January 8; For the first time in 25 years, no one garners 75 percent of the votes needed to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Phil Niekro comes closest with 68 percent.
March 16 – Christy Martin loses to Deirdre Gogarty by a decision in six rounds to retain her Women's boxing world title in front of a national TV audience. This fight is credited with making the general public aware of women's boxing.
Tiger Woods turns professional in September. In the last five regular tournaments of the year on the PGA Tour, his finishes were T5-T3-1-3-1, placing him among the tour's top 30 money-winners for the year and thereby qualifying him for the season-ending The Tour Championship. Woods named the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.
U.S. Amateur - Tiger Woods becomes the first golfer to win three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles. This was the sixth consecutive year in which he won a USGA championship, one short of Bobby Jones' record of seven.
The following is a list of major noteworthy MMA events during 1996 in chronological order.
Before 1997, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was considered the only major MMA organization in the world and featured much fewer rules then are used in modern MMA.
UFC rule change, timed rounds were changed to two 10-minute rounds for first two rounds of the tournament and a single 15-minute round in the tournament final and superfights. Introduction of judges. First MMA event to draw criticism from politicians.
First UFC event not to feature a tournament, however it was not the last. Closed fisted strikes to the head were banned for this event only, however this was not enforced.
Following this event the UFC was removed from airing events on numerous cable systems, including TCI cable.
