There has been a lot of disinterest in UFC over the past couple of years in particular and it is always kind of strange to me. We have this sport that used to be the most electrifying sport that I could possibly watch but these days events come and go and normally I don't even know they are happening. When I hear about the cards after the fact I normally have the feeling of "glad I didn't bother with that."
But I was trying to think about exactly what has changed that made UFC so much less interesting than it used to be and I came up with a couple of what I think are pretty solid points.
grappling and wrestling is boring
If you can make heads or tails of the above image it kind of speaks volumes about how the sport has become less interesting over time. That dude, is looking at the clock and trying to spend as much time doing whatever TF that is in order to win the round on points.
A win is a win to a lot of people and wrestling and grappling is in fact a very effective path to victory. So effective in fact that an entire region of the world, Dagestan, became famous for producing the best pack of dudes in the world for winning bouts using these methods.
Yes it works, yes it is energy efficient, yes it gets you the W. It also is boring as fuck for the average viewer. There are probably some guys out there that are purists and are seriously into the sport that love this sort of thing, but for the most part it just isn't interesting to watch two guys have a 15-25 minute hugging contest to see who can be on top the most.
Joe Rogan lashed out at fans one day when the crowd started to boo and he got some backlash for this. He said "listen to all the casuals who don't understand MMA." Well Joe, the average person actually doesn't appreciate this sort of thing. It's wonderful that you do but the people who paid good money to go to these things want to be entertained and this simply isn't entertaining.
This isn't a new thing per se, one of the original Ultimate Fighting Champions was a man named Royce Gracie and he would fight guys much larger and stronger than he was and win.
His fights were also almost universally hated because they were all the same. He would let the opponent take him down and then hug and do kidney kicks from bottom position for basically the entire fight. Jeez it was lame.
This sort of thing has always been allowed but other than a person here are there these fighters don't end up becoming famous because it is lame. UFC has taken steps to try to prevent this but it just isn't enough. I would like to see the rule system drastically overhauled to eliminate this sort of tactic. Will it ever happen?
A genuine lack of star power
Try as they may the UFC just can't really seem to get a face to stick anymore and this is why they keep rounding back to Conor McGregor and the name Jon Jones pops up every now and then even though Jon has said he isn't going to do it anymore.
There just aren't any real stars in UFC right now, try as they may and this is likely caused by the fact that all of the popular fighters want, and likely deserve, much more money than they are getting offered. Recently, Sean Strickland was offered a pittance of $400,000 to defend his belt and while that would seriously change your life or mine, that is peanuts for someone that has championship gold. So the big names, the big personalities, they are constantly looking to go elsewhere and this brings us to the largest point about why UFC kind of sucks now.
Greed
UFC makes billions every year. Dana White could increase everyone's pay if he wanted to and people would stick around and everyone could be happy. But Dana only pretends to like MMA these days. What he really likes is money. Don't believe me? Well then why is UFC one of the lowest earnings to fighter pay organizations in the world?
Also, this greed has lead to an absolutely shitshow of advertising during all events and this was a major reason why I started first tuning out to televised events and later, to Pay per views as well. I get that they need to have commercials when something is on ESPN or something like that but when Pay Per Views, which were costing like $70 or so, are still filled with 2.5 hours of adverts and 1 hour of fighting, what the hell are we doing here?
I can't even bear to go to a sports bar to watch events with audio because we are just bombarded with never-ending adverts the entire time. They shove adverts into the middle of fights in a small window while the fight is going on. The sponsors are everywhere all over the ring and every fighter has to have a can of Monster Energy Drink in their hands during speeches. This is just stupid.
This is starting to be too long so I will wrap this up with one last, and quite important element of why UFC is boring.
The best fighters don't actually fight one another
Matches are made based on focus groups and social media presence, not on who the best and most deserving fighters are. Routinely guys are thrown up a weight division or down a weight division and they get to fight top guys on their very first day why? Because it will sell tickets. Or at least it did for a while.
If you have a big name and a good PR firm you can jump divisions, fight for that stupid BMF belt, or get any fight you want. When UFC decides they are going to push you to the top they intentionally give you easy fights to justify having some mouthy asshat fight for the belt even with a trash record.
Tai Tuivasa is a perfect example of this. He was a crowd favorite and got pushed to the top of the heavyweight division and was handed easy fights. The problem was, the guy friggin sucks and when he finally had to fight real fights against good opponents he got his ass handed to him.
Then when UFC uses you up they show you the door. Just ask Mark Hunt.
A lot of big names end up leaving with a sour taste in their mouth because of the greed of UFC. How long can they continue this? Are the fans ever going to gravitate towards another MMA promotion? I'd really like to see that happen. In the meantime I get some updates here and there about events that happen (there are way too many of them) and don't really pay much attention to the sport that used to be my favorite just a few years ago. I guess money really can ruin anything - or at least once the Americans get a hold of it and turn anything into a gigantic advertisement.
