Fedor, Randy Couture and a T-shirt company that took on the UFC
Episode 5 of Dark Side of the Cage's second season follows Affliction from skull-and-wings shirts to a fight promotion that folded barely a year after its first show.
VICE TV
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 179,308 views a day, 65 times a normal first day on this channel (2,762).
Affliction: The Rise and Fall of the UFC's Favorite Brand | Dark Side of the Cage (Episode 5)
A longer VICE TV upload usually collects a few thousand views on its first day. The fifth episode of Dark Side of the Cage's new season passed 118,000 in its first eleven hours.
Its subject is Affliction, the clothing label whose skull-and-wings shirts were all over mixed martial arts in the late 2000s. The brand sponsored Randy Couture, Fedor Emelianenko and Georges St-Pierre. Then its relationship with the UFC fell apart, the promotion banned the brand, and founder Todd Beard and his partners answered by putting on fights of their own. The chapter titles tell the arc: the debut show, Affliction: Banned, Donald Trump joining the venture, Beard being pushed out of his own company. A main event of Fedor against Josh Barnett was set and then lost when Barnett failed a drug test, and Affliction: Trilogy was cancelled. The episode closes by asking who killed the promotion.
It follows the season's UFC 229 episode on Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor, as we reported here. This week VICE TV also cut two short clips from the Affliction story, one about the brand's dark beginning as a T-shirt label.
The comments read like a reunion of the era. Viewers trace a line from Tapout to Affliction and remember the shirts turning up on Pantera and Megadeth fans as often as on fighters. Some miss seeing Fedor fight and miss MMA in a ring, which Affliction used instead of a cage. Others reopen the old joke about the kind of man who wore the shirts, while a few defend them simply because they fit so well.
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What viewers say
Tapout walked so Affliction could run
@maddgeneralSee it on YouTubeAffliction also sponsored metal bands. Fedor and Pantera shirts, sold and sold.
@krazylarrySee it on YouTubeMan i miss fedor and mma in a ring
@EdsecondstocomplySee it on YouTube
6 more comments
I absolutely love this series ❤
@HanSoloxcsSee it on YouTubeAffliction shirts fit so well which is the reason I liked them so much. They fit like vintage shirts.
@Calvinmob681See it on YouTubeGreat show vice an everyone involved i enjoyed it ..i miss some of those old shirts I had lol
@BASSDADDY88See it on YouTubeS2 is so much better than S1. I loved Affliction when I was a kid. Both the appeal and the promotion . I never knew the whole thing was based on petty revenge.
@BooboosANDBloodshed_95See it on YouTubeman the 2000s were awesome
@kountrygunz2032See it on YouTubeThese docs are 🔥🔥
@codysuttoncomedySee it on YouTube
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- Channel
- VICE TV
- Subscribers
- 2,770,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,353,779
- Channel views, pace per day
- 124,501 (on a normal day: 260,349)
- Video published
- October 7, 2026
- Video views so far
- 118,020 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 179,308
The numbers
For a channel whose longer videos usually open quietly, this first half-day stands far apart.
💡 Test your knowledge
Randy Couture, one of Affliction's best-known sponsored fighters, fought under which nickname?
Couture, a multiple-time UFC champion at heavyweight and light heavyweight, was known throughout his career as "The Natural."
