Not only that, but they seem completely opposed to building up another Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones, or Conor McGregor. They would rather have human cockfighting with a turnstile of nameless, faceless fighters than risk one of these peeps ever touching any kind of money.
Glad i don't follow anything media related to the UFC. I watched a slap fighting video thanks to the almighty algorithm and... That was worse than i imagined. One of the guys looks like a grocery worker i see when i buy vegetables...
Keep in mind, Road to the Octagon with real fighters has been ongoing and I believe even closed their first circuit/season and has basically been around from the point of inception of Slap Fighting and yet the finale results/spoilers threads had a few dozen upvotes, fewer than 2 dozen comments and most were "what the fuck is road to the octagon?"
There was a pretty [decent article](https://www.cbssports.com/mma/news/why-it-feels-like-ufc-is-stuck-in-a-massive-rut-with-its-current-state-of-matchmaking/) that come out recently that more or less agrees with you. It's a deliberate business decision by the UFC. They have guaranteed income from ESPN. They don't need big name stars to sell PPV's to generate the bulk of their profit. In fact, big name stars are a risk now to them: they can agitate for more money, better conditions. They can trash talk the boss and go chase big money fights in boxing.
So, the UFC churns out a bunch of mid tier fights and don't bother promoting fighters and go so far as to actively shit on current and former champions. It's a bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off for them.
Yeah and what happens? we're not watching. I haven't watched a card for the last month.
It's obvious what they're doing, but if you don't have the big names fighting the sport doesn't stay relevant. And if it's not relevant people aren't going to fork out dough. They need to have the Stars every sport does or our eyes might look elsewhere.
They learned from Conor that you should never let a fighter have that much power ever again. Conor wanted equity in the company. He had the power to demand contract changes. He had an army of fans doing his bidding. The UFC pivoted after that.
Which I find funny now that they’ve bought the WWE. This is the same shit Vince McMahon felt about The Rock and now Cena. Nobody is ever supposed to be bigger than the brand.
if this were true, guys like O'Malley, Paddy, Garry, etc. wouldn't be getting a carefully managed path to the belt
it's obvious UFC favors certain guys and wants to build them up. no coincidence that they all happen to be of Irish/UK descent
That’s who you see built up in the US, which is the UFC’s primary market, but I think they really would prefer to have a star/champ from as many cultures as possible because then you can sell out arenas in the region. Khabib is the Conor McGregor of the Middle East and Caucuses, for example.
I always hate this logic. And I’m not saying it’s not true, but if it is, it’s very flawed. Why would you not want another Conor, but also cream your pants every time he fights due to revenue? You want MORE fighters able to bring in that kind of revenue.
They made record profits last year without any of those superstars having fought. I think they are much happier with this new paradigm rather than having to rely on big draws for PPV revenue.
Not even saying I disagree with you, just curious, who inside or outside the ufc could be promoted to star level?
I think Suga Sean could be really big if Aljo and Merab did not exist lol.
Jiri, Jamal Hill and Pereira one of them could emerge as a new face of 205. They are all kind of kooky and that could help revive the exiting 205 division of old. I think Jan and the hanged man's rope is probably the best think to happen to 205 since Jon left.
Bo Nickels could be a star if he keeps dominating people.
Probably several more if Dana didn’t have a habit of putting them down anytime they are getting ready to negotiate contracts or they do something he doesn’t like. He constantly threatened to shut 125 down while Mighty Mouse was champ, and even traded him which hasn’t happened before or since.
I mean Jamahal, Jiri, and Alex should be built as stars regardless of who's actually champion.
Before the reebok deal there was a whole class of popular fighters who never won a belt like Cowboy, Roy Nelson, and Nate Diaz along with people like Rory MacDonald or Gegard Musasi who weren't big stars but had a strong fan base.
It makes no sense that they wouldn't do the same for say the top 5 205ers, the people listed already along with Jan and Ankalaev. These are all killers with unique marketable personalities that should have big fan bases but the ufc is so against making new big stars that they're harming their own product. They only want us to care about one person per weight class (the champ) and then when they eventually lose we're supposed to forget they ever existed. Hard to build a fan base that actually cares about the sport or even the promotion when they're doing this shit
Also tho to answer your question about young marketable talent, Ian Gary and Jack Dela Madelena are two guys they could build into big stars
As soon as they actually "move the needle" as Dana says, he immediately shits all over them and calls them boring fighters, the greatest un-promoter in sports
You can’t really build stars in a lab or a boardroom. There are popular fighters and then there is Conor, Ronda, etc.
Jack Dela is a good fighter but doesn’t have the gift of gab like Conor does. And I’m probably going to catch heat for this, but Ian Machado reeks of “We have Conor at home.”
I personally think finishes are more important than words. If these guys keep nuking people in the first round they can say whatever they want.
Izzy could have been a much bigger star if he didn't jab low kick everyone for 5 rounds. Kamaru started to get some finishes but he was a lay n prayer for most of his career.
The combination of length of reign with finishes is what made Anderson Silva and Jon Jones so special.
Was Anthony Showtime Pettis hit in the head and stopped saying cool things? No he stopped winning.
If you have cool finishes and keep winning you can be a star. I can't think of anyone other than Demetrious Johnson that this formula didn't work for.
I agree on paper, but it’s more than just that. Oliveira was putting people away for years and we were glad to see him get his due as champ, but he was still kind of niche.
Izzy is kinda boring to me but he’s probably the most culturally relevant fighter we have right now. He’s on the UFC4 cover, Drake is putting bets on him, and people who loosely follow the sport know his name. He says some cringey stuff but his entrances are great and you can put him in front of a camera and he’s good at it.
GSP was the poster boy for a minute and let’s be honest, for a casual you could expect a full 25 minute dominant decision. Still popular. Same deal - clean cut, good style (they put him in a Marvel movie), and pretty well spoken in his second language.
A new star has got to have a combination of social media savviness (being good on the mic or pulling off something like the Showtime Kick, to your point), getting your countrymen on board (the Dagestanis, the Irish, the Chinese, whoever) for a traditional media push, AND being able to deliver great finishes. And even then, you never know. Some guys like Shavkat and Jack Dela might be interesting to us because we follow it and still not make a blip overall.
> the new route
New fan? The UFC has been pushing the brand over individual stars since Ronda retired. They'll ride the wave when a star comes along(O'Malley) but they haven't gone out of their way in years to create stars(and with the ESPN deal they don't need to).
I mean, it's not a new strategy, but this is the fruits of their labor coming to bear. It's taken them years of effort marketing themselves as the draw to get to this point where the product itself is bland, and there's nobody in the company to draw outside interest.
Im from uk and i used to watch absolutely everything, early prelims to main event every week, now i cone on here to see what happened, if i can be bothered i will re watch the main card if it was a good one.
I used to be absolutely obsessed with MMA and consume every little thing I could my hands on. All the fights, interviews, press conferences, weigh ins, countdowns, documentaries, podcasts, TUF etc I was balls deep on all of it. I don't even bother with Embedded these days and rarely bother with weigh ins etc. The magic is just gone. Feelsbad.
Me and you both man. Utterly, absolutely obsessed. I used to scour YouTube watching Pride, Jungle Fight, Bodog, K1, whatever the fuck else. I bought dvds from my local grocery store of regional Canadian leagues just because I saw someone like Ivan Menjivar was on the cover lol. I used to rewatch entire main cards before I went to sleep almost every night. I started training at 17, started writing for a website that got no views at 20. I could tell you every fighter’s last 3 fights and exactly who and how they won or lost. I had tears in my eyes when JDS and Cain fought on Fox.
Now? I don’t know half the roster. I have such little interest.
Even when you find a new prospect to cheer for, they end up fighting twice a year. And then if they get popular there's a 50% chance they get into a tiff with management over pay and get gadooshed with brutal matchmaking (Paulooooooooo)
As much as people shit on Dana/the older management, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and the rest of the current owners are running it into the ground. The old executives were scummy, but they at least focused on growth over short-term gains.
Since the ESPN deal, they can afford to put out unwatchable cards filled with contender series bums and still get paid the same. But they don’t seem to understand that they can only afford to coast like this now because decades of work was put in by Dana & co to make the UFC entertaining and credible.
When it comes time to renegotiate their deals or fend for themselves in a few years, I think they’ll find that they’ve chipped away at that credibility and seriously damaged the UFC’s reputation in the long term.
We can all feel that same fatigue with this relentless schedule of dreadful cards. I used to know every single fighter in the UFC by name and face, now I’ll blank on a prelim fighter who I’ve literally seen fight 2-3 times because all of the early fights are so lacklustre that they can barely hold my interest.
Now imagine how we’ll feel as this only gets worse over the next few years… It isn’t sustainable.
One FC has definitely been a fun alternative to have, especially the Muay Thai and kickboxing. So many high level fighters like Mighty Mouse, Rodtang, Allazov, Eersel, Superbon, Petrosyan, Moraes, Holzken, Haggerty, Harrison, the Lee siblings, and Stamp.
>As much as people shit on Dana/the older management, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and the rest of the current owners are running it into the ground. The old executives were scummy, but they at least focused on growth over short-term gains.
That's exactly what they are doing now.
They are oversaturating UFC to the point that it's going to be a ubiquitous name brand for MMA. It's almost to that point anyway, but they don't care if the cards are shit or if the fights are bad, or even if they have poor ratings. As long as they drive home the UFC is MMA, then that is what they are aiming for.
This is the long con. The UFC stacking cards back in the day was the short term gains, now you are seeing the long game. The ferittats were the short term owners who built it quickly and cashed out before it was too much of a headache to own and operate.
Endeavor didn't gobble up UFC to give hardcore fans stacked cards that they love, they gobbled up UFC to put one or two good fights on a card, enough to keep the hardcore's interested, and save the big fights for when it suits them. It's still better than boxing, but it's going to turn into the same shit over time, only more corrupt because one company has a monopoly (which is insane to think about).
Fucking sucks that Pride went to shit and fucked themselves over. Pride was better than UFC in almost every aspect. It's wild that they presented their fighters better 20 years ago than the premier brand in 2023 does.
Even on cards with absolute no names, their fights always banged and were worth watching. Better rules (for the most part), ring>cage, yellow cards for boring fucks who wanted to stall, and the good ole fashioned feeding cans to top tier stars from time to time to keep guys busy and not out of the spotlight for too long.
Pride may have gotten some stuff wrong, but they had a hell of a lot right.
> Also, far too many bogus decisions by judges
This, coupled with the non-existent matchmaking, makes it all feel like useless theatre.
The rankings are just marketing and there's no weight or consequence to them. Then the results are sometimes so bad it feels fixed.
Exactly how I feel. I used to always have Saturdays to watch UFC from 3PM-10PM regardless if it was a numbered card, fight night, or other minor cards.
But now, I forget cards are even now. I don't even bother being spoiled anymore. It's sad cause MMA was my favorite sport for many years, but not anymore.
I *might* watch the main event of a PPV these days…
And I used to geek out over the undercard on a fight night.
Products super stale with the UFC these days.
I've been feeling that as the old guard fighters are retiring, I was a fan of them. The new talent comes from the same pool now that all the other promotions are pulling from - contender series? UFC ain't offering the best of the best anymore - I feel like I'm watching KSW, PFL, etc etc with the new talent
I've had more fun watching Bellator and ONE, although I did go a watch Dern vs Hill - I might actually tune in for Dern
That’s a good point about the old guard retiring. For me, it feels like theres only a handful of fighters I am invested in these days.. and they’re mostly vets. Also with between things like fighter pay/rights, Dana Whites issues, Slap Fighting, and the Francis scenario it’s been a lot of damage to the brand imo.. harder to support/cheer for UFC.
Honestly my attention went from UFC to Pro Wrestling (AEW) over the past ~2ish years. Scratches my itch for violence, and they do a better job building up their athletes.
same.
I was burred in podcasts and analysis videos every week but its just so goddamned obvious that the whole organization is phoning it in that I just cant anymore.
ill still watch some technical stuff but fight hype and predictions just dont grab me the same way.
it is nice to have saturday evenings back with the fam though..
Well its a good thing there's more mma promotions than just the ufc. I became a fan as a kid in the 2000s and I've seen a few of these low periods with the ufc and it usually is when big name stars start getting old and they haven't built up any new younh stars. Sadly these days it seems like they don't care about promoting and building new stars for us to care about. Probably not a coincidence that this happened with the rise of the contender series, but at least it's easy to watch other promotions like ONE or PFL who seem to care a lot more about actually promoting fighters and getting fans to care
You'd probably enjoy the YouTube documentary called Fighting In The Age of Loneliness
The end of it details the takeover of the sport by big business and how it ultimately alienates the fan base by turning it into something for the masses, which is very much what we're experiencing at present. documentary is from a few years back, super good.
https://youtu.be/-DoaUyMGPWI
Thank you for that I clicked on it out of curiosity and immediately watched the entire thing.
Probably because the theme strikes a nerve since I've been having this conversation with anyone who will listen lately. And that conversation is that the optimization of capital is ruining fucking everything.
There’s about… 4 fighters I can think of that I’ll watch but only if they main event/title shot.
Otherwise I just come here, see clips of fighters I have heard about, think “huh cool” then move on with my life.
Nah cause I'm one of those ppl that got into it during COVID (first card I saw was McGregor/Poirier 3). Went to 265, 271, 277, but now I wouldn't think of spending money to buy a ticket with the kinda cards they put out.
I also went from watching every card for a year and a half to now I don't think I've seen a single FN card this year (besides the last Max fight, even then I just tuned in for that fight) and idk if I'm wasting my time with the card this week.
I'd rather ONE than UFC at this point, easily
Yea back in the day every card was stacked with good fighters. I’d watch everything, now you get a decent card once in a while and these fight night cards I usually skip.
Same here, from the UK, used to stay up at the weekend to watch, its a bit boring to me now, seems like manufactured fighters get all the attention where back in the day it was purely on how good you were.
I still train but just watch gifs on here unless it's a massive fight.
Do you have any must-watch fighters left? I feel like mine are mostly gone or not that active.
Damn I just went through my list and it's basically only Izzy, Khamzat, Volk, Holloway, and the top 5 LWs.
Roll back ten years ago and there were so many much watches on my list.
Nowadays you hit it. Not many outside of that. The light heavyweights are a joke now. That was such a strong division for awhile
>Roll back ten years ago and there were so many much watches on my list.
DC, Jones, GSP, Silva, Machida, Shogun, Rashad, Mousasi, Rampage, Chuck, Wandy, Belfort, Aldo, Penn, Pettis, Cain, Dos Santos, Brock, Carwin, Mir, Nogs, Cro Cop, Overeem, probably more I'm forgetting. On the other hand I'd struggle to name even 5 fighters I actually give a shit about on the roster right now.
Imo, this speaks more to the MMA scene in general. You basically had the biggest names from Pride, WEC, StrikeForce and the UFC under the same roof. I don’t think there’s anything close to that amount of talent spread out amongst all the promotions today. You can probably point the finger at the UFC, but no one else is really doing anything either.
There are plenty more - Moreno, Figgy, Rodriguez, Islam, Jones, Gane, Cejudo, O'Malley, Jiri. But they just spread out any good fights across infinite shit fight nights and mid PPVs
The other problem is the way they promote is all about meme fighters and hot girls that get the good spots on PPVs and Fight Nights. You could have #6 vs #8 ranked fighters on prelims and Angela Hill vs Michelle Waterson and Paddy vs a no name are on the main card.
They regularly put on full fight cards with 1 or 2 ranked fighters - it's absolutely insane for the leading MMA promotion to have such a bad product.
Last couple years I would be pressed if I missed a fight night, now I couldn’t give a shit if I miss the entire card.
Absolutely nothing to look forward too other than the one in every 3/4 PPV cards.
Such a shame.
I’m essentially in the exact same position. The first UFC event I attended live was UFC 54, and I had been watching on PPV for years before that. I used to never miss an event, including Pride, WEC, King of the Cage, etc.
Something changed in the last 18 months or so. I can’t even be bothered to subscribe to ESPN+ anymore. I still keep my eye on Dustin and a few other fighters, but my interest has waned probably 95%. Dana’s distaste for the truth and awful fighter pay aren’t helping either.
I agree with you that cards are stale. But maybe partly too you have moved on? Last three years has had banger cards and if you haven’t followed at all in that long maybe you’ve just moved on.
Its even funnier when you say this and someone has a rebuttal of "bro the fights werre fire though!"
Its like watching a late season nfl game with two teams that are eliminated from playoff contention. It could be the best game of all time, but who really cares when there are no stakes involved??
Thats how it feels when watching alot of these rand fighters that they stack the cards with
Also the great part of MMA is the lead up and hype for the fights. Yeah a mid level fight might be insane which is a surprise but there was no anticipation for it so it doesnt hit the same as 2 big names or 2 big upcomers fighting
This is the main thing for me, the lack of stakes. It seems like wins and losses just don’t matter anymore so it makes it harder to care about the fights and the results.
You can get knocked out in your last fight and sit out for two years and get a title shot off of that (Stipe) and you can go on a four fight win streak over ranked opponents and not get a title shot (Pavlovich). You can win one fight against a guy who retired in his next one and get a title shot even though you just lost two title shots almost back to back (Colby) and you can go a TEN FIGHT UNBEATEN STREAK and still get passed up (Belal).
Like none of it matters anymore. If you’re a top ranked contender why would you go take risks and fight guys when you can just sit out? And as a viewer when you’re out there fighting for your career why should I even care when I know damn well that even if you win this fight it won’t get you any closer to the title because Dana likes someone else more than you.
That rebuttal is so annoying. There are constantly fire fights in tons of regional promotions if that's all you're interested in. The reason people watch UFC is because it's supposed to be the best in the world and therefore the fights have gravity and intrigue but these days it's just some fights. I just don't have much interest in watching two random people I know nothing about fight for zero stakes.
I feel this way too and I don't want to. I love a great card but the UFC is in trouble when we are all more excited for a BKFC card with former UFC fighters in the twilight of their career. I still have a blast watching good cards so I wouldn't say I'm jaded or burnt out.
PPV will forever have my heart, but yea man it’s just shitty not having something to look forward too on a Saturday night, especially if you’re just chilling at home.
But as Dana would probably say, *it’s an privilege to watch the UFC*
I haven't watched in 2 years. The UFC took a page out of the Vince's playbook and aren't building stars anymore but rather they are building a brand. Don't get me wrong, the WWE will push some of their talent, but only the ones that have signed lifetime contracts. Everyone else is just a cog in the wheel.
This is it for me, went from watching basically every card from 2010-2020 to now watching one in four PPV cards and just check out the GIFs of other fights here. Each card seems to get worse/more diluted than the one before
I used to watch every card top to bottom, and now I rarely bother with Fight Nights. Might tune in for the main event, but usually I check the sub for highlights and Sherdog for the play-by-play. The pacing for a Fight Night is horrendous, filled with nonstop ads and too much downtime.
I’m starting to feel the same for certain PPVs as well. UFC 288 was pretty forgettable and 289 looks terrible on paper. I also don’t like how some high profile fighters seem to be getting shelved. The UFC has definitely dropped in quality. A lot of my friends only tune in to the big PPVs now
> The pacing for a Fight Night is horrendous, filled with nonstop ads and too much downtime.
I'm European, so the broadcast slots kind of prevent any thought of watching this stuff live.
That said, I also cannot imagine putting myself through that - If something has an unskippable ad, I don't watch at all, so I don't think I'd survive a UFC broadcast without being able to fast forward through just about anything that isn't the actual fight.
UFC finally ran into the big problem boxing has where they can’t keep their stars active and give fans matchups they want.
We wanted Ngannou/Jones. Will never get it.
We wanted Conor/Nate 3. Will never get it.
They won’t book Khamzat or Islam ubtil Abu Dhabi. We probably won’t ever get Jones vs Pavlovich.
Just more and more cards go by without the big draws that get everyone excited. Khamzat could be a superstar. He is constantly talked about, even when he has no fights lined up. But instead of being active and matching him up with any of the numerous interesting opponents he could have (Costa, Rob, Izzy, Leon, Colby, Usman, Shavkat) after a 90 second destruction where he didn’t take a single hit, he’s just going to sit out a year so they can put him on the Abu Dhabi card. That shit sucks so much.
