viewers would therefore assume that he was associated with the new channel. Lee stated in court papers that: "The media description of this change of name, as well as comments made to me and my wife, confirmed what was obvious—that Spike TV referred to Spike Lee." Spike Jones Jr., son of comic musician Spike Jones, became a party to the lawsuit as part of Viacom's defense to protect the rights to his father's name. Most of the new programming would premiere on the originally-planned date as a soft launch; at this time, the TNN name and logo was downplayed heavily in favor of the "First Network for Men" tagline. The suit was settled on July 8, 2003, in announcing the settlement, Lee admitted that he did not believe that the channel intentionally tried to trade on his name. On July 28, 2003, it was announced that Spike TV would officially launch on August 11, 2003 — eight weeks later than initially scheduled. Its launch night programming featured two programs originally intended to air on June 16, including Party with Spike—a launch special filmed at the Playboy Mansion, and the premiere of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge—a comedic dub of the Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle. Klasky Csupo's Immigrants and the John Leguizamo-produced Zilch & Zero were originally slated to run on Spike TV's animation block, but these plans never materialized and the former was broadcast as a film instead. Later that year, Spike premiered the reality television parody The Joe Schmo Show, and launched the Spike Video Game Awards. On January 17, 2005, Spike TV premiered The Ultimate Fighter, a reality competition series following mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters training and competing to earn a contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The series helped to raise the profile of the promotion, and would run for 14 seasons, ending its run in 2011 only after Fox Sports acquired the U.S. television rights to UFC programming and events under a new, seven-year deal. In March 2005, Viacom announced that it would not renew its contract with WWE when it expired in September 2005. Spike's new president, Doug Herzog, stated that the network had planned to "expand its investments in original programming and new acquisitions for its core audience", including new scripted programming. The following month, it was announced that WWE Raw would return to USA Network. Spike subsequently reached a deal with