apart and had everything labeled so we knew which parts went where when we put it back together."

The canvas was white. A freelance artist drew Ultiman, the muscled mascot in the center of the cage, from Harrison's design. (Ultiman would become such a blood-splattered biohazard during the show that he would have to be repainted for UFC II the following year.) The cage was reassembled over a half-day in Denver, where both Harrison and Cusson hoped it would stand up to the scrutiny of Pillot, SEG and a 400-pound sumo wrestler.

Debating the source of inspiration

One proposed idea saw a fighting surface with a circular cage and a rolling track for camera operators. OtherMMA promotions would later opt for a circle to avoid trademark infringement on the Octagon. Courtesy of Gregory W. Harrison

It would be easy enough to limit the possibilities of Octagon authorship to Harrison and Cusson, two men who worked closely together and who most agree were jointly responsible for creating a practical solution for SEG's many problems. But that would ignore the story of Greg Patschull, an enterprising martial artist who built an eight-sided cage fighting area a good seven months before Pillot ever phoned Harrison.

Patschull's event, which he dubbed "Cage of Rage," was held in February 1993 at the University of California Irvine. According to Patschull, it was originally intended to be a no-holds-barred event in the spirit of Japan's free-fighting Shooto series before he realized the