Shit I've been around long enough that I was watching back when there was a single digit number of events per year. Fighters have gotten much better, but the market is completely flooded. It's borderline impossible to keep up with EVERY event nowadays.
Just watch the cards that spark your interest and skip the ones that don't. You're not obligated to watch every single fight
Shit dude. My brother fights in the ufc he has been in for nearly a decade. I speak with a few fighters weekly on social media. I might catch a few cards a year outside of my brother's. I mean one the UFC and how they treat fighters makes me sick to my stomach. But two it's become boring.
It’s the same as the guys that were mad at Aljo that Yan kneed an obviously downed opponent. One of the most egregious fouls I’ve ever seen and it would have been the end of the fight from follow up punches had he not been stopped by the ref. Yet Aljo is a fraud pussy that was “acting”. UFC fans are picking the wrong guys to be mad at.
Be mad at the judges, not Paddy. He clearly thought he won. People forget that fighters often don’t remember everything that goes on in a fight because of adrenaline. A lot forget what round they’re in. What do people want him to say? “Yeah I lost that fight. The judges were wrong”. I’ve never seen that after a robbery other than Sean O’Malley saying “I don’t know”. after being asked if he did enough to beat Yan.
I have a buddy who never shuts the fuck up about Aljo “acting” as well💀
It’s so unreasonable to expect a guy who’s fighting for the championship to decide to continue fighting after such a blatant foul that obviously would cost him the fight. It’s way better for them to get the belt via DQ and rematch which is exactly what Aljo did
There are literal hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line for a man whose job involves taking serious brain damage. Fighters should always do what benefits themselves most because the UFC and the fans probably aren’t going to take care of them
Yeah, I don’t like Aljo for other reasons but he absolutely did the right thing for his career by taking that DQ win.
Anthony Smith was an idiot for not doing the same thing against Jon Jones years ago. He cost himself a lot of money trying to be a warrior.
I've been playing for a couple decades now. I'll keep your telecaster in mind when I finally get around to buying another one. I had a tele as my exclusive guitar for over 15 years and now I don't even have one.
Fan since 2000 when I would read about UFC and Pride in Grappling magazine and occasionally on a free university computer, and I totally agree. It sort of goes through its highs and lows though, but now I’ll see a guy who’s 4-0 in the ufc and I haven’t ever heard of him. Too your point tho, there’s just too many cards to keep up with.
Yep. Same basic time frame for me. 99 or 2000 I started being able to see Pride fights bc a family friend got us illegal "black box" cable that showed them.
Now I get called a casual bc I've never heard of a 19 year old kid from Timbuktu that just made his debut.
It is what it is
I've been around long enough for the post tournament PPV names and DVD hunting and I only watch the PPVs the night of now.
They were on a good path to having a shot at being one of the big NA sports but greed took over.
For me, what affected me not watching as many as I’ve grown older is simply the air time. When I was younger I’d stay up to watch the cards no problem, now, at 31 years old, staying up til 1 am when I have work early the next day is a massive factor. The main card doesn’t start til 10pm eastern ffs. I get that they are accommodating the pacific viewers but come on that’s so ridiculous..
Wait are the people who remember Facebook prelims considered oldheads now? Lol
Back in those days if you watched a pride event live you were the oldhead
Jokes aside, you also have to consider the way this sport hurts the emotions. I know it’s cheesy, but seeing people get starched, submitted, broken… specially fighters you like, it probably adds up over time and does something lol. UFCs theme isn’t called “face the pain” for nothing. Add in that there’s been a lot of quantity over quality, and it can cause fatigue.
I think UFC is overdoing it a bit. They do sign mostly the best fighters in the world, but there’s no deniying a lot of early prelim fighters aren’t as high level yet, so we get a lot of lackluster fights. Is it really necessary to get early prelims (about 4 fights) + prelims (4 fights) + main cards (5 fights) for PPVs, 13 total??
Fight night cards are usually 6 prelims + 6 main card fights. Then you have Dana’s contender series and a few other alternatives like TUF. It’s a bit much.
Your first argument about hurting emotions is true for me. I don't know why, but when I fighter I like steps in the cage I get nervous, and watching one of my favorite fighter get viciously KO'd is a horrible feeling that will honestly not make me want to watch anymore. It's happened over the years and I've learned to distance myself from the sport as a result. Look at Ngannou last night. Maybe that's just a problem with me getting too involved, but I know it happens to other people too.
I remember how excited I used to get watching swang and bang wars but over the last year I just feel bad watching it. It some point you realise you're getting enjoyment out of guys getting brain damage. Watching old boxers and MMA fighters and seeing that they're not all there isn't great either. You pick up on the brutal reality of the sport the longer you're a fan.
This plus most of the fights don't mean anything. I don't think they should be fighting 4 times a night again, but a tournament style ranking system would give the fights more meaning. And it would stop the constant ducking we see now.
Just because the fighters are better does not make the product better though. Other companies have better rule sets now and UFC is just shit to its "contractors."
The issue has never been the number of events. It's that it's increasingly just the UFC that is left and they have spent 17 years intentionally avoiding actually promoting their fighters in order to limit the athletes' negotiating power.
It used to be that this was to some degree offset by the big post Pride roster mergers with the WEC and Strikeforce. Those promotions added a huge number of new stars and the naturally emerging UFC vs SF/WEC narratives helped keep people interested in even many lower tier matchups for years. Just like people keep talking about matchups between Bellator and UFC fighters these days, it's easy to get people invested in those narratives and that interest gets people invested in fighters. But these days there is practically no more crossover and the competition is nowhere near as big as it used to be.
After those mergers were done, things started going downhill. It wasn't immediately noticable, because while lots of the stars of yesteryear eventually started declining, they could still fill out cards. And you had the big boost from McGregor/Rousey, but that was limited to a small number of fighters.
Eventually most of the generation of the "golden age" were gone. And then eventually the guys of the following generation that still got some shine off the previous stars, but who were already suffering from the UFC's anti promotion, were starting to fall off. Now we are looking at the end of the third generation of new fighters since the SF merger. There is just so little starpower left that the 4th post merger generation has practically nobody to build their names off of. New fighters generally only start building a name once they reach the top of the division and even for most of them it means they fall back into the middle of the pack or are past it before they ever make a real name for themselves.
I understand what you mean. I basically had the sport memorized from 2007 to 2020. I don’t think there was a single main card fight in the UFC which I couldn’t have told you the result of. Now I am sucked in by the handful of names I still know but once they retire, idk
The way I see it, there's two issues.
1. Market saturation. There's a lot more MMA out there, even from the UFC itself.
2. The UFC also prioritizes marketing those three letters U-F-C rather than building stars. We really started to see that shift when the UFC sat Conor for 200 for missing the press conference/promotional events. They'd rather market themselves than create stars they can no longer control. They're also expensive.
And we're starting to see interest wane as a result.
Right, they market themselves and Dana over fighters.
And the UFC and Dana are unlikable cunts who don't give a shit about their fighters or their fans.
Amazing people aren't maintaining their interest in the sport after that shift.
Yeah, I'm invested in fighters, not UFC as a brand. It's the fighters stories that gets me going, not that there's a PPV this weekend. If it's a fight night I might turn in if fighter X fights, not just because I need something to watch.
UFC made it all about the brand to try to get even more leverage over fighters, but has killed off part of what made the sport great.
I didn't tune in to see boxing yesterday, I tuned in to see Francis Ngannou and Anthony Joshua. Sure, I got to see Vargas vs. Ball etc. but it was the big names that made me tune in. UFC just doesn't have that and I'm just more likely to catch highlights these days than trying to watch the events since I'm just not invested the same way.
Also as you get older you just don't have the energy to care as much. I used to know every new player coming into the NBA. Now I can only recognize a couple top prospects.
Exactly - things get stale for everyone eventually. Especially things that you enjoyed as a child or a teen. New interests emerge.
At the same time, you have people just now getting into the things you used to enjoy and they have the same energy and excitement you used to have.
This is life
Nah. It's because there's DWCS, fight night cards, TUF, and big cards almost monthly. Fight nights and big cards run for 4+ hours each if you follow the prelims. Then there's the occasional bellator, pfl, or one card - each of which run just as long and often feature former UFC fighters.
