Mixed martial arts – commonly called “Ultimate Fighting” because of the popularity of Ultimate Fighting Championship – makes its Hilton Coliseum debut Saturday night as Fight Sport Global Network and Extreme Contact Fighting present “Coliseum Carnage 1.” For event promoter Troy Waller, it’s the culmination of hours of hard work.

“I think it’s going to be a pretty good night,” Waller said. “There’s been a lot of buzz about it and our TV and radio ads are hitting real hard this week.”

Based out of Fort Dodge, Waller started his MMA promoting career from scratch and has built up a successful circuit of shows around Iowa. Waller says Saturday’s event, which features 17 fights, is easily the biggest he’s ever promoted.

“We were looking for a place to do shows in Ames, not of [Hilton Coliseum’s] caliber, honestly, more like a 1,000 to 2,000 seat place and there’s really nothing down there,” Waller said. “I thought for sure we’d find something because we go to Okoboji and there’s like 20 different places.

“We started talking to Hilton and it’s really somewhat reasonable to [rent], not as bad as I thought it would be. I thought, ‘If we’re going to do it, let’s do it on a grand scale.'”

Saturday’s event represents the growing popularity of MMA throughout the state. Professional events are held almost biweekly across Iowa by a number of different promoters.

One roadblock Waller said he’s encountering as MMA’s popularity grows is uninformed government officials enacting new regulations for professional events that result in smaller professional events being too expensive to hold.

“Basically, what the state is trying to do is over-regulate MMA so much that it will make it too expensive to be able to do unless you put on huge events like we’re doing [Saturday].”

With MMA far removed from the unregulated mismatches of early Ultimate Fighting Championships, Waller is one of many event promoters around the country working to reverse the stigma they say current legislators still give current MMA, given its history and based on unregulated events.

“I’ve invited a bunch of legislators to come [this Saturday] to see what it’s all about because a lot of them don’t know,” Waller said. “They think you throw two guys in there and they beat the heck out of each other, like there’s no rules or something, and that’s not the case.”

Kevin Jackson, a former national champion wrestler at Iowa State and 1992 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling, is currently the freestyle wrestling coach for USA Wrestling and a former MMA competitor. Jackson agrees that MMA has come a long way since the early 1990s and sees MMA as another opportunity for amateur wrestlers to use their skills. In fact, the International Fight League and USA Wrestling recently formed a partnership to encourage further growth in each sport.

“[MMA] gives some of our elite wrestlers, even some of our wrestler that aren’t so elite, another opportunity to make a living and use their wrestling skills,” Jackson said.

While Jackson doesn’t necessarily encourage his athletes to forgo competing for higher accomplishments in wrestling, he admits it’s a growing trend among wrestlers to enter MMA competition for financial gain and further acceptance of the sport.

“I think with [MMA] being on free TV that the general public has gained general information and knowledge of the sport, whereas back in the day it was a situation where there was an ignorance that went along with MMA, because it was looked at as street fighting and barbaric.

“When I was growing up, the toughest man in the world was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Now it’s realized by the general public that the toughest man in the world is a guy that encompasses all those skills – the boxing, the wrestling, the grappling, the jiu-jitsu, the striking.”