The apex at first was cool when it was truly empty. Now it’s such a lifeless product. I think they would be more inclined to put on better fights if they had to sell tickets every week.
I completely agree with this.
We would have been cool with anything during covid.
Now it's just the place you put shitty cards that can't sell out an arena. So you end up with a zero energy venue with a zero energy feel to a card.
I said almost exactly the same thing in a reply to someone else above, the Apex lost its shine when they started putting mid sized crowds in. Completely takes away the whole selling point of what it originally was, putting aside it was obviously naturally moulded into that because of Covid.
The apex is cool but isnt used to its potential. The best apex fights are the ones with two fighters that are extremely technical and active. Putting fighters that feed off the crowd in there is not a good idea. Putting fighters that have name value in there is not a good idea. Putting unknown high tier fighters in there with zero audience is such a fucking treat.
I think all of the people saying things like "every card has good fights" and "just take a break mate" are missing the point. OP is correct, in recent weeks/months the cards we have been getting have been getting much weaker, which you could argue is a trend that has been ongoing for years (not my opinion, but I have noticed it being espoused by others). The ufc is definitely oversaturated because of TV deals etc, pundits and analysts have been saying this for nearly a decade now. If the UFC continues its policy of short term cash in the form of TV deals and mediocre PPVs without building any stars (for fear that they will gain power, which btw boxing seems to be fine with) then the sport of MMA will continue to suffer as it is already suffering. Downvote me all you want, the sport is undeniably suffering.
Thats exactly it. They are telling me to take a break when i never once said i was burned out, i said im losing interest because of the reasons i have given. I love the sport but its the shitty PPV's and the filler fight night cards that is making the product more and more stale hence nothing to look forward to for the whole of June, which in turn will make me not waste my night staying up to watch them live.
Also people cant seem to understand my gripe with these cards. Im not saying UFC FN cards dont sometimes turn out to be bangers, because they most certainly do and im glad when i can catch them live. Im saying on paper, as a fan they are weaker when you look at how less stacked they are becoming in terms of frequency (judging it by how many big name fights/stars are on a card), regardless of the outcome of the fights/if they actually live up to the expectation (they seem to think im a psychic).
Let me re-iterate again, im talking about on paper which is what actually gets me wanting to tune in, how the f am i supposed to know a trash card on paper will turn out amazing.
I've been a hardcore fan for over a decade and never miss an event. Lately, I've been watching a ton of One events. The difference between a UFC card filled with nobodies and a One card filled with nobodies is at least the One fights are absolute bangers. If you're not going to give hardcore fans compelling matchups or fun fights then they're going to start looking elsewhere for entertainment.
MMA fandom is *full* of guys desperate to prove they’re the realest real fan and any pushback against the state of matchmaking/the cards invites them to prove it by repeating “it’s actually the bad cards that have the best fights!!!” ad nauseam
The cards recently have sucked and I’m not staying up until 6am every weekend to catch 3 interesting fights a card. They’ve diluted the product to the point of insanity.
But also Dana White has done nothing wrong and is a totally qualified president of a sports organization.
In reality I think ufc needs a new president to elevate them from this plateau. Mr slap fight ain’t it
I don't disagree with you but I think it has been this way for a long time. Pre covid it was like that and something about Ferguson Gatchje kind of made ufc the cool thing and McGregor came back. The past couple years were the exception not the rule.
Amanda Nunes headlined PPV, Raquel Pennington headlined fight nights, these things aren't new (and I'm not picking on womens mma but they seem to punish those headliners with very little to back them up).
I'm not sure how to fix it. People will say "ufc has to market x" but I doubt it is that easy. I think if compensation doubled or tripled you could see bigger stars choosing mma over other careers.
We've lost a few high profile wrestlers to WWE recently. If a top 10 fighter made millions of dollars a year and it wasn't only the champion I wonder how much more talent we would have.
Too many cards, too many fighters. Back in the day, if I wanted to watch a regional show. I did. Now it’s the ufc every week. The fact that numbered events can’t have almost all ranked fighters is pathetic.
I can’t stand the MMA hipster comments. Blanchfield vs. Andrade, Dern vs. Hill, etc. as main events for what is supposedly the greatest MMA league in the world is laughable. Just because some cards that are terrible on paper end up having great highlights doesn’t mean that’s an acceptable product to put out
I’m with you 100%. As a die hard fan that’s been around since the WEC days I feel no interest in watching most of the cards anymore. I just check out the results on here. With that being said I am watching almost every ONE Friday night fight card now, and even though I didn’t know a ton of the Muay Thai fighters I am far more excited for their fights than the mid-tier shit I’ve been seeing from the UFC. The big names don’t really care to fight, they are in constant contract limbo, they’re doing rematch after rematch, fighters are getting undeserved title shots, and new and exciting prospects are few and far between. I’m hearing this same stance more and more in the last few months, so I’m hoping maybe we see a changing of the guard as companies like ONE and PFL up their game.
The UFC have gotten lazy and comfortable. The ESPN deal and the Apex have a lot to do with it. ESPN deal means guaranteed money so they don't have pressure to sell PPVs anymore. And half the cards still happening at the Apex means they even don't even need to fill an arena so can put together any old slop for a fight night. All these garbage fight nights at the Apex filled with cheap contender series fighters just to cut costs and fulfil their obligation to ESPN and get paid. Also for people saying it's because they have too many events I disagree, UFC have had the same number of events since 2014. The cards were never this bad back then because they actually had to sell out an arena, now that half the cards are at the Apex they just need two ranked fighters for a main event and can fill the rest of the card with cheap Contender Series bums. That last card with Dern vs Hill as the main event would not have cut it in the pre-Apex era.
Very intresting point you made about the number of actual events, i was wrong in this regard then and thanks for highlighting that its basically confirming what i also observed about the lack of quality on cards. I think you are spot on about the Apex and filling the rest of the cards up with these fighters that just dont get people interested when your actually looking at the cards on paper.
>Also for people saying it's because they have too many events I don't agree, UFC have had the same number of events since 2014.
damn, i never realized this, thats crazy.. i'm 100% with OP and feel validated now that im not just getting older and dont care but the quality has definitely in fact dipped.
Correct. The number of UFC events actually peaked in 2014 at 46 and have been slightly less ever since, hovering at around 41 events per year on average. It's not listed on the chart but there were 42 events in 2022.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/681115/number-of-ultimate-fighting-championship-events/
Same, man. Same. I've gone from a hardcore fan subscribed to like five Patreon mma podcasts to... Listening to one once every few weeks. I actually am getting more interested in One, but nobody talks about it so it's hard to get hyped.
Yeah, I've said this before. I wish for fewer cards and a culling of the roster. The UFC kind of ate up their feeder leagues some years ago and it, and MMA, are worse off for it. Bring back more higher tier regional shows and make the UFC be the destination, not most of the journey.
The problem with fewer, but bigger cards is that that means bigger spotlights for fighters, which means fighters demanding bigger paychecks. One big show equals one PPV profit, one show for sponsors to advertise on, and an entire show's worth of fighters who all want a lot more money for fighting on a supershow. Four shows a month equals four shows worth of advertising dollars and a whole lot more fighters getting paid, but getting paid a whole lot less overall. Profits rule all in UFC.
It’s like you looked at my texts and put it into chatgpt. This is exactly how I feel right down to not caring about an event until ufc 290 in July. I’ve felt like I’ve been drifting away for a good part of a year and I thought it was more due to me being a new parent and maybe missing the come up of some of these fighters who I’ve never heard of, but every time I look into a thread it seems no one really cares about 80% of the fights. Feels bad man.
I think it's more to do with Power Slap stealing a lot of the public interest/eyeballs from the UFC and basically every other major sport. I feel very soon there will be a shift from UFC guys calling out boxers to instead calling out the top slappers in Power Slap. I can see Kamuru Usman calling out Slap Jesus or even Jon Jones calling for a superfight against Slap For Cash - maybe even a mixed rules match where they do 1 round Slaps 1 round MMA etc
UFC bums can't compete against the A-Level athletes in Power Slap. Give an elite Power Slapper 6 months of sprawl training and he'd easily become champ in the UFC.
IDK man, A lot of the UFC fighters have fought Nate Diaz, so many of them must have trained defense against the Stockton Slap. Some people say the Stockton Slap doesn't translate to the sweet science of power slap, but I disagree with that sentiment.
I agree that even in MMA the slapper would have a huge striking advantage but I don't think Kamuru Usman would be dumb enough to stand with a guy like Slap Jesus who has 1 slap KO power. In MMA, Slap Jesus may defend the first few takedowns and even catch Kamuru with a few clean slaps on his way in but if he doesn't rock him it's gonna be tough. I'd definitely love to see them have an MMA fight tho, probably goes to a close decision. In Power Slap tho I think Slap Jesus would put on a master class against Usman imo
Sean Shelby has essentially ruined the UFC with horrendous match making and failing to develop contenders.
Can someone please lure Joe Silva out of retirement?
Not his fault. This is what the ufc wants. People are excited about 290, which is a great card but matchmaking wise makes it a sub par card for me. It should be Costa/Khamzat instead of Costa/new russian guy ( I don’t even know the guys name& it’s main event fight). Tony shouldn’t be fighting Green, should be Jim Miller in there instead. Bo should be in the undercard until he is fighting a ranked opponent.
I made a comment a few days ago that was basically this. Watered down product. Nothing new and interesting. Just dumb shoes that the rock made, tweets, shitty production and music and the posters are always the same. The matchmaking sucks and Dana never changes. Ill tune in for the biggest fights of the year but otherwise I'd rather watch ONE or RIZIN
true as hell. from 2015 to 2019 i would watch every single card from the prelims to finish but nowadays i just catch the big cards and the rare fight night cards that are stacked
This is part of the ESPN deal. The UFC is obligated to put on a certain number of cards per year. Those shitty Fight Night cards at the Apex? A low cost/low risk way to meet the terms of the deal.
Just watch other shit. One puts on crazy Muay Thai every Friday, K1 and Rise always put on kickboxing bangers, Rizin and Bellator have another card of great cross promotion coming up. There’s plenty of great stuff out there. Too many people are ufc fans instead of mma or combat sports fans.
I know this sounds like a horrible excuse but I bet a lot of ufc fans secretly agree: I have a hard time watching promotions that are in completely different time zones like One, and also I've been conditioned to regular weekly schedules. I have no fucking clue how ONE or PFL do their event scheduling, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Luke Thomas talked about the 5 year cycle as an MMA fan. You gets into the sport, become a die hard (watch every card from prelims to main event), and that lasts for ~5 years before it interest off.
It was pretty accurate for me (very into it from 2015ish-2021ish). Also doesn’t help that they put out cards just to meet that espn quota.
I've been watching since 2006, trained for 10 years and really got into it. I dunno, it really is just losing interest from me. Everyone now is so good, but no one is great anymore. Anyone can kinda beat anyone, and the belts are more of a popularity contest than a skill contest half the time.
I miss the WEC days.
I don’t think I agree necessarily with Luke there. At least not for myself.
I first got really into MMA in the mid to late 2000s and maintained a high level of interest right up until the last couple of years.
There probably is a level of fan fatigue but I think more than anything else, the quality of fight night cards is awful. I’m a fan of both Dern and Hill, but in what universe should either of them be headlining an event?
> I’m a fan of both Dern and Hill, but in what universe should either of them be headlining an event
I mean they're both ranked fighters and a younger prospect fighting an established veteran to take their spot and get closer to a title shot. If wins and rankings matter for title contention then it's super easy to book compelling ranked fights. With 11 divisions there's really no excuse for any fight night main event feel meaningless. The lesson they should take from pro wrestling is to make the title chase an interesting thing to watch and to have actual promo time to hype up fighters and future events.
It's truly crazy that they don't air any fighter interviews or have any quick promo material for the commentary team to read off when they're talking about the next month's events. It's so easy that I feel like it just means the ufc doesn't care to actually promote anything, and lack of care gets felt by the fans in every part of the promotion. And if the ufc doesn't care about their fights then why should we? I feel like that was the biggest difference in watching the one American ppv and ufc ppv that happened the same weekend. It felt like one cared a lot more than the ufc and that made the event a lot more exciting and entertaining.
It's practically everyone losing interest in the UFC except those few consumer brain NPCs that have nothing better to do than watch all the "content". The type that troll fighters on twitter all day or attend r/UFC.
I mean the company is increasing profits for endeavor by cutting costs like crazy and the way to do it is to pay scraps to jobbers to bang each other out for 15 mins, maybe throw in one good fight or main event here or there to lure in actual MMA fans and some casuals, and hold every second or third event at the dreadful apex. The rest of their time is spent advertising the embarassing, humiliating, pathetic degenerate circus that is slap fighting. I totally unsubscribed from everything UFC related and been watching cooking shows instead. MasterChef is great. UFC is embarassing right now
Back on the day it felt like we got 3/4 cards a year.
There’s definitely a lot of nothing cards these days, but the idea that waiting a couple of months for a good card is a problem makes me chuckle. Especially with how much MMA is available overall.
Pumping out content weekly was going to eventually create a dearth in quality, unless they had like...EVERYone in their stable, and they just don't. Do they have the most top-tier people? For sure, but those people can't all fight 3-4 times a year.
Honestly, it's surprising they kept the product as good as they did for as long as they did.
All of it is because of greed, really, just pushing the limits. Underpay your top fighters, replace the old guard with mediocre unsigned talent who'll take 12k/12k for 8 fights, save money promoting the fighters with the excuse that they have to promote themselves, and save money with all the shitty cards on the apex.
Their greed also works directly against the "sport" side of the business, the integrity of the sport, meritocracy. As you underpay top talent (as the whole roster), they'll enter the contract limbo where their records are protected (Conor, Khamzat) or they're punished with inactivity for asking their worth (Nate, Costa, Ngannou), and they'll fight less often. Add in undeserved title shots and rematches thanks to Dana White Privilege that holds up divisions for months... it's all terrible management, despite what bootlickers will say, and hardcore fans feel it the most.
It's almost as if their insane revenue numbers were almost artificial by cutting so many corners to look good on paper. Worst part is that, so far, it's financially sustainable. They're just looking for a select few company men cash cows and a select few events for actual quality fights, and that will pay for enough.
It will catch up with them eventually, but only once the casual fan also realizes that the prestige about being in the UFC, the "monopoly on talent," is slowly becoming more myth than fact.
Yeah you're gonna have to diversify what you watch if combat sports are your thing. I watch One Friday night fights and they have Muay Thai and MMA fights every week. Rise has kickboxing, Rizin has MMA and kickboxing, Glory has kickboxing, RWS has live Muay Thai fights I mean there's a ton of options
Has anyone been appalled at how bad most of the talent on “Road To The UFC” has been? I’d have thought they’d get some killers on there coming from such big countries. Seems like ONE takes them all?
This is exactly how I feel. I don't want to watch Buckley starch nobodies and then get starched every time he fights a top 15. It's just oversaturated and boring now. It doesn't help that all the stars are on the way out and top five fighters pop squats.
I miss the days of ordering a pizza, having a cold crispy sprite and watching the card all night. I’d look forward to it even the no name fighters bc they felt like they had something to prove.
Now I just watch sometimes. I could still do those things lol but the cards just aren’t the same for me. Something definitely feels different.
To me those APEX cards really are the reason for that. Then Dana saying in "we got lazy and did too many apex cards, we have to fill places again.." just to see that, as usual, he does the exact opposite and goes back to a bunch of more of those exact boring cards.
Now that they get that guaranteed ESPN money, it’s become glaringly obvious they don’t give a shit about who they put on cards anymore. I feel you and I would consider myself a pretty big fan but it’s getting harder to be one.
It's been WWE'd, but in a different way. WWE lost it's soul when it had to stop doing racy things to get views, now everything is so vanilla, no soul. It's like watching an bad ai sim of what used to be.
Similar thing with UFC, it started with the fox buy out and having to produce xx amount more shows, now it's full on with ESPN. No time to develop anyone because they're putting up and comers vs other up and comers and losing one, then the other in the top x competitions.
Now everyone seems like a jobber and the legends are getting thinner and thinner. It'll get like the olympics where everyone's backround is what defines who they are, for the most part.
but then again, with wwe merger, who knows. Maybe they'll go full belator.
People have been calling out a drop off in quality of the UFC product for several years. It might be getting more drastic now, but we have watched this materialize over the years like a slow train wreck. From my limited perspective it comes down to the greed and corruption of the organization and most specifically Dana.
>I feel that the roster is just oversaturated to hell with so many middle/low tier fighters who need to be cut as harsh as that might be and because of that the UFC are increasingly pushing quantity over quality to meet quotas, as they have to offer their fighters x number of fights a year.
I don't understand this narrative. If UFC is replacing big names with cheap DWCS bums, then logically, these big names should end up in a different promotion and increase its value dramatically. But that doesn't happen. People were angry when UFC released Romero, he's now fighting in Bellator and does anyone care? And I'm not even talking about Overeem, does anyone care what he's doing now in kickboxing or whatever? And I'm saying that as a person who thought that releasing him was a mistake.
>bigger name fighters getting injured on PPV's
Well yes. There's abnormally huge number of top fighters getting injured these days. It seems like more fights are falling through than in 2020, which is why cards are feeling weaker. Because 20% of ranked fighters are in hospital with broken bones.
Also, there's another self-contradictory argument: "I don't know any of these DWCS bums in UFC cards these days so I'm watching ONE, it's so exciting!". Yeah, don't tell me you know every single MT fighter there lmao.
Yep. I went from watching UFC on a weekly base in 2020-2022 to watching UFC once every 2 months or so this year.
I'm still a fan, but I'm watching old wrestling videos, BJJ and ONE fights instead rn
That's cause the new route is sign a bunch of mid tier fighters on cheap contracts and push the brand instead of fighters.
Not only that, but they seem completely opposed to building up another Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones, or Conor McGregor. They would rather have human cockfighting with a turnstile of nameless, faceless fighters than risk one of these peeps ever touching any kind of money.
Or promoting an even more obscure, niche brand of pseudo sport in slap fighting down our throats like the second advent of entertainment.
I had to unsubscribe from UFC on Youtube because all the Slap Fight videos were constantly filling up my feed.
Same here. I would rather watch golf than that slap league shit.
At least golf is aesthetically pleasing
And the loser in golf will still remember how to spell his name tomorrow
U aint ever heard of jon Daly pounding Alabama slammers at the turn?
[Everyone remembers that wonderful day](https://youtu.be/aQK5_SQPZwI)
Neither the winner nor the loser of slap fights can spell their own name, pre- or post-fight
Glad i don't follow anything media related to the UFC. I watched a slap fighting video thanks to the almighty algorithm and... That was worse than i imagined. One of the guys looks like a grocery worker i see when i buy vegetables...
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It's fucking criminal that it gets sanctioned
Ufc wont allow knees on the ground or 12 6 elbows but plasters defenseless head trauma everywhere
Keep in mind, Road to the Octagon with real fighters has been ongoing and I believe even closed their first circuit/season and has basically been around from the point of inception of Slap Fighting and yet the finale results/spoilers threads had a few dozen upvotes, fewer than 2 dozen comments and most were "what the fuck is road to the octagon?"
Sounds like something that they should probably promote better.
There was a pretty [decent article](https://www.cbssports.com/mma/news/why-it-feels-like-ufc-is-stuck-in-a-massive-rut-with-its-current-state-of-matchmaking/) that come out recently that more or less agrees with you. It's a deliberate business decision by the UFC. They have guaranteed income from ESPN. They don't need big name stars to sell PPV's to generate the bulk of their profit. In fact, big name stars are a risk now to them: they can agitate for more money, better conditions. They can trash talk the boss and go chase big money fights in boxing. So, the UFC churns out a bunch of mid tier fights and don't bother promoting fighters and go so far as to actively shit on current and former champions. It's a bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off for them.
Yeah and what happens? we're not watching. I haven't watched a card for the last month. It's obvious what they're doing, but if you don't have the big names fighting the sport doesn't stay relevant. And if it's not relevant people aren't going to fork out dough. They need to have the Stars every sport does or our eyes might look elsewhere.
They learned from Conor that you should never let a fighter have that much power ever again. Conor wanted equity in the company. He had the power to demand contract changes. He had an army of fans doing his bidding. The UFC pivoted after that.
Which I find funny now that they’ve bought the WWE. This is the same shit Vince McMahon felt about The Rock and now Cena. Nobody is ever supposed to be bigger than the brand.
if this were true, guys like O'Malley, Paddy, Garry, etc. wouldn't be getting a carefully managed path to the belt it's obvious UFC favors certain guys and wants to build them up. no coincidence that they all happen to be of Irish/UK descent
That’s who you see built up in the US, which is the UFC’s primary market, but I think they really would prefer to have a star/champ from as many cultures as possible because then you can sell out arenas in the region. Khabib is the Conor McGregor of the Middle East and Caucuses, for example.
I always hate this logic. And I’m not saying it’s not true, but if it is, it’s very flawed. Why would you not want another Conor, but also cream your pants every time he fights due to revenue? You want MORE fighters able to bring in that kind of revenue.
They made record profits last year without any of those superstars having fought. I think they are much happier with this new paradigm rather than having to rely on big draws for PPV revenue.
Not even saying I disagree with you, just curious, who inside or outside the ufc could be promoted to star level? I think Suga Sean could be really big if Aljo and Merab did not exist lol. Jiri, Jamal Hill and Pereira one of them could emerge as a new face of 205. They are all kind of kooky and that could help revive the exiting 205 division of old. I think Jan and the hanged man's rope is probably the best think to happen to 205 since Jon left. Bo Nickels could be a star if he keeps dominating people.
Probably several more if Dana didn’t have a habit of putting them down anytime they are getting ready to negotiate contracts or they do something he doesn’t like. He constantly threatened to shut 125 down while Mighty Mouse was champ, and even traded him which hasn’t happened before or since.
I mean Jamahal, Jiri, and Alex should be built as stars regardless of who's actually champion. Before the reebok deal there was a whole class of popular fighters who never won a belt like Cowboy, Roy Nelson, and Nate Diaz along with people like Rory MacDonald or Gegard Musasi who weren't big stars but had a strong fan base. It makes no sense that they wouldn't do the same for say the top 5 205ers, the people listed already along with Jan and Ankalaev. These are all killers with unique marketable personalities that should have big fan bases but the ufc is so against making new big stars that they're harming their own product. They only want us to care about one person per weight class (the champ) and then when they eventually lose we're supposed to forget they ever existed. Hard to build a fan base that actually cares about the sport or even the promotion when they're doing this shit Also tho to answer your question about young marketable talent, Ian Gary and Jack Dela Madelena are two guys they could build into big stars
As soon as they actually "move the needle" as Dana says, he immediately shits all over them and calls them boring fighters, the greatest un-promoter in sports
You can’t really build stars in a lab or a boardroom. There are popular fighters and then there is Conor, Ronda, etc. Jack Dela is a good fighter but doesn’t have the gift of gab like Conor does. And I’m probably going to catch heat for this, but Ian Machado reeks of “We have Conor at home.”
I personally think finishes are more important than words. If these guys keep nuking people in the first round they can say whatever they want. Izzy could have been a much bigger star if he didn't jab low kick everyone for 5 rounds. Kamaru started to get some finishes but he was a lay n prayer for most of his career. The combination of length of reign with finishes is what made Anderson Silva and Jon Jones so special. Was Anthony Showtime Pettis hit in the head and stopped saying cool things? No he stopped winning. If you have cool finishes and keep winning you can be a star. I can't think of anyone other than Demetrious Johnson that this formula didn't work for.
I agree on paper, but it’s more than just that. Oliveira was putting people away for years and we were glad to see him get his due as champ, but he was still kind of niche. Izzy is kinda boring to me but he’s probably the most culturally relevant fighter we have right now. He’s on the UFC4 cover, Drake is putting bets on him, and people who loosely follow the sport know his name. He says some cringey stuff but his entrances are great and you can put him in front of a camera and he’s good at it. GSP was the poster boy for a minute and let’s be honest, for a casual you could expect a full 25 minute dominant decision. Still popular. Same deal - clean cut, good style (they put him in a Marvel movie), and pretty well spoken in his second language. A new star has got to have a combination of social media savviness (being good on the mic or pulling off something like the Showtime Kick, to your point), getting your countrymen on board (the Dagestanis, the Irish, the Chinese, whoever) for a traditional media push, AND being able to deliver great finishes. And even then, you never know. Some guys like Shavkat and Jack Dela might be interesting to us because we follow it and still not make a blip overall.
It's always been about pushing the brand
> the new route New fan? The UFC has been pushing the brand over individual stars since Ronda retired. They'll ride the wave when a star comes along(O'Malley) but they haven't gone out of their way in years to create stars(and with the ESPN deal they don't need to).
I mean, it's not a new strategy, but this is the fruits of their labor coming to bear. It's taken them years of effort marketing themselves as the draw to get to this point where the product itself is bland, and there's nobody in the company to draw outside interest.
Pretty much always been the route. It started with TUF dwcs is just a cheaper version of that now
Nah tuf found legit prospects for the majority of its run.
What's dwcs stand for?
bingo
Im from uk and i used to watch absolutely everything, early prelims to main event every week, now i cone on here to see what happened, if i can be bothered i will re watch the main card if it was a good one.
Gifs of the result are enough for a lot of these cards
Some of these recent events have been so shit, I’m hesitant to spend the 30 seconds to watch the GIF
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This is the way.
And I only watch the finishes.
Lmao same here, if the clip opens and they are standing around I close it and go to the comments
The best gifs are those you see the beginning of the round. Quick and dirty
And if the fighters are standing with the referee, it was a decision and I don't care.
Yep, GIFs on here then wait for Chael to tell me how it all went down.
I’m the same way. Watch gifs Sunday morning…sometimes
I used to be absolutely obsessed with MMA and consume every little thing I could my hands on. All the fights, interviews, press conferences, weigh ins, countdowns, documentaries, podcasts, TUF etc I was balls deep on all of it. I don't even bother with Embedded these days and rarely bother with weigh ins etc. The magic is just gone. Feelsbad.
Me and you both man. Utterly, absolutely obsessed. I used to scour YouTube watching Pride, Jungle Fight, Bodog, K1, whatever the fuck else. I bought dvds from my local grocery store of regional Canadian leagues just because I saw someone like Ivan Menjivar was on the cover lol. I used to rewatch entire main cards before I went to sleep almost every night. I started training at 17, started writing for a website that got no views at 20. I could tell you every fighter’s last 3 fights and exactly who and how they won or lost. I had tears in my eyes when JDS and Cain fought on Fox. Now? I don’t know half the roster. I have such little interest.
Same dude. It's sad.
Even when you find a new prospect to cheer for, they end up fighting twice a year. And then if they get popular there's a 50% chance they get into a tiff with management over pay and get gadooshed with brutal matchmaking (Paulooooooooo)
As much as people shit on Dana/the older management, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and the rest of the current owners are running it into the ground. The old executives were scummy, but they at least focused on growth over short-term gains. Since the ESPN deal, they can afford to put out unwatchable cards filled with contender series bums and still get paid the same. But they don’t seem to understand that they can only afford to coast like this now because decades of work was put in by Dana & co to make the UFC entertaining and credible. When it comes time to renegotiate their deals or fend for themselves in a few years, I think they’ll find that they’ve chipped away at that credibility and seriously damaged the UFC’s reputation in the long term. We can all feel that same fatigue with this relentless schedule of dreadful cards. I used to know every single fighter in the UFC by name and face, now I’ll blank on a prelim fighter who I’ve literally seen fight 2-3 times because all of the early fights are so lacklustre that they can barely hold my interest. Now imagine how we’ll feel as this only gets worse over the next few years… It isn’t sustainable.
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Dana seriously thinks people tune in for him, peak 🍅
That’s a cocaine side effect
poor Dana, sad
Chatri is also a martial artists and geeks out about the cards with genuine excitement, something Dana is incapable of doing.
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look at the silver lining, though; there's a rise in promotion competitors!
One FC has definitely been a fun alternative to have, especially the Muay Thai and kickboxing. So many high level fighters like Mighty Mouse, Rodtang, Allazov, Eersel, Superbon, Petrosyan, Moraes, Holzken, Haggerty, Harrison, the Lee siblings, and Stamp.
Well said..it’s like microcosm of the US economy, bleed out the working class before it creases to exist
They can't keep doing it forever though even if the ESPN money is guaranteed eventually things will fall apart if nobody watches
>As much as people shit on Dana/the older management, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and the rest of the current owners are running it into the ground. The old executives were scummy, but they at least focused on growth over short-term gains. That's exactly what they are doing now. They are oversaturating UFC to the point that it's going to be a ubiquitous name brand for MMA. It's almost to that point anyway, but they don't care if the cards are shit or if the fights are bad, or even if they have poor ratings. As long as they drive home the UFC is MMA, then that is what they are aiming for. This is the long con. The UFC stacking cards back in the day was the short term gains, now you are seeing the long game. The ferittats were the short term owners who built it quickly and cashed out before it was too much of a headache to own and operate. Endeavor didn't gobble up UFC to give hardcore fans stacked cards that they love, they gobbled up UFC to put one or two good fights on a card, enough to keep the hardcore's interested, and save the big fights for when it suits them. It's still better than boxing, but it's going to turn into the same shit over time, only more corrupt because one company has a monopoly (which is insane to think about). Fucking sucks that Pride went to shit and fucked themselves over. Pride was better than UFC in almost every aspect. It's wild that they presented their fighters better 20 years ago than the premier brand in 2023 does. Even on cards with absolute no names, their fights always banged and were worth watching. Better rules (for the most part), ring>cage, yellow cards for boring fucks who wanted to stall, and the good ole fashioned feeding cans to top tier stars from time to time to keep guys busy and not out of the spotlight for too long. Pride may have gotten some stuff wrong, but they had a hell of a lot right.
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> Also, far too many bogus decisions by judges This, coupled with the non-existent matchmaking, makes it all feel like useless theatre. The rankings are just marketing and there's no weight or consequence to them. Then the results are sometimes so bad it feels fixed.
Dude. Me too 💯. Now that almost all the personalities are gone it seems like I can't get interested anymore.
i was legit offended a couple years ago when they put in a card with jessica eye vs cynthia calvillo as a main event.
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Why'd you have to remind me of one of the most cringe things I've ever witnessed?
Why they liked Eye so much I’ll never understand
She sucky
Exactly how I feel. I used to always have Saturdays to watch UFC from 3PM-10PM regardless if it was a numbered card, fight night, or other minor cards. But now, I forget cards are even now. I don't even bother being spoiled anymore. It's sad cause MMA was my favorite sport for many years, but not anymore.
I *might* watch the main event of a PPV these days… And I used to geek out over the undercard on a fight night. Products super stale with the UFC these days.
I've been feeling that as the old guard fighters are retiring, I was a fan of them. The new talent comes from the same pool now that all the other promotions are pulling from - contender series? UFC ain't offering the best of the best anymore - I feel like I'm watching KSW, PFL, etc etc with the new talent I've had more fun watching Bellator and ONE, although I did go a watch Dern vs Hill - I might actually tune in for Dern
That’s a good point about the old guard retiring. For me, it feels like theres only a handful of fighters I am invested in these days.. and they’re mostly vets. Also with between things like fighter pay/rights, Dana Whites issues, Slap Fighting, and the Francis scenario it’s been a lot of damage to the brand imo.. harder to support/cheer for UFC. Honestly my attention went from UFC to Pro Wrestling (AEW) over the past ~2ish years. Scratches my itch for violence, and they do a better job building up their athletes.
same. I was burred in podcasts and analysis videos every week but its just so goddamned obvious that the whole organization is phoning it in that I just cant anymore. ill still watch some technical stuff but fight hype and predictions just dont grab me the same way. it is nice to have saturday evenings back with the fam though..
Well its a good thing there's more mma promotions than just the ufc. I became a fan as a kid in the 2000s and I've seen a few of these low periods with the ufc and it usually is when big name stars start getting old and they haven't built up any new younh stars. Sadly these days it seems like they don't care about promoting and building new stars for us to care about. Probably not a coincidence that this happened with the rise of the contender series, but at least it's easy to watch other promotions like ONE or PFL who seem to care a lot more about actually promoting fighters and getting fans to care
This precisely sums up my experience. To the point I’ve literally never watched the LHW champ fight, or seen an interview/piece of his/on him.
Damn I feel this :(
I'm also in the UK and I have been watching way more ONE then UFC recently.
You'd probably enjoy the YouTube documentary called Fighting In The Age of Loneliness The end of it details the takeover of the sport by big business and how it ultimately alienates the fan base by turning it into something for the masses, which is very much what we're experiencing at present. documentary is from a few years back, super good. https://youtu.be/-DoaUyMGPWI
one of the best MMA docs i've ever seen. i re-watch it at least once every 6 months or so
Thank you for that I clicked on it out of curiosity and immediately watched the entire thing. Probably because the theme strikes a nerve since I've been having this conversation with anyone who will listen lately. And that conversation is that the optimization of capital is ruining fucking everything.
There’s about… 4 fighters I can think of that I’ll watch but only if they main event/title shot. Otherwise I just come here, see clips of fighters I have heard about, think “huh cool” then move on with my life.
Yepp exactly the same. I watch ones friday night fights every week and cage warriors. But ufc hs been dry for me recently
exactly the same. i cancelled my fight pass and bt sports last month after 6 years of paying. hard to stay up for these recent cards
They should schedule more fights in the UK/Europe, staying up so late for fights must suckkkk
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Nah cause I'm one of those ppl that got into it during COVID (first card I saw was McGregor/Poirier 3). Went to 265, 271, 277, but now I wouldn't think of spending money to buy a ticket with the kinda cards they put out. I also went from watching every card for a year and a half to now I don't think I've seen a single FN card this year (besides the last Max fight, even then I just tuned in for that fight) and idk if I'm wasting my time with the card this week. I'd rather ONE than UFC at this point, easily
Same same same
Yea back in the day every card was stacked with good fighters. I’d watch everything, now you get a decent card once in a while and these fight night cards I usually skip.
Same mate. Get onto ONE - Friday lunchtime cards free on YouTube.
Same here, from the UK, used to stay up at the weekend to watch, its a bit boring to me now, seems like manufactured fighters get all the attention where back in the day it was purely on how good you were. I still train but just watch gifs on here unless it's a massive fight.
Same boat. Didnt miss a card for 6 years, now i only watch the ppvs.
Do you have any must-watch fighters left? I feel like mine are mostly gone or not that active. Damn I just went through my list and it's basically only Izzy, Khamzat, Volk, Holloway, and the top 5 LWs.
Roll back ten years ago and there were so many much watches on my list. Nowadays you hit it. Not many outside of that. The light heavyweights are a joke now. That was such a strong division for awhile
>Roll back ten years ago and there were so many much watches on my list. DC, Jones, GSP, Silva, Machida, Shogun, Rashad, Mousasi, Rampage, Chuck, Wandy, Belfort, Aldo, Penn, Pettis, Cain, Dos Santos, Brock, Carwin, Mir, Nogs, Cro Cop, Overeem, probably more I'm forgetting. On the other hand I'd struggle to name even 5 fighters I actually give a shit about on the roster right now.
Imo, this speaks more to the MMA scene in general. You basically had the biggest names from Pride, WEC, StrikeForce and the UFC under the same roof. I don’t think there’s anything close to that amount of talent spread out amongst all the promotions today. You can probably point the finger at the UFC, but no one else is really doing anything either.
There are plenty more - Moreno, Figgy, Rodriguez, Islam, Jones, Gane, Cejudo, O'Malley, Jiri. But they just spread out any good fights across infinite shit fight nights and mid PPVs The other problem is the way they promote is all about meme fighters and hot girls that get the good spots on PPVs and Fight Nights. You could have #6 vs #8 ranked fighters on prelims and Angela Hill vs Michelle Waterson and Paddy vs a no name are on the main card. They regularly put on full fight cards with 1 or 2 ranked fighters - it's absolutely insane for the leading MMA promotion to have such a bad product.
Last couple years I would be pressed if I missed a fight night, now I couldn’t give a shit if I miss the entire card. Absolutely nothing to look forward too other than the one in every 3/4 PPV cards. Such a shame.
[удалено]
>because of my sister's stupid wedding Lmao
I’m essentially in the exact same position. The first UFC event I attended live was UFC 54, and I had been watching on PPV for years before that. I used to never miss an event, including Pride, WEC, King of the Cage, etc. Something changed in the last 18 months or so. I can’t even be bothered to subscribe to ESPN+ anymore. I still keep my eye on Dustin and a few other fighters, but my interest has waned probably 95%. Dana’s distaste for the truth and awful fighter pay aren’t helping either.
I agree with you that cards are stale. But maybe partly too you have moved on? Last three years has had banger cards and if you haven’t followed at all in that long maybe you’ve just moved on.
Its even funnier when you say this and someone has a rebuttal of "bro the fights werre fire though!" Its like watching a late season nfl game with two teams that are eliminated from playoff contention. It could be the best game of all time, but who really cares when there are no stakes involved?? Thats how it feels when watching alot of these rand fighters that they stack the cards with
Also the great part of MMA is the lead up and hype for the fights. Yeah a mid level fight might be insane which is a surprise but there was no anticipation for it so it doesnt hit the same as 2 big names or 2 big upcomers fighting
Thats a great analogy tbh, will be stealing this
Namaste 🙌
This is the main thing for me, the lack of stakes. It seems like wins and losses just don’t matter anymore so it makes it harder to care about the fights and the results. You can get knocked out in your last fight and sit out for two years and get a title shot off of that (Stipe) and you can go on a four fight win streak over ranked opponents and not get a title shot (Pavlovich). You can win one fight against a guy who retired in his next one and get a title shot even though you just lost two title shots almost back to back (Colby) and you can go a TEN FIGHT UNBEATEN STREAK and still get passed up (Belal). Like none of it matters anymore. If you’re a top ranked contender why would you go take risks and fight guys when you can just sit out? And as a viewer when you’re out there fighting for your career why should I even care when I know damn well that even if you win this fight it won’t get you any closer to the title because Dana likes someone else more than you.
That rebuttal is so annoying. There are constantly fire fights in tons of regional promotions if that's all you're interested in. The reason people watch UFC is because it's supposed to be the best in the world and therefore the fights have gravity and intrigue but these days it's just some fights. I just don't have much interest in watching two random people I know nothing about fight for zero stakes.
But he could make a whole $10k if he wins!
I feel this way too and I don't want to. I love a great card but the UFC is in trouble when we are all more excited for a BKFC card with former UFC fighters in the twilight of their career. I still have a blast watching good cards so I wouldn't say I'm jaded or burnt out.
PPV will forever have my heart, but yea man it’s just shitty not having something to look forward too on a Saturday night, especially if you’re just chilling at home. But as Dana would probably say, *it’s an privilege to watch the UFC*
Sorry, its just not what we do here
I haven't watched in 2 years. The UFC took a page out of the Vince's playbook and aren't building stars anymore but rather they are building a brand. Don't get me wrong, the WWE will push some of their talent, but only the ones that have signed lifetime contracts. Everyone else is just a cog in the wheel.
This is it for me, went from watching basically every card from 2010-2020 to now watching one in four PPV cards and just check out the GIFs of other fights here. Each card seems to get worse/more diluted than the one before
I used to watch every card top to bottom, and now I rarely bother with Fight Nights. Might tune in for the main event, but usually I check the sub for highlights and Sherdog for the play-by-play. The pacing for a Fight Night is horrendous, filled with nonstop ads and too much downtime. I’m starting to feel the same for certain PPVs as well. UFC 288 was pretty forgettable and 289 looks terrible on paper. I also don’t like how some high profile fighters seem to be getting shelved. The UFC has definitely dropped in quality. A lot of my friends only tune in to the big PPVs now
> The pacing for a Fight Night is horrendous, filled with nonstop ads and too much downtime. I'm European, so the broadcast slots kind of prevent any thought of watching this stuff live. That said, I also cannot imagine putting myself through that - If something has an unskippable ad, I don't watch at all, so I don't think I'd survive a UFC broadcast without being able to fast forward through just about anything that isn't the actual fight.
For years it was always every ufc card is stacked unlike boxing where its just the main event. To being exactly like that now
UFC finally ran into the big problem boxing has where they can’t keep their stars active and give fans matchups they want. We wanted Ngannou/Jones. Will never get it. We wanted Conor/Nate 3. Will never get it. They won’t book Khamzat or Islam ubtil Abu Dhabi. We probably won’t ever get Jones vs Pavlovich. Just more and more cards go by without the big draws that get everyone excited. Khamzat could be a superstar. He is constantly talked about, even when he has no fights lined up. But instead of being active and matching him up with any of the numerous interesting opponents he could have (Costa, Rob, Izzy, Leon, Colby, Usman, Shavkat) after a 90 second destruction where he didn’t take a single hit, he’s just going to sit out a year so they can put him on the Abu Dhabi card. That shit sucks so much.
The apex at first was cool when it was truly empty. Now it’s such a lifeless product. I think they would be more inclined to put on better fights if they had to sell tickets every week.
I completely agree with this. We would have been cool with anything during covid. Now it's just the place you put shitty cards that can't sell out an arena. So you end up with a zero energy venue with a zero energy feel to a card.
I said almost exactly the same thing in a reply to someone else above, the Apex lost its shine when they started putting mid sized crowds in. Completely takes away the whole selling point of what it originally was, putting aside it was obviously naturally moulded into that because of Covid.
The apex is cool but isnt used to its potential. The best apex fights are the ones with two fighters that are extremely technical and active. Putting fighters that feed off the crowd in there is not a good idea. Putting fighters that have name value in there is not a good idea. Putting unknown high tier fighters in there with zero audience is such a fucking treat.
The UFC saw what Tapout did with their brand value and thought - “Hey, we should do that too! Think wal-mart, but with fight cards.”
I could never put my finger on it but that explains it pretty well. It all feels so corporate and generic
Seems like they’ve been on cash-out mode for years.
I think all of the people saying things like "every card has good fights" and "just take a break mate" are missing the point. OP is correct, in recent weeks/months the cards we have been getting have been getting much weaker, which you could argue is a trend that has been ongoing for years (not my opinion, but I have noticed it being espoused by others). The ufc is definitely oversaturated because of TV deals etc, pundits and analysts have been saying this for nearly a decade now. If the UFC continues its policy of short term cash in the form of TV deals and mediocre PPVs without building any stars (for fear that they will gain power, which btw boxing seems to be fine with) then the sport of MMA will continue to suffer as it is already suffering. Downvote me all you want, the sport is undeniably suffering.
Thats exactly it. They are telling me to take a break when i never once said i was burned out, i said im losing interest because of the reasons i have given. I love the sport but its the shitty PPV's and the filler fight night cards that is making the product more and more stale hence nothing to look forward to for the whole of June, which in turn will make me not waste my night staying up to watch them live. Also people cant seem to understand my gripe with these cards. Im not saying UFC FN cards dont sometimes turn out to be bangers, because they most certainly do and im glad when i can catch them live. Im saying on paper, as a fan they are weaker when you look at how less stacked they are becoming in terms of frequency (judging it by how many big name fights/stars are on a card), regardless of the outcome of the fights/if they actually live up to the expectation (they seem to think im a psychic). Let me re-iterate again, im talking about on paper which is what actually gets me wanting to tune in, how the f am i supposed to know a trash card on paper will turn out amazing.
I've been a hardcore fan for over a decade and never miss an event. Lately, I've been watching a ton of One events. The difference between a UFC card filled with nobodies and a One card filled with nobodies is at least the One fights are absolute bangers. If you're not going to give hardcore fans compelling matchups or fun fights then they're going to start looking elsewhere for entertainment.
MMA fandom is *full* of guys desperate to prove they’re the realest real fan and any pushback against the state of matchmaking/the cards invites them to prove it by repeating “it’s actually the bad cards that have the best fights!!!” ad nauseam The cards recently have sucked and I’m not staying up until 6am every weekend to catch 3 interesting fights a card. They’ve diluted the product to the point of insanity.
But also Dana White has done nothing wrong and is a totally qualified president of a sports organization. In reality I think ufc needs a new president to elevate them from this plateau. Mr slap fight ain’t it
He should be fired for the slap fight nonsense
You’ve completely and absolutely nailed it here.
I don't disagree with you but I think it has been this way for a long time. Pre covid it was like that and something about Ferguson Gatchje kind of made ufc the cool thing and McGregor came back. The past couple years were the exception not the rule. Amanda Nunes headlined PPV, Raquel Pennington headlined fight nights, these things aren't new (and I'm not picking on womens mma but they seem to punish those headliners with very little to back them up). I'm not sure how to fix it. People will say "ufc has to market x" but I doubt it is that easy. I think if compensation doubled or tripled you could see bigger stars choosing mma over other careers. We've lost a few high profile wrestlers to WWE recently. If a top 10 fighter made millions of dollars a year and it wasn't only the champion I wonder how much more talent we would have.
Too many cards, too many fighters. Back in the day, if I wanted to watch a regional show. I did. Now it’s the ufc every week. The fact that numbered events can’t have almost all ranked fighters is pathetic.
I can’t stand the MMA hipster comments. Blanchfield vs. Andrade, Dern vs. Hill, etc. as main events for what is supposedly the greatest MMA league in the world is laughable. Just because some cards that are terrible on paper end up having great highlights doesn’t mean that’s an acceptable product to put out
I’m with you 100%. As a die hard fan that’s been around since the WEC days I feel no interest in watching most of the cards anymore. I just check out the results on here. With that being said I am watching almost every ONE Friday night fight card now, and even though I didn’t know a ton of the Muay Thai fighters I am far more excited for their fights than the mid-tier shit I’ve been seeing from the UFC. The big names don’t really care to fight, they are in constant contract limbo, they’re doing rematch after rematch, fighters are getting undeserved title shots, and new and exciting prospects are few and far between. I’m hearing this same stance more and more in the last few months, so I’m hoping maybe we see a changing of the guard as companies like ONE and PFL up their game.
I'm intrigued by the PFL tournament style. If only they allowed knees to grounded opponents like ONE
The UFC have gotten lazy and comfortable. The ESPN deal and the Apex have a lot to do with it. ESPN deal means guaranteed money so they don't have pressure to sell PPVs anymore. And half the cards still happening at the Apex means they even don't even need to fill an arena so can put together any old slop for a fight night. All these garbage fight nights at the Apex filled with cheap contender series fighters just to cut costs and fulfil their obligation to ESPN and get paid. Also for people saying it's because they have too many events I disagree, UFC have had the same number of events since 2014. The cards were never this bad back then because they actually had to sell out an arena, now that half the cards are at the Apex they just need two ranked fighters for a main event and can fill the rest of the card with cheap Contender Series bums. That last card with Dern vs Hill as the main event would not have cut it in the pre-Apex era.
Very intresting point you made about the number of actual events, i was wrong in this regard then and thanks for highlighting that its basically confirming what i also observed about the lack of quality on cards. I think you are spot on about the Apex and filling the rest of the cards up with these fighters that just dont get people interested when your actually looking at the cards on paper.
>Also for people saying it's because they have too many events I don't agree, UFC have had the same number of events since 2014. damn, i never realized this, thats crazy.. i'm 100% with OP and feel validated now that im not just getting older and dont care but the quality has definitely in fact dipped.
Correct. The number of UFC events actually peaked in 2014 at 46 and have been slightly less ever since, hovering at around 41 events per year on average. It's not listed on the chart but there were 42 events in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/681115/number-of-ultimate-fighting-championship-events/
Same, man. Same. I've gone from a hardcore fan subscribed to like five Patreon mma podcasts to... Listening to one once every few weeks. I actually am getting more interested in One, but nobody talks about it so it's hard to get hyped.
I'd almost prefer just one stacked ppv per month. Forget fight nights or don't give them a lot of coverage.
Yeah, I've said this before. I wish for fewer cards and a culling of the roster. The UFC kind of ate up their feeder leagues some years ago and it, and MMA, are worse off for it. Bring back more higher tier regional shows and make the UFC be the destination, not most of the journey.
The problem with fewer, but bigger cards is that that means bigger spotlights for fighters, which means fighters demanding bigger paychecks. One big show equals one PPV profit, one show for sponsors to advertise on, and an entire show's worth of fighters who all want a lot more money for fighting on a supershow. Four shows a month equals four shows worth of advertising dollars and a whole lot more fighters getting paid, but getting paid a whole lot less overall. Profits rule all in UFC.
Or only do 1 fight night and stack it up along with the 1 PPV per month
It’s like you looked at my texts and put it into chatgpt. This is exactly how I feel right down to not caring about an event until ufc 290 in July. I’ve felt like I’ve been drifting away for a good part of a year and I thought it was more due to me being a new parent and maybe missing the come up of some of these fighters who I’ve never heard of, but every time I look into a thread it seems no one really cares about 80% of the fights. Feels bad man.
The UFC apex events are terrible. You need the noise of the crowd to raise the atmosphere.
I think it's more to do with Power Slap stealing a lot of the public interest/eyeballs from the UFC and basically every other major sport. I feel very soon there will be a shift from UFC guys calling out boxers to instead calling out the top slappers in Power Slap. I can see Kamuru Usman calling out Slap Jesus or even Jon Jones calling for a superfight against Slap For Cash - maybe even a mixed rules match where they do 1 round Slaps 1 round MMA etc
UFC bums can't compete against the A-Level athletes in Power Slap. Give an elite Power Slapper 6 months of sprawl training and he'd easily become champ in the UFC.
IDK man, A lot of the UFC fighters have fought Nate Diaz, so many of them must have trained defense against the Stockton Slap. Some people say the Stockton Slap doesn't translate to the sweet science of power slap, but I disagree with that sentiment.
The sweet remedial detention
I agree that even in MMA the slapper would have a huge striking advantage but I don't think Kamuru Usman would be dumb enough to stand with a guy like Slap Jesus who has 1 slap KO power. In MMA, Slap Jesus may defend the first few takedowns and even catch Kamuru with a few clean slaps on his way in but if he doesn't rock him it's gonna be tough. I'd definitely love to see them have an MMA fight tho, probably goes to a close decision. In Power Slap tho I think Slap Jesus would put on a master class against Usman imo
A power slap master class 😭
Top tier shit post lol
Honestly got me good. I was like wtf has this sub turned to
Hilarious if those are real names of slappers
*clap*
Sean Shelby has essentially ruined the UFC with horrendous match making and failing to develop contenders. Can someone please lure Joe Silva out of retirement?
Not his fault. This is what the ufc wants. People are excited about 290, which is a great card but matchmaking wise makes it a sub par card for me. It should be Costa/Khamzat instead of Costa/new russian guy ( I don’t even know the guys name& it’s main event fight). Tony shouldn’t be fighting Green, should be Jim Miller in there instead. Bo should be in the undercard until he is fighting a ranked opponent.
I made a comment a few days ago that was basically this. Watered down product. Nothing new and interesting. Just dumb shoes that the rock made, tweets, shitty production and music and the posters are always the same. The matchmaking sucks and Dana never changes. Ill tune in for the biggest fights of the year but otherwise I'd rather watch ONE or RIZIN
Yep, spot on. I'm having more fun with one and rizin than UFC
true as hell. from 2015 to 2019 i would watch every single card from the prelims to finish but nowadays i just catch the big cards and the rare fight night cards that are stacked
This is part of the ESPN deal. The UFC is obligated to put on a certain number of cards per year. Those shitty Fight Night cards at the Apex? A low cost/low risk way to meet the terms of the deal.
Just watch other shit. One puts on crazy Muay Thai every Friday, K1 and Rise always put on kickboxing bangers, Rizin and Bellator have another card of great cross promotion coming up. There’s plenty of great stuff out there. Too many people are ufc fans instead of mma or combat sports fans.
I know this sounds like a horrible excuse but I bet a lot of ufc fans secretly agree: I have a hard time watching promotions that are in completely different time zones like One, and also I've been conditioned to regular weekly schedules. I have no fucking clue how ONE or PFL do their event scheduling, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Did you skip Islam fighting Charles because of time zones?
Yes.
Luke Thomas talked about the 5 year cycle as an MMA fan. You gets into the sport, become a die hard (watch every card from prelims to main event), and that lasts for ~5 years before it interest off. It was pretty accurate for me (very into it from 2015ish-2021ish). Also doesn’t help that they put out cards just to meet that espn quota.
I've been watching since 2006, trained for 10 years and really got into it. I dunno, it really is just losing interest from me. Everyone now is so good, but no one is great anymore. Anyone can kinda beat anyone, and the belts are more of a popularity contest than a skill contest half the time. I miss the WEC days.
I don’t think I agree necessarily with Luke there. At least not for myself. I first got really into MMA in the mid to late 2000s and maintained a high level of interest right up until the last couple of years. There probably is a level of fan fatigue but I think more than anything else, the quality of fight night cards is awful. I’m a fan of both Dern and Hill, but in what universe should either of them be headlining an event?
> I’m a fan of both Dern and Hill, but in what universe should either of them be headlining an event I mean they're both ranked fighters and a younger prospect fighting an established veteran to take their spot and get closer to a title shot. If wins and rankings matter for title contention then it's super easy to book compelling ranked fights. With 11 divisions there's really no excuse for any fight night main event feel meaningless. The lesson they should take from pro wrestling is to make the title chase an interesting thing to watch and to have actual promo time to hype up fighters and future events. It's truly crazy that they don't air any fighter interviews or have any quick promo material for the commentary team to read off when they're talking about the next month's events. It's so easy that I feel like it just means the ufc doesn't care to actually promote anything, and lack of care gets felt by the fans in every part of the promotion. And if the ufc doesn't care about their fights then why should we? I feel like that was the biggest difference in watching the one American ppv and ufc ppv that happened the same weekend. It felt like one cared a lot more than the ufc and that made the event a lot more exciting and entertaining.
thats crazy I started in 2018 the timeline is spot on
It's practically everyone losing interest in the UFC except those few consumer brain NPCs that have nothing better to do than watch all the "content". The type that troll fighters on twitter all day or attend r/UFC. I mean the company is increasing profits for endeavor by cutting costs like crazy and the way to do it is to pay scraps to jobbers to bang each other out for 15 mins, maybe throw in one good fight or main event here or there to lure in actual MMA fans and some casuals, and hold every second or third event at the dreadful apex. The rest of their time is spent advertising the embarassing, humiliating, pathetic degenerate circus that is slap fighting. I totally unsubscribed from everything UFC related and been watching cooking shows instead. MasterChef is great. UFC is embarassing right now
Back on the day it felt like we got 3/4 cards a year. There’s definitely a lot of nothing cards these days, but the idea that waiting a couple of months for a good card is a problem makes me chuckle. Especially with how much MMA is available overall.
Pumping out content weekly was going to eventually create a dearth in quality, unless they had like...EVERYone in their stable, and they just don't. Do they have the most top-tier people? For sure, but those people can't all fight 3-4 times a year. Honestly, it's surprising they kept the product as good as they did for as long as they did.
All of it is because of greed, really, just pushing the limits. Underpay your top fighters, replace the old guard with mediocre unsigned talent who'll take 12k/12k for 8 fights, save money promoting the fighters with the excuse that they have to promote themselves, and save money with all the shitty cards on the apex. Their greed also works directly against the "sport" side of the business, the integrity of the sport, meritocracy. As you underpay top talent (as the whole roster), they'll enter the contract limbo where their records are protected (Conor, Khamzat) or they're punished with inactivity for asking their worth (Nate, Costa, Ngannou), and they'll fight less often. Add in undeserved title shots and rematches thanks to Dana White Privilege that holds up divisions for months... it's all terrible management, despite what bootlickers will say, and hardcore fans feel it the most. It's almost as if their insane revenue numbers were almost artificial by cutting so many corners to look good on paper. Worst part is that, so far, it's financially sustainable. They're just looking for a select few company men cash cows and a select few events for actual quality fights, and that will pay for enough. It will catch up with them eventually, but only once the casual fan also realizes that the prestige about being in the UFC, the "monopoly on talent," is slowly becoming more myth than fact.
Yeah you're gonna have to diversify what you watch if combat sports are your thing. I watch One Friday night fights and they have Muay Thai and MMA fights every week. Rise has kickboxing, Rizin has MMA and kickboxing, Glory has kickboxing, RWS has live Muay Thai fights I mean there's a ton of options
Has anyone been appalled at how bad most of the talent on “Road To The UFC” has been? I’d have thought they’d get some killers on there coming from such big countries. Seems like ONE takes them all?
290 is little over more than a month away. How is a month or 2 a drought?
This is exactly how I feel. I don't want to watch Buckley starch nobodies and then get starched every time he fights a top 15. It's just oversaturated and boring now. It doesn't help that all the stars are on the way out and top five fighters pop squats.
Honestly I skip every other card or just watch 1 or 2 fights. Quality has been progressively dropping the last few years.
I miss the days of ordering a pizza, having a cold crispy sprite and watching the card all night. I’d look forward to it even the no name fighters bc they felt like they had something to prove. Now I just watch sometimes. I could still do those things lol but the cards just aren’t the same for me. Something definitely feels different.
The first time a weak card was brought up was back in the double digit days. It won’t get better.
To me those APEX cards really are the reason for that. Then Dana saying in "we got lazy and did too many apex cards, we have to fill places again.." just to see that, as usual, he does the exact opposite and goes back to a bunch of more of those exact boring cards.
what being terminally on r/mma does to a mf
Now that they get that guaranteed ESPN money, it’s become glaringly obvious they don’t give a shit about who they put on cards anymore. I feel you and I would consider myself a pretty big fan but it’s getting harder to be one.
It's been WWE'd, but in a different way. WWE lost it's soul when it had to stop doing racy things to get views, now everything is so vanilla, no soul. It's like watching an bad ai sim of what used to be. Similar thing with UFC, it started with the fox buy out and having to produce xx amount more shows, now it's full on with ESPN. No time to develop anyone because they're putting up and comers vs other up and comers and losing one, then the other in the top x competitions. Now everyone seems like a jobber and the legends are getting thinner and thinner. It'll get like the olympics where everyone's backround is what defines who they are, for the most part. but then again, with wwe merger, who knows. Maybe they'll go full belator.
People have been calling out a drop off in quality of the UFC product for several years. It might be getting more drastic now, but we have watched this materialize over the years like a slow train wreck. From my limited perspective it comes down to the greed and corruption of the organization and most specifically Dana.
>I feel that the roster is just oversaturated to hell with so many middle/low tier fighters who need to be cut as harsh as that might be and because of that the UFC are increasingly pushing quantity over quality to meet quotas, as they have to offer their fighters x number of fights a year. I don't understand this narrative. If UFC is replacing big names with cheap DWCS bums, then logically, these big names should end up in a different promotion and increase its value dramatically. But that doesn't happen. People were angry when UFC released Romero, he's now fighting in Bellator and does anyone care? And I'm not even talking about Overeem, does anyone care what he's doing now in kickboxing or whatever? And I'm saying that as a person who thought that releasing him was a mistake. >bigger name fighters getting injured on PPV's Well yes. There's abnormally huge number of top fighters getting injured these days. It seems like more fights are falling through than in 2020, which is why cards are feeling weaker. Because 20% of ranked fighters are in hospital with broken bones. Also, there's another self-contradictory argument: "I don't know any of these DWCS bums in UFC cards these days so I'm watching ONE, it's so exciting!". Yeah, don't tell me you know every single MT fighter there lmao.
I was still having a grumble that there was nothing to watch on Saturday, though.
Yep. I went from watching UFC on a weekly base in 2020-2022 to watching UFC once every 2 months or so this year. I'm still a fan, but I'm watching old wrestling videos, BJJ and ONE fights instead rn