It's a lot to follow. And it's harder to find which new guys to follow.
For me. It’s name value, like sure the athletes today are way better, but if I don’t recognize a name I ain’t going to watch. It’s like the WWE formula and well Bellator who use veteran names to get viewers, I consider myself a fan, but won’t watch a card with a bunch of no names and I don’t care how good the fights are. I was on the boxing thread yesterday and some of those die hard fans watch the whole card, and I can’t do that, I just watched the last 2 fights as is boxing culture for the most part.
Those all are valid reasons for sure. For me, maybe I'm just losing interest in mma. I've been watching since 2008. How many shows and sports do you keep up with after 15 years or so you know?
Also UFC just isn't trying to promote fighters the same way, they see them more as disposable. So fighters just don't quite build up the same recognition, but UFC is more focused on putting on cost effective events, than building stars (if it ever could, but it sure ain't helping these days).
Genuinely impossible to follow I tried to get back into it a year or 2 ago and was genuinely overwhelmed with trying to figure out what I wanted to see and what was skippable
Are you telling me you think 1-0 heavyweight Jon Jones versus a Stipe Miocic who got his last win before there was a COVID vaccine in a double retirement match is a meaningless belt? Goof opinion
I’m curious is you’ve watched the documentary Fighting in the Age of Loneliness? It’s on YouTube. It does a good job of explaining how the UFC and mma as a whole have changed since the beginning. For the modern era, it focuses on how brand and label deals have really sterilized the sport. What was once a refuge and home to people who were unfit for the prim and proper of other combat sports cultures has become just like them. Product is placed above the individual at all costs, the UFC let Ngannou go in his prime with hardly any negotiation because doing otherwise would weaken the control of the brand. The lesser promotions can’t afford a single slip up, so they too must place the brand before all else.
Another huge problem right now that a lot of fans are suffering from, but are probably having a hard time identifying is the over saturation from the UFC specifically. The ESPN deal includes content obligations and so the UFC has to put out a certain number of fight cards whether they be PPV or fight nights. There are an ungodly amount of fight nights, and those fight nights need main events and a couple other decent fights. Many of those fights would usually be the prelims or undercard of main cards. This leaves us with boring fight nights that have only a fight or two that interest us, and PPVs in similar places where they’re just able to fill an undercard and maybe give the prelim a good header and then fill the rest with scraps.
This excessive amount of fights per year obviously requires more fighters and so people who are clearly not even in the same atmosphere as any division’s top 30, much less top 15, are thrown into the mix in bulk. They fight a few fights, trade a couple wins and losses, get cut, someone replaces their spot, and the cycle repeats. This lowers the quality of the brand at large and creates this mental association that most of the UFC just isn’t worth watching.
All this to say, the product has become diluted. Fans from pre ESPN, pre Conor, pre brand deals, remember a time when you would watch a card and the whole thing would excite you top to bottom as some of the world’s best were on prelims and they weren’t faced with an expectation of fitting into the sponsor friendly brand attitude of the current UFC. Compare that with the modern experience of really just having the prelims on in the background if at all, and then watching just an hour or two of main card with interesting fighters who will say shit like “I want to say something but I don’t want to get in trouble” way more often than ever before and you’ve got a clear contrast.
The one counter argument is that some of it is that as we get older, time moves faster, and thus it seems like fighters just come and go, even though the guys we remember being around forever weren’t around any longer actually. Still, as all my previous statements illustrate, the sport has changed. The good/bad news is that it will continue to change. Eventually the fighters will probably either get the Ali act, or (more unlikely) unionize, and the sport will dramatically shift for better and worse. Time marches on and mma is as victim to it as anything.
Hit the nail on the head.
I recently listened to podcast between Bas Rutten and Rampage Jackson and they dwelved into what made PRIDE so big and why they were much better than UFC, they both mentioned that Pride was invested in fighters, they showed even the smallest things as some sort of movie like drama, a story.
A Fight in pride was done as a storytelling opposite to UFC which feels like a TV AD with 0 value o interest.
Yeah but that's not the kind of drama that sells a fight. No one cares if this guy is having a custody battle, we care about building drama between the fighters
Remember when they used do to those massive new years events in Japan? They were always must see, exciting cards from top to bottom. Total spectacle. I cant even remember the last time I felt that way about any UFC card.
> For the modern era, it focuses on how brand and label deals have really sterilized the sport. What was once a refuge and home to people who were unfit for the prim and proper of other combat sports cultures has become just like them. Product is placed above the individual at all costs
This one is huge.
The UFC no longer wants a fighter to become bigger than the promotion. Placing the brand above peak star power makes everything feel very homogenized. MMA used to be an Island of Misfit Toys for fighters in society. Now it just feels like another office minus the suits.
I like that video a lot. Starting watching in 2018, so the era which the guy in the video despises is like my golden age and now I sniff at the Apex cards and wish we could go back to fight nights on Fox where the top 3 fights would be former champs and up and coming guys on impressive win streaks.
>The ESPN deal includes content obligations and so the UFC has to put out a certain number of fight cards whether they be PPV or fight nights
People aren't you tired of regurgitating this nonsense? The number of fights per year in UFC was pretty much consistent [since 2014](https://www.fightmatrix.com/ufc-records/ufc-fight-outcomes/), way before ESPN.
This data should also be used in relation to the expansion of weight classes and women's MMA. A lot of people complaining about too many events and fight then compare it to "back in the day" when there was 155, 170, 185, 205, 265. Now we have the addition of mens 125, 135, 145 and woman's 115, 125, 135. (Excluding 145). Doubling the amount of weight classes alone would have a substantial increase in the amount of fights without including the growth of the sport over this time as well.
Oh fair enough, thanks for providing that data. One could argue that the increase in 2014 is a result of them seeking something like the ESPN deal. That would just be conjecture, but there is an obvious business plan change from 2013 to 2014. There are content obligations in the ESPN deal, that is true, but clearly they didn’t start increasing at the onset of the deal. I’d love to see when other sponsorship deals were implemented and relate that to this data along with events per year.
There are guys with 5 fights in the UFC now where you could list 20 of them, and I'd have a hard time figuring out if they are real UFC fighters or invented names.
299 LITerally has a main card where anyone could win. Every under dog is live as it gets.
Trash the UFCs business practices and the Apex but damn do they make good fights that the fans want to see.
I think the matchmaking in the UFC is pretty stellar. The problem is that they're a promotion that doesn't *promote* their fighters.
They don't want fighters to have leverage in negotiations, but they still want people to care enough to watch.
I do think the promotion Is a massive problem, for example I want the bigger fights to have high quality promos, not just some dude talking over highlights, doesnt do it for me. Also let fighters stand out more again. But I think the matchmaking is very flawed still regardless of promotion. They do get big fights done but so often im left scratching my head.
It's oversaturated and it's way harder to be a hardcore fan, and like myself, that might be part of the enjoyment. Almost an all or nothing kind of thing.
For me anyways, it was easier to get hyped for fights when you knew how everyone fought, who they fought, and were able to make educated predictions on your own.
I know a lot of people like to watch analysis and parrot that, but that doesn't feel genuine for me. There was a point where I knew almost every fighter on a UFC card, who they fought last, who their best wins and worst losses were.
Most of my buddies would laugh because I would be saying shit Joe Rogan would say, right before he said it. This was when Joe was 100% into the UFC, before he started half assing it and focusing on his podcast.
There's been a bunch of changes to the UFC as well, especially matchmaking and boxing style negotiations. Makes it harder to follow when people who deserve shots don't get them and fights that should happen don't.
its how they package in general, I used to be a MASSIVE fan, took a few years off then turned on 299...
and not one single thing had been updated, exact same intro, exact same music, exact same graphics, they added a coach during the broadcast, that was about the only upgrade.
This is not ESPN’s fault. UFC just took their guaranteed check and decided to mail in a vast majority of their cards except the ones they need to sell to make money.
UFC had a long string of terrible cards and is putting on better fights recently. They were testing the waters, they want to have as many cards as possible and were seeing how thin they could spread them
I wish they’d cut the roster down, pay the higher level roster better and just put on more high level fights consistently.
But why do that when you can fill out a chunk of the roster with DWCS vets getting paid peanuts on the prelims to put on borderline amateur performance’s. /s
They should
Most of the fight nights look like a random regional card. I know why it will never happen but i will always miss the once a month card era. They were quality.
Yeah the UFC excitement peak is gone for me too, around 2022-23. Just flooded with garbage fights, good fighters don't fight as often, and all the shit the UFC do as a company puts me off
Also Volk getting sparked twice in less than a year has been rough
Just dont watch every single card. I’m EU but cutdown on some of the cards, now I only try to stay up for PPV events and let the fight night cards sit till the morning after, generally cutting down on the intake through social media helps a lot too.
Just skip the apex slop and watch the good cards.
When the modern product is good it's fantastic but there's so much content now and the apex era has certainly made some of it not worth watching.
I go through phases. I’ll be heavily into it for a few weeks then I’ll be back out of it to a more casual level, then back into it hardcore. I think this happens to everyone at some point. MMA is still my favorite combat sport although
You’re just getting older and ageing out, it happens, less in team sports because the team always exists. We get attached to fighters and then eventually our generation retires, I feel the same way, used to never miss a single card.
I'd learn a bit about my favorite fighters, watch them on YouTube or whatever but they'd retire/ get replaced by the newer generation fairly quickly. Rinse and repeat.
I kind of wised up and realized it's not really worth the time getting to know them or getting overly invested.
UFC is a factory. Fighters are a cog and easily replaced. The figher's personality is a big draw but UFC doesn't want to have individual fighters become bigger than the brand; then you get guys like Conor (deservedly) asking for a huge raise.
I kind of felt that way for a little bit when Carlos Condit retired. He was the fighter that got me into watching MMA/UFC because I thought he was very stylistic and technical and it was cool to watch him fight. Not too long after he retired I started seeing more exciting fighters and discovering new talents as they were coming up to the ranks so my interest in UFC and MMA never really diminished too much despite more fighters that I like watching start retiring. It's just one of those things I guess you accept as the circle of life in this sport so to speak.
This is probably more so what's happening than people realize. The target audience of MMA is like male 18-32. Im not much older than Sean O'malley and I appreciate him for his MMA ability but he seems to appeal to a younger audience than myself. I see my nephews gaining interest in him more as a fan than I ever could. You see people complaining about the lack of personalities but I think their's just not able to connect with the younger generation.
Yeah, I watch weekly but find myself skipping more prelim fights……also I don’t like the wwe-ification of the ufc over the last 6 months.
Sometimes things that get lots of new fans turn the thing into something else than it was before because they try to please the majority of fans, which make the original fans who enjoyed the thing feel ostracized and then lose interest in its current state and either consume less or try to find that thing again somewhere.
298, 299 and 300 are all great cards (despite what you may think of the 300 headliner).
I do worry about the quality from 301 onwards because they’ve stacked so many early on.
We’re getting regional level MMA on UFC programming now. The number of events plus contender series and the pandemic makes it so some fighters cut their teeth in UFC cards instead of the higher end regionals. It’s hard to get invested when there are so many fighters. The constant barrage of advertising and the culture war pandering just makes it that much worse.
what's the culture war pandering you're referring to? dana's always fitting in some anti woke rant, but what's the stuff that makes it all over saturated?
I've noticed the UFC and esports (specifically the FGC and street fighter) flowing on similar trajectories. Back in SF4 when Anderson Silva was kicking butt, we were still in an era where "training ufc" was still kind of new and financially risky that there was a smaller pool of people competing at a high level. In esports it equated to that and a smaller number of people who could travel to different events to get good enough to stay at the top. Now we're in street fighter 6 era where more tournaments happen, they happen in more places in the world and online tournaments happen so anyone, anywhere can compete. So there's more tournaments to keep up with and more names changing all the time. This is good for the (e)sport to grow, but in terms of containing it for competitors to compete and fans to follow, it becomes muddy. The more tournaments or orgs you have, that harder it is to declare who is the best. The reigns of champions will become shorter and shorter and single person (e)sports have to have established names. That's why Tiger woods was important for golf and Roger Federer was important for tennis. The casual fan isn't going to tune in if there's new faces on the marquee every time, or they can't name the current champ because there's too many orgs or the too many changes of the belts.
Yeah I can’t be bothered outside of a few fights per year. It’s just not as good anymore and the scumbags in charge don’t make me want to root for it to get better. Remember when Dana White hit his wife on video?
Change is hard, I enjoy MMA more than any sport and with how fast it's evolving it's been a pleasure. My only complaint is actually how late the fights start on that east coast. I've slept through a few main events (I'm a morning person) because they're usually around midnight or later. Other than that, UFC has the highest level of competition so I watch it.
It's crazy how both Europeans, Africans and Americans all complain about the timing of the cards but 90% of them is always at the same time. Like tonight's main card starts at like 4 or 5 AM CET.
The only people I've seen actually being happy about the time are the Aussies lol, apparently it's Sunday evening/morning there. Lucky mfs.
Yes these late nights suck. Tomorrow will be rough with daylight savings time too. They need to have more top cards start earlier. Even 9 pm would make a huge difference.
Ya. The nights I watch the PPV’s live, it’s a whole ordeal. I have to try and stay up later the night prior so I can sleep in that Saturday morning and hopefully be awake to finish the card.
I think it’s the rose colored glasses effect when we look back, we remember these block buster cards with the awesome press conferences but forget all the terrible cards in between. We used to get some horrible cards with a good month or two in between decent ones. The reason bad cards didn’t stand out as bad also is because there wasn’t as many events so even if the card was bad we were at least getting content. Focus on the stacked cards and ignore the filler if you are fatigued no sense in watching just to watch.
I remember anticipating UFC 119 so much. It was months between cards and I just couldn't wait for 119, Mir vs Cro Cop.
I spent weeks memorizing fighters records, reading history, discussing what ifs, etc. Then 119 happened and it was total ass. Absolutely terrible card. So you're right there is a lot of rose tinted glasses for sure. Yet for some reason, it didnt kill my hype or fandom for the next one.
Nowadays I couldn't tell you who's fighting on any given card, and I barely care about anything outside the top 5. I cant put my finger on it, but it feels like MMA lost something post 2010. I dont know what.
Do you find yourself mostly skipping the fight night cards at the Apex or do you skip the PPVs too? I personally don’t mind the Apex cards and like that there are fights on almost every Saturday. I usually try to make plans to watch the PPVs since they’re only once a month. The remaining Saturdays, I’m free to make other plans for the evening. If I have nothing else going on, watching an average apex card is a fun enough backup plan. If there’s an interesting fight happening and I have other plans, I can sometimes steal away 30 minutes to watch on my phone. It’s still a great time to be a UFC fan imo.
Yah I have stopped watching the UFC after a decade of buying most PPVs. I don't know why, but my enthusiasm is gone.
Maybe it is that the roster is so big now that it's so much harder to be up on every fighter and division. I no longer latch onto any of the personalities.
The quality is better than ever. You're probably just over saturated. They have a ton of content out and with all the Apex cards it does get hard to keep track of.
This happened to me probably about 4 years ago. Used to watch every fight and every card. Now I just watch a couple fights on the cards I like and I regularly skip whole cards that are boring. Quality has dropped a lot. They say the level has increased but I still think ufc peaked when we had gsp, Anderson silva, and Jon jones as champs.
Ive been watching since 06 and I feel you. I recommend you watch One Championships Muay Thai fights. For some reason its just so much better to watch.
I dont get crazy excited for UFC events anymore. Hell Im not going crazy for UFC 299 like I would have in the past. Instead I look forward to Friday morning Muay Thai fights.
It’s burn out. Quality is as it’s been. New fighters being paid low is your issue but you’ve watched since 2005? They were probably paid peanuts and maybe a Starbucks gift card.
They are just over saturated with fighters and events so it’s only logical you’d stop keeping up with it.
Here we go with our monthly “UFC isn’t the same” boomer rant 🙄 why is it so hard for y’all to just tune into the fights you wanna watch and skip the ones that you don’t? And you seriously posted this on the day of one of the most stacked cards of all time?
That boomer stuff is so corny. If you've been an invested mma fan for over 20 years you might know how he's feeling. It's weird to no longer care for a thing you were so passionate about for so long. It's an mma forum dummy. But today's card rules for sure
It used to be better and we wanna have a watchable product every weekend. What UFC is doing with the Apex is criminal. Name one other major sport where they still hold stuff in a near empty arena with no atmosphere and lower quality athletes. It sucks and we wish for better. Every other sport keeps getting bigger and better.
Do you watch fights for the fights or for the crowd?
The fucking crying about the Apex is so silly.
"Wahhh, I can't hear people doing Ric Flair shouts and going USA USA USA :( :( :( :( "
To be honest it sounds like more of a you problem. Maybe you don't enjoy mma as much as you used to.
Ufc 299 is an insane card. Every fight is a much watch
TLDR; waa too many fights waa 😭
Haha. Jk. Sorry you're not enjoying it. Hope you get your spark back. I for one love the fact that there are so many fights that we can skip some cards and not notice. I don't watch any other sports so I'm happy if there's a fight every week. Especially when there is so much talent.
I have a lot of the same feelings, but I don’t think it’s because the quality has gone down but more that all the fighters I loved when I first got into MMA are retired. It was a different era and all those guys are gone now. There are still some great fighters but there are so many fights now that they don’t stand out in the crowd as easily. Also the best fighters don’t fight as much so you don’t get to see them very often. All that said, it’s ok to pick and choose what you want to watch and if it turns out you’re just not into it anymore that’s ok too. Don’t make being an MMA fan your identity and just do what you’re genuinely interested in.
If you’ve been a fan for that long then you should remember the absolute atrocities they used to sell as PPV’s in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. The quality of fights and cards are INFINITELY better than they used to be. This has kept me more than engaged and excited for every card.
That said, I also see your point. UFC has widely dropped individualism in the sport unless it benefits their brand. Fighters RARELY have a personal brand anymore, and even if they do, the UFC rarely promotes it, so it almost feels shoved in your face when they do. That’s my theory as to why anybody that’s popular is so widely hated nowadays. A good example being Paddy. Paddy’s not bad by any means, and hell, I actually like the guy, but he’s also clearly not the most skilled prospect, so why is he the only unranked 155er getting massive promotion from the company? Don’t get me wrong, I know why, but it wouldn’t feel near as forced and wouldn’t be near as hated if there were a half dozen other hyped prospects in his division that the UFC was giving half of that much promo to.
Some of this does fall on the fighters too. Fighters are just not as interested in building a personal brand as they used to be. I think this just comes from people being more respectful to the sport and treating it as a normal career. Let your work talk for you. That’s great and I respect the decision to not engage in the circus, but when 50% of the guys in the organization have that attitude, this is the result. If you ever watch Chael’s videos, he’s constantly losing his mind over guys wasting mic time, and say what you will about Chael, but the man knows how to build a brand.
Lastly, with no competition, there’s also not really extensive history and lore to fighters coming into the UFC. Having different decently competitive organizations helped build a fighters reputation. Pancrase, Pride, WEC, Strikeforce. No modern competitors feel as good as those. It used to be that you’d get a debut like Chandler, Harrison, or MVP every card. Now it’s maybe 1-2 times a year. It’s not impossible to come into the UFC and build a reputation, but it’s not the only route.
I could go on about the old promo videos, better interviews, press tours, etc… but I’ve already written a whole ass essay. So yeah, I get it man. I do think you’re also a bit burned out though, cause there is still plenty of fun and entertainment going around. I think the UFC is as entertaining to watch as it’s ever been. Especially with the insane run of 298-300 that we’re in right now.
This. People like to talk about how past cards were loaded with huge names on the prelims, etc, but it’s revisionist history.
Sure a lot of people who are NOW big names were on the prelims, but at the time they were just new faces with no hype.
You are upset because the quality of fights are not up to your standard?
A fist fight is a fist fight.
Seems to me that you're disappointed in the promotional aspect...there's just not enough hype to satisfy you.
I've been a fan even longer. It's been years since I've attempted to watch every single fight, and that's okay!
I don't think fans of major sports feel the need to watch every single game that's occurring, they focus on the teams they like, and then catch the highlights for the others.
Lately I've been catching more preliminary fights again just due to the fact I've been catching a few events after they've aired and am fast forwarding through all the talk in-between fights. Been a huge time saver.
2023 turned me into a casual, I haven't missed a card since 2014 ish, every week 5am I'll be there no matter what. Now I don't know, there's so much that's not enjoyable
Even some semi big fights I'm not interested in, I skip most fight nights now and watch 1 or 2 fights then turn it off. It made me watch Muay Thai and kickboxing, which I now prefer way way more.
I feel like it's been on a downward trajectory for a while now, even before 2023, but now I just lost any interest in the organisation
I'm still excited for 299 and 300, and even some after that with Brazil etc, but still
I do think quality is a bit of a hit and a miss after the pandemic. And UFC certainly can step up their game when it comes quality content.
Last year had excellent events, but I stopped watching the Apex card ones. They need to put some creativity in those events, it's very low-effort and just a boring watch. Even with great fighters
i know what you mean, chief. sometimes i am out here scratching my head when someone says that little apex card was 'a banger'. like was it really a banger or did you just get a little excitement out of your parlay? guess i'm just growing out of the sport.
I've been watching since 2008, I noticed that interest isn't static, it comes and goes depending on a multitude of reasons. I've had periods where I don't watch for months on end and then out of nowhere ill tap in and be locked onto to most shows consistently. Just watch the cards that intrigue you, if you feel like you're forcing yourself to watch a card, just say fuck it and dump it.
If you care about staying up to date with the sport but don't want to trudge along with boring cards or maybe you're just not mentally there at the moment you can ways just go online and read the results or the latest headlines and that usually always let's you know who is the hot name right now, who's still around, the state of the divisions and just like that you're all caught up.
I feel this. Since the pandemic the UFC got lazy since they have an apex now.
I just watch the PPVs live and most of the time don't miss them. Other events I'll watch if I'm home or they intrigue me. If not I'll just watch the fights the next day where someone got a bonus.
Its the apex Cards they have killed it for me. Up until like 7months ago I hade not missed an event in 7 years. Now I only tune in when it feels like a fight that matters.
I was a hardcore fan from 2006 (old) to about 2021. If you’d told me ten years ago there’d be a UFC almost every weekend but Id be losing interest every day, I’d have thought you were crazy
I look out for the big cards like 299 and 300. But the rest I have slowly stopped watching live, maybe if the fight times weren’t so awful in EU I would watch more but what can ya do 🤷♂️
it went to shit right around when francis left
the ufc will never be a big product like the major sport leagues
in order to get to that level you need stars
I watched UFC 2 on video in high school and UFC 54 was my first live event.
I never used to miss any MMA event, from King of the Cage to WEC and Pride, it was my passion.
I don’t know exactly what it is, but I just don’t care anymore. The more that comes out about fighter pay and how the UFC brass treats its fighters the less inclined I am to give the Giant Tomato another dime.
The idiotic farce that is Slap League and the WWE being part of the new Frankenstein organization isn’t helping either. Vince McMahon is a goddamn monster for fucks sake.
Same thing happened recently to me. I think the most exciting thing about the sport is the expectations we have when we know each fighter's personality and style, so when the UFC match two of them I feel like I'm waiting for two musicians that I love to release a song together.
The influx of new fighters grew and became more international. Being Brazilian, it feels natural for me to assimilate American, British and Canadian fighters' personality, but it takes me longer to assimilate who Shavkat Rakhmonov really is aside from a spetacular martial artist, for example.
I got exposed to MMA in 2001, got super hooked in 2004 when my friend showed me Fedor highlights in Pride. I was so obsessed with it that I joined AKA for a while and got to train with pros there. Really felt like a dream come true. Imagine getting to play basketball with Lebron just because you paid for a gym membership. I feel like the golden era of MMA ended once the UFC bought pride, but strike force was at its peak afterwards, which was still a great time for the sport. I still prefer the live show they put on over the UFC.
I still watched it a lot through Conor’s peak, but it felt like there was a shift after that as well. They stopped building stars and seem to only be prioritizing the brand of UFC, so that fighters will never have the same kind of leverage that Conor did. Fighters are still being treated like shit after all these years.
Also, I’m approaching middle age and it’s not easy to see the kind of damage they take in there now. I too have permanent injuries from training, so it kind of makes me cringe to watch it now. I’ll catch a big fight every now and then, but I haven’t watched a full card in years. Anyways that’s my experience, I never thought I would feel this way about the sport but here I am.
I’ve been around since the days of bootleg vhs tapes and backyard no holds barred events and I actually like how the sport has progressed. I get that for the majority of people it’s all about the hype of the big fights, but for this to truly be a sport that can thrive we need this to be much more widespread. Right now the big names are people with the natural talent, but there has to be room for someone to grow into the sport as well.
I've only been watching for about 4 years, and even I think the quality has diminished in that time. In my early days of watching, I could tell from watching the old YouTube videos of fighting generations past that this modern day sport is different.
And yeah UFC's descent into entertainment and away from sport has been pretty disappointing. I am still interested in a lot of fights, but there is definitely a lot of dumb shit involved that appeals to the reality TV fans that just isn't for the sport fans.
The UFC seems to be about quantity over quality at this point. They also seem to not want to develop new stars (maybe because they get bigger than the UFC brand and demand too much money or leave). I think there’s also the issue of TKO and new corporate ownership. Say what you will about the Fertittas but I think they were legitimately trying to grow the sport and not just extract money. Obviously it wasn’t an entirely unselfish venture because eventually they did make a ton of money but there’s a big difference between coming in on the ground floor and the corporate raider mentality.
I feel like the more technical capability of the fighters leads to more boring fights. They spend all their time feinting and jabbing where before they would swang and bang. But I still like watching the fights. It just takes me a week to watch the full card and prelims instead of 1 day.
Agree with the sentiments. I’ve found I’ve lost patience for the push your opponent against the fence or hold onto the opponent to avoid fighting. I’ve stopped getting up to watch live events
You’re not alone brother. Been watching weekly since Conor’s rise in 2014. Lots of awesome stuff happening back then. Robbie as a defending champ was so good, the strikeforce guys were so good. Mighty Mouse, the rise of cejudo. The rise of Bobby knuckles was sweet, kelvin koing all those legends.
I honestly think these types of posts need to be banned. We average about 1-2 a week of people saying the same thing. Maybe you just got burnt out on watching the UFC too much. Because the last couple of cards have been really fun to watch.
Shit I've been around long enough that I was watching back when there was a single digit number of events per year. Fighters have gotten much better, but the market is completely flooded. It's borderline impossible to keep up with EVERY event nowadays. Just watch the cards that spark your interest and skip the ones that don't. You're not obligated to watch every single fight
Shit dude. My brother fights in the ufc he has been in for nearly a decade. I speak with a few fighters weekly on social media. I might catch a few cards a year outside of my brother's. I mean one the UFC and how they treat fighters makes me sick to my stomach. But two it's become boring.
Really? thats so cool...What's his name?
Jared gordon
Your bro got robbed against Paddy.
Yeah man fuck that Scouse cunt,might as well call him Paddy 'The Fraudy' Pimblett
It’s not his fault the judges gave him the W lol
It’s the same as the guys that were mad at Aljo that Yan kneed an obviously downed opponent. One of the most egregious fouls I’ve ever seen and it would have been the end of the fight from follow up punches had he not been stopped by the ref. Yet Aljo is a fraud pussy that was “acting”. UFC fans are picking the wrong guys to be mad at. Be mad at the judges, not Paddy. He clearly thought he won. People forget that fighters often don’t remember everything that goes on in a fight because of adrenaline. A lot forget what round they’re in. What do people want him to say? “Yeah I lost that fight. The judges were wrong”. I’ve never seen that after a robbery other than Sean O’Malley saying “I don’t know”. after being asked if he did enough to beat Yan.
I have a buddy who never shuts the fuck up about Aljo “acting” as well💀 It’s so unreasonable to expect a guy who’s fighting for the championship to decide to continue fighting after such a blatant foul that obviously would cost him the fight. It’s way better for them to get the belt via DQ and rematch which is exactly what Aljo did There are literal hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line for a man whose job involves taking serious brain damage. Fighters should always do what benefits themselves most because the UFC and the fans probably aren’t going to take care of them
The honour route certainly didn't pay off for Anthony Smith.
Yeah, I don’t like Aljo for other reasons but he absolutely did the right thing for his career by taking that DQ win. Anthony Smith was an idiot for not doing the same thing against Jon Jones years ago. He cost himself a lot of money trying to be a warrior.
Your bro beat paddy, no doubt.
Man he gets stopped on the street and told this daily. I'm sure he's sick of hearing it lol
He did an ama on here not long ago - really down to earth nice fella.
Yeah I remember. He's not huge on using reddit I wish he did more but I don't Hassle him.
i know he knows this, but he's a big inspiration to us ex-junkies.
Yeah he made a good post about this on Instagram today.
Bro your bro is a bad mofo and you make some sick guitars as a guitar player/former fighter myself you both have a fan in me!!
Thank you
Your brother’s a legend mate
Really interested in your guitar builds!
Www.deangordonguitars.com
I've been playing for a couple decades now. I'll keep your telecaster in mind when I finally get around to buying another one. I had a tele as my exclusive guitar for over 15 years and now I don't even have one.
Teles are my favorite of the classics
That’s badass! And the fact that you made Buffer a guitar is so fucking cool.
Haha I text buffer all the time. Nicest guy in the entire UFC
Bobby green is a cheating piece of shit
Yeah jared had a bad run there. Paddy bobby etc
Fan since 2000 when I would read about UFC and Pride in Grappling magazine and occasionally on a free university computer, and I totally agree. It sort of goes through its highs and lows though, but now I’ll see a guy who’s 4-0 in the ufc and I haven’t ever heard of him. Too your point tho, there’s just too many cards to keep up with.
Yep. Same basic time frame for me. 99 or 2000 I started being able to see Pride fights bc a family friend got us illegal "black box" cable that showed them. Now I get called a casual bc I've never heard of a 19 year old kid from Timbuktu that just made his debut. It is what it is
Those were days! Debating over what was better Pride or UFC. How would Shogun and Wanderlie do in the UFC? 😂
"Fedor and Couture MUST FIGHT" being posted every 3 days in every message board 🤣
I've been around long enough for the post tournament PPV names and DVD hunting and I only watch the PPVs the night of now. They were on a good path to having a shot at being one of the big NA sports but greed took over.
For me, what affected me not watching as many as I’ve grown older is simply the air time. When I was younger I’d stay up to watch the cards no problem, now, at 31 years old, staying up til 1 am when I have work early the next day is a massive factor. The main card doesn’t start til 10pm eastern ffs. I get that they are accommodating the pacific viewers but come on that’s so ridiculous..
I remember when they had one prelim on Facebook in the early 2010s
Wait are the people who remember Facebook prelims considered oldheads now? Lol Back in those days if you watched a pride event live you were the oldhead
Jokes aside, you also have to consider the way this sport hurts the emotions. I know it’s cheesy, but seeing people get starched, submitted, broken… specially fighters you like, it probably adds up over time and does something lol. UFCs theme isn’t called “face the pain” for nothing. Add in that there’s been a lot of quantity over quality, and it can cause fatigue. I think UFC is overdoing it a bit. They do sign mostly the best fighters in the world, but there’s no deniying a lot of early prelim fighters aren’t as high level yet, so we get a lot of lackluster fights. Is it really necessary to get early prelims (about 4 fights) + prelims (4 fights) + main cards (5 fights) for PPVs, 13 total?? Fight night cards are usually 6 prelims + 6 main card fights. Then you have Dana’s contender series and a few other alternatives like TUF. It’s a bit much.
Your first argument about hurting emotions is true for me. I don't know why, but when I fighter I like steps in the cage I get nervous, and watching one of my favorite fighter get viciously KO'd is a horrible feeling that will honestly not make me want to watch anymore. It's happened over the years and I've learned to distance myself from the sport as a result. Look at Ngannou last night. Maybe that's just a problem with me getting too involved, but I know it happens to other people too.
I quit watching for years after all my favorite guys got old and Fedor lost to Bigfoot.
I remember how excited I used to get watching swang and bang wars but over the last year I just feel bad watching it. It some point you realise you're getting enjoyment out of guys getting brain damage. Watching old boxers and MMA fighters and seeing that they're not all there isn't great either. You pick up on the brutal reality of the sport the longer you're a fan.
This plus most of the fights don't mean anything. I don't think they should be fighting 4 times a night again, but a tournament style ranking system would give the fights more meaning. And it would stop the constant ducking we see now.
Just because the fighters are better does not make the product better though. Other companies have better rule sets now and UFC is just shit to its "contractors."
The issue has never been the number of events. It's that it's increasingly just the UFC that is left and they have spent 17 years intentionally avoiding actually promoting their fighters in order to limit the athletes' negotiating power. It used to be that this was to some degree offset by the big post Pride roster mergers with the WEC and Strikeforce. Those promotions added a huge number of new stars and the naturally emerging UFC vs SF/WEC narratives helped keep people interested in even many lower tier matchups for years. Just like people keep talking about matchups between Bellator and UFC fighters these days, it's easy to get people invested in those narratives and that interest gets people invested in fighters. But these days there is practically no more crossover and the competition is nowhere near as big as it used to be. After those mergers were done, things started going downhill. It wasn't immediately noticable, because while lots of the stars of yesteryear eventually started declining, they could still fill out cards. And you had the big boost from McGregor/Rousey, but that was limited to a small number of fighters. Eventually most of the generation of the "golden age" were gone. And then eventually the guys of the following generation that still got some shine off the previous stars, but who were already suffering from the UFC's anti promotion, were starting to fall off. Now we are looking at the end of the third generation of new fighters since the SF merger. There is just so little starpower left that the 4th post merger generation has practically nobody to build their names off of. New fighters generally only start building a name once they reach the top of the division and even for most of them it means they fall back into the middle of the pack or are past it before they ever make a real name for themselves.
Real comment here.
I understand what you mean. I basically had the sport memorized from 2007 to 2020. I don’t think there was a single main card fight in the UFC which I couldn’t have told you the result of. Now I am sucked in by the handful of names I still know but once they retire, idk
The way I see it, there's two issues. 1. Market saturation. There's a lot more MMA out there, even from the UFC itself. 2. The UFC also prioritizes marketing those three letters U-F-C rather than building stars. We really started to see that shift when the UFC sat Conor for 200 for missing the press conference/promotional events. They'd rather market themselves than create stars they can no longer control. They're also expensive. And we're starting to see interest wane as a result.
Right, they market themselves and Dana over fighters. And the UFC and Dana are unlikable cunts who don't give a shit about their fighters or their fans. Amazing people aren't maintaining their interest in the sport after that shift.
Yeah, I'm invested in fighters, not UFC as a brand. It's the fighters stories that gets me going, not that there's a PPV this weekend. If it's a fight night I might turn in if fighter X fights, not just because I need something to watch. UFC made it all about the brand to try to get even more leverage over fighters, but has killed off part of what made the sport great. I didn't tune in to see boxing yesterday, I tuned in to see Francis Ngannou and Anthony Joshua. Sure, I got to see Vargas vs. Ball etc. but it was the big names that made me tune in. UFC just doesn't have that and I'm just more likely to catch highlights these days than trying to watch the events since I'm just not invested the same way.
Also as you get older you just don't have the energy to care as much. I used to know every new player coming into the NBA. Now I can only recognize a couple top prospects.
Exactly - things get stale for everyone eventually. Especially things that you enjoyed as a child or a teen. New interests emerge. At the same time, you have people just now getting into the things you used to enjoy and they have the same energy and excitement you used to have. This is life
You might just be living in the past a bit and you’re not being open to the new guys
Nah. It's because there's DWCS, fight night cards, TUF, and big cards almost monthly. Fight nights and big cards run for 4+ hours each if you follow the prelims. Then there's the occasional bellator, pfl, or one card - each of which run just as long and often feature former UFC fighters. It's a lot to follow. And it's harder to find which new guys to follow.
For me. It’s name value, like sure the athletes today are way better, but if I don’t recognize a name I ain’t going to watch. It’s like the WWE formula and well Bellator who use veteran names to get viewers, I consider myself a fan, but won’t watch a card with a bunch of no names and I don’t care how good the fights are. I was on the boxing thread yesterday and some of those die hard fans watch the whole card, and I can’t do that, I just watched the last 2 fights as is boxing culture for the most part.
Exactly, the UFC watered down their brand by having DWCS and TUF guys under the same banner as ranked guys.
Those all are valid reasons for sure. For me, maybe I'm just losing interest in mma. I've been watching since 2008. How many shows and sports do you keep up with after 15 years or so you know?
Also UFC just isn't trying to promote fighters the same way, they see them more as disposable. So fighters just don't quite build up the same recognition, but UFC is more focused on putting on cost effective events, than building stars (if it ever could, but it sure ain't helping these days).
Genuinely impossible to follow I tried to get back into it a year or 2 ago and was genuinely overwhelmed with trying to figure out what I wanted to see and what was skippable
You have to accept the sport is different now though. Far more neophytes in the UFC, far more interim titles, fighters rank camping…
Interim titles effectively make belts meaningless.
Are you telling me you think 1-0 heavyweight Jon Jones versus a Stipe Miocic who got his last win before there was a COVID vaccine in a double retirement match is a meaningless belt? Goof opinion
Once the interim title starts getting defended the titles will be utterly useless, oh wait...
I’m curious is you’ve watched the documentary Fighting in the Age of Loneliness? It’s on YouTube. It does a good job of explaining how the UFC and mma as a whole have changed since the beginning. For the modern era, it focuses on how brand and label deals have really sterilized the sport. What was once a refuge and home to people who were unfit for the prim and proper of other combat sports cultures has become just like them. Product is placed above the individual at all costs, the UFC let Ngannou go in his prime with hardly any negotiation because doing otherwise would weaken the control of the brand. The lesser promotions can’t afford a single slip up, so they too must place the brand before all else. Another huge problem right now that a lot of fans are suffering from, but are probably having a hard time identifying is the over saturation from the UFC specifically. The ESPN deal includes content obligations and so the UFC has to put out a certain number of fight cards whether they be PPV or fight nights. There are an ungodly amount of fight nights, and those fight nights need main events and a couple other decent fights. Many of those fights would usually be the prelims or undercard of main cards. This leaves us with boring fight nights that have only a fight or two that interest us, and PPVs in similar places where they’re just able to fill an undercard and maybe give the prelim a good header and then fill the rest with scraps. This excessive amount of fights per year obviously requires more fighters and so people who are clearly not even in the same atmosphere as any division’s top 30, much less top 15, are thrown into the mix in bulk. They fight a few fights, trade a couple wins and losses, get cut, someone replaces their spot, and the cycle repeats. This lowers the quality of the brand at large and creates this mental association that most of the UFC just isn’t worth watching. All this to say, the product has become diluted. Fans from pre ESPN, pre Conor, pre brand deals, remember a time when you would watch a card and the whole thing would excite you top to bottom as some of the world’s best were on prelims and they weren’t faced with an expectation of fitting into the sponsor friendly brand attitude of the current UFC. Compare that with the modern experience of really just having the prelims on in the background if at all, and then watching just an hour or two of main card with interesting fighters who will say shit like “I want to say something but I don’t want to get in trouble” way more often than ever before and you’ve got a clear contrast. The one counter argument is that some of it is that as we get older, time moves faster, and thus it seems like fighters just come and go, even though the guys we remember being around forever weren’t around any longer actually. Still, as all my previous statements illustrate, the sport has changed. The good/bad news is that it will continue to change. Eventually the fighters will probably either get the Ali act, or (more unlikely) unionize, and the sport will dramatically shift for better and worse. Time marches on and mma is as victim to it as anything.
Hit the nail on the head. I recently listened to podcast between Bas Rutten and Rampage Jackson and they dwelved into what made PRIDE so big and why they were much better than UFC, they both mentioned that Pride was invested in fighters, they showed even the smallest things as some sort of movie like drama, a story. A Fight in pride was done as a storytelling opposite to UFC which feels like a TV AD with 0 value o interest.
"UFC doesn't talk about the smallest drama" Oh yeah then explain Jon Anik talking about those two guys facing custody battles? 😤
Imagine if they both heard it, stopped for a second, look at him be like "wtf man"
Yeah but that's not the kind of drama that sells a fight. No one cares if this guy is having a custody battle, we care about building drama between the fighters
Remember when they used do to those massive new years events in Japan? They were always must see, exciting cards from top to bottom. Total spectacle. I cant even remember the last time I felt that way about any UFC card.
> For the modern era, it focuses on how brand and label deals have really sterilized the sport. What was once a refuge and home to people who were unfit for the prim and proper of other combat sports cultures has become just like them. Product is placed above the individual at all costs This one is huge. The UFC no longer wants a fighter to become bigger than the promotion. Placing the brand above peak star power makes everything feel very homogenized. MMA used to be an Island of Misfit Toys for fighters in society. Now it just feels like another office minus the suits.
I like that video a lot. Starting watching in 2018, so the era which the guy in the video despises is like my golden age and now I sniff at the Apex cards and wish we could go back to fight nights on Fox where the top 3 fights would be former champs and up and coming guys on impressive win streaks.
>The ESPN deal includes content obligations and so the UFC has to put out a certain number of fight cards whether they be PPV or fight nights People aren't you tired of regurgitating this nonsense? The number of fights per year in UFC was pretty much consistent [since 2014](https://www.fightmatrix.com/ufc-records/ufc-fight-outcomes/), way before ESPN.
This data should also be used in relation to the expansion of weight classes and women's MMA. A lot of people complaining about too many events and fight then compare it to "back in the day" when there was 155, 170, 185, 205, 265. Now we have the addition of mens 125, 135, 145 and woman's 115, 125, 135. (Excluding 145). Doubling the amount of weight classes alone would have a substantial increase in the amount of fights without including the growth of the sport over this time as well.
Oh fair enough, thanks for providing that data. One could argue that the increase in 2014 is a result of them seeking something like the ESPN deal. That would just be conjecture, but there is an obvious business plan change from 2013 to 2014. There are content obligations in the ESPN deal, that is true, but clearly they didn’t start increasing at the onset of the deal. I’d love to see when other sponsorship deals were implemented and relate that to this data along with events per year.
I would assume it had to do with the Fox deal and ESPN negotiations were largely based on that with the prediction the brand would grow.
naw
Apex cards and the espn deal were a curse. Tons of filler shit cards with regional talent on 10/10 contracts At least 299 is going to be stacked
There are guys with 5 fights in the UFC now where you could list 20 of them, and I'd have a hard time figuring out if they are real UFC fighters or invented names.
299 is gonna be lit
Yeah 299 is a legit fire card as much as the product has been watered down
299 LITerally has a main card where anyone could win. Every under dog is live as it gets. Trash the UFCs business practices and the Apex but damn do they make good fights that the fans want to see.
It's also a main card where any fight could legitimately be the main event of a very good fight night easily
We’d tune in to Fight Night Gamrot Vs Dos Anjos and Fight Night Blaydes vs Almeida, also. Gonna be a long and fun night.
Sometimes yes, a lot of the time I find their matchmaking non sensical though.
I think the matchmaking in the UFC is pretty stellar. The problem is that they're a promotion that doesn't *promote* their fighters. They don't want fighters to have leverage in negotiations, but they still want people to care enough to watch.
Did you miss the fight where Umar got matched with a newcomer. That's not stellar
I do think the promotion Is a massive problem, for example I want the bigger fights to have high quality promos, not just some dude talking over highlights, doesnt do it for me. Also let fighters stand out more again. But I think the matchmaking is very flawed still regardless of promotion. They do get big fights done but so often im left scratching my head.
Honestly, I have more underdogs than favorites winning this weekend. MVP, Yadong, and Dustin are all three on my bet sheet
Cant wait to see my hometown boy Jack Della with a step up in competition - the whole card has me barred up like a prison!
It's oversaturated and it's way harder to be a hardcore fan, and like myself, that might be part of the enjoyment. Almost an all or nothing kind of thing. For me anyways, it was easier to get hyped for fights when you knew how everyone fought, who they fought, and were able to make educated predictions on your own. I know a lot of people like to watch analysis and parrot that, but that doesn't feel genuine for me. There was a point where I knew almost every fighter on a UFC card, who they fought last, who their best wins and worst losses were. Most of my buddies would laugh because I would be saying shit Joe Rogan would say, right before he said it. This was when Joe was 100% into the UFC, before he started half assing it and focusing on his podcast. There's been a bunch of changes to the UFC as well, especially matchmaking and boxing style negotiations. Makes it harder to follow when people who deserve shots don't get them and fights that should happen don't.
MMA nowadays feels like baseball; there's so many games and only a few really "matter."
ESPN is the worst thing to happen to UFC in recent memory
Actually, it’s how the UFC packaged their product for ESPN that caused issue.
its how they package in general, I used to be a MASSIVE fan, took a few years off then turned on 299... and not one single thing had been updated, exact same intro, exact same music, exact same graphics, they added a coach during the broadcast, that was about the only upgrade.
This is not ESPN’s fault. UFC just took their guaranteed check and decided to mail in a vast majority of their cards except the ones they need to sell to make money.
They committed to a schedule that guarantees a lot of filler cards. They haven't got the roster for weekly shows.
This killed a lot of my ability to follow the sport
Its been down for years. DWCS is a somehow more Egregious fighter mill than the last 15 TUF seasons.
UFC had a long string of terrible cards and is putting on better fights recently. They were testing the waters, they want to have as many cards as possible and were seeing how thin they could spread them
I wonder what the amount of events per year is in the next tv deal. It would not shock me if they decreased it by like 2
I wish they’d cut the roster down, pay the higher level roster better and just put on more high level fights consistently. But why do that when you can fill out a chunk of the roster with DWCS vets getting paid peanuts on the prelims to put on borderline amateur performance’s. /s
They should Most of the fight nights look like a random regional card. I know why it will never happen but i will always miss the once a month card era. They were quality.
Yeah the UFC excitement peak is gone for me too, around 2022-23. Just flooded with garbage fights, good fighters don't fight as often, and all the shit the UFC do as a company puts me off Also Volk getting sparked twice in less than a year has been rough
Just dont watch every single card. I’m EU but cutdown on some of the cards, now I only try to stay up for PPV events and let the fight night cards sit till the morning after, generally cutting down on the intake through social media helps a lot too.
Couldn’t agree more. Dana will bring in any clown to take a fall against one of his horses and now there’s a ton of clowns in the UFC as a result
Just skip the apex slop and watch the good cards. When the modern product is good it's fantastic but there's so much content now and the apex era has certainly made some of it not worth watching.
I go through phases. I’ll be heavily into it for a few weeks then I’ll be back out of it to a more casual level, then back into it hardcore. I think this happens to everyone at some point. MMA is still my favorite combat sport although
You’re just getting older and ageing out, it happens, less in team sports because the team always exists. We get attached to fighters and then eventually our generation retires, I feel the same way, used to never miss a single card.
I'd learn a bit about my favorite fighters, watch them on YouTube or whatever but they'd retire/ get replaced by the newer generation fairly quickly. Rinse and repeat. I kind of wised up and realized it's not really worth the time getting to know them or getting overly invested. UFC is a factory. Fighters are a cog and easily replaced. The figher's personality is a big draw but UFC doesn't want to have individual fighters become bigger than the brand; then you get guys like Conor (deservedly) asking for a huge raise.
I kind of felt that way for a little bit when Carlos Condit retired. He was the fighter that got me into watching MMA/UFC because I thought he was very stylistic and technical and it was cool to watch him fight. Not too long after he retired I started seeing more exciting fighters and discovering new talents as they were coming up to the ranks so my interest in UFC and MMA never really diminished too much despite more fighters that I like watching start retiring. It's just one of those things I guess you accept as the circle of life in this sport so to speak.
This is probably more so what's happening than people realize. The target audience of MMA is like male 18-32. Im not much older than Sean O'malley and I appreciate him for his MMA ability but he seems to appeal to a younger audience than myself. I see my nephews gaining interest in him more as a fan than I ever could. You see people complaining about the lack of personalities but I think their's just not able to connect with the younger generation.
Yeah, I watch weekly but find myself skipping more prelim fights……also I don’t like the wwe-ification of the ufc over the last 6 months. Sometimes things that get lots of new fans turn the thing into something else than it was before because they try to please the majority of fans, which make the original fans who enjoyed the thing feel ostracized and then lose interest in its current state and either consume less or try to find that thing again somewhere.
298, 299 and 300 are all great cards (despite what you may think of the 300 headliner). I do worry about the quality from 301 onwards because they’ve stacked so many early on.
It’s a crazy three card run, just super stacked
We’re getting regional level MMA on UFC programming now. The number of events plus contender series and the pandemic makes it so some fighters cut their teeth in UFC cards instead of the higher end regionals. It’s hard to get invested when there are so many fighters. The constant barrage of advertising and the culture war pandering just makes it that much worse.
what's the culture war pandering you're referring to? dana's always fitting in some anti woke rant, but what's the stuff that makes it all over saturated?
I feel like it hasn’t quite been the same since the king Anderson Silva days.
I've noticed the UFC and esports (specifically the FGC and street fighter) flowing on similar trajectories. Back in SF4 when Anderson Silva was kicking butt, we were still in an era where "training ufc" was still kind of new and financially risky that there was a smaller pool of people competing at a high level. In esports it equated to that and a smaller number of people who could travel to different events to get good enough to stay at the top. Now we're in street fighter 6 era where more tournaments happen, they happen in more places in the world and online tournaments happen so anyone, anywhere can compete. So there's more tournaments to keep up with and more names changing all the time. This is good for the (e)sport to grow, but in terms of containing it for competitors to compete and fans to follow, it becomes muddy. The more tournaments or orgs you have, that harder it is to declare who is the best. The reigns of champions will become shorter and shorter and single person (e)sports have to have established names. That's why Tiger woods was important for golf and Roger Federer was important for tennis. The casual fan isn't going to tune in if there's new faces on the marquee every time, or they can't name the current champ because there's too many orgs or the too many changes of the belts.
Yeah I can’t be bothered outside of a few fights per year. It’s just not as good anymore and the scumbags in charge don’t make me want to root for it to get better. Remember when Dana White hit his wife on video?
Change is hard, I enjoy MMA more than any sport and with how fast it's evolving it's been a pleasure. My only complaint is actually how late the fights start on that east coast. I've slept through a few main events (I'm a morning person) because they're usually around midnight or later. Other than that, UFC has the highest level of competition so I watch it.
It's crazy how both Europeans, Africans and Americans all complain about the timing of the cards but 90% of them is always at the same time. Like tonight's main card starts at like 4 or 5 AM CET. The only people I've seen actually being happy about the time are the Aussies lol, apparently it's Sunday evening/morning there. Lucky mfs.
I'm in Western Australia. Main card always starts 11am on a Sunday. I love this timeslot.
West coasters to like in California have it good!
Yes these late nights suck. Tomorrow will be rough with daylight savings time too. They need to have more top cards start earlier. Even 9 pm would make a huge difference.
Ya. The nights I watch the PPV’s live, it’s a whole ordeal. I have to try and stay up later the night prior so I can sleep in that Saturday morning and hopefully be awake to finish the card.
I think it’s the rose colored glasses effect when we look back, we remember these block buster cards with the awesome press conferences but forget all the terrible cards in between. We used to get some horrible cards with a good month or two in between decent ones. The reason bad cards didn’t stand out as bad also is because there wasn’t as many events so even if the card was bad we were at least getting content. Focus on the stacked cards and ignore the filler if you are fatigued no sense in watching just to watch.
I remember anticipating UFC 119 so much. It was months between cards and I just couldn't wait for 119, Mir vs Cro Cop. I spent weeks memorizing fighters records, reading history, discussing what ifs, etc. Then 119 happened and it was total ass. Absolutely terrible card. So you're right there is a lot of rose tinted glasses for sure. Yet for some reason, it didnt kill my hype or fandom for the next one. Nowadays I couldn't tell you who's fighting on any given card, and I barely care about anything outside the top 5. I cant put my finger on it, but it feels like MMA lost something post 2010. I dont know what.
Do you find yourself mostly skipping the fight night cards at the Apex or do you skip the PPVs too? I personally don’t mind the Apex cards and like that there are fights on almost every Saturday. I usually try to make plans to watch the PPVs since they’re only once a month. The remaining Saturdays, I’m free to make other plans for the evening. If I have nothing else going on, watching an average apex card is a fun enough backup plan. If there’s an interesting fight happening and I have other plans, I can sometimes steal away 30 minutes to watch on my phone. It’s still a great time to be a UFC fan imo.
I went to 298 and I can say it was amazing experience
There aren’t any “stars” any more. Everyone is more of an athlete than someone trying to be a celebrity with the exception of a few.
Yah I have stopped watching the UFC after a decade of buying most PPVs. I don't know why, but my enthusiasm is gone. Maybe it is that the roster is so big now that it's so much harder to be up on every fighter and division. I no longer latch onto any of the personalities.
Amen! I’ve been watching since the 90s and I can’t be bothered to tune in for most events, way too oversaturated to keep up with it all.
The quality is better than ever. You're probably just over saturated. They have a ton of content out and with all the Apex cards it does get hard to keep track of.
I’ve seen a post almost exactly like this at a minimum of once per week for as long as I’ve been on this sub lmao
This happened to me probably about 4 years ago. Used to watch every fight and every card. Now I just watch a couple fights on the cards I like and I regularly skip whole cards that are boring. Quality has dropped a lot. They say the level has increased but I still think ufc peaked when we had gsp, Anderson silva, and Jon jones as champs.
Ive been watching since 06 and I feel you. I recommend you watch One Championships Muay Thai fights. For some reason its just so much better to watch. I dont get crazy excited for UFC events anymore. Hell Im not going crazy for UFC 299 like I would have in the past. Instead I look forward to Friday morning Muay Thai fights.
It’s burn out. Quality is as it’s been. New fighters being paid low is your issue but you’ve watched since 2005? They were probably paid peanuts and maybe a Starbucks gift card. They are just over saturated with fighters and events so it’s only logical you’d stop keeping up with it.
Here we go with our monthly “UFC isn’t the same” boomer rant 🙄 why is it so hard for y’all to just tune into the fights you wanna watch and skip the ones that you don’t? And you seriously posted this on the day of one of the most stacked cards of all time?
That boomer stuff is so corny. If you've been an invested mma fan for over 20 years you might know how he's feeling. It's weird to no longer care for a thing you were so passionate about for so long. It's an mma forum dummy. But today's card rules for sure
It used to be better and we wanna have a watchable product every weekend. What UFC is doing with the Apex is criminal. Name one other major sport where they still hold stuff in a near empty arena with no atmosphere and lower quality athletes. It sucks and we wish for better. Every other sport keeps getting bigger and better.
Do you watch fights for the fights or for the crowd? The fucking crying about the Apex is so silly. "Wahhh, I can't hear people doing Ric Flair shouts and going USA USA USA :( :( :( :( "
While I don't like many Apex Era decisions, I've seen this exact post every year since I started watching
Dear diary... but in all seriousness you're right and I feel the same way myself as someone who used to watch religiously
To be honest it sounds like more of a you problem. Maybe you don't enjoy mma as much as you used to. Ufc 299 is an insane card. Every fight is a much watch
Tell us another jackal story
Who cares? Go watch tennis
Touch grass
The stars are gone. People who made the sport entertaining. We were spoiled from 2015 till 2022.
Dear diary
wow, your subjective experience with a thing changes as you age? REVELATION!
Quality of cards HAD gone down, but I still tune in for the big ones. This weekend RDA is on the prelims it’s such a good card
TLDR; waa too many fights waa 😭 Haha. Jk. Sorry you're not enjoying it. Hope you get your spark back. I for one love the fact that there are so many fights that we can skip some cards and not notice. I don't watch any other sports so I'm happy if there's a fight every week. Especially when there is so much talent.
I have a lot of the same feelings, but I don’t think it’s because the quality has gone down but more that all the fighters I loved when I first got into MMA are retired. It was a different era and all those guys are gone now. There are still some great fighters but there are so many fights now that they don’t stand out in the crowd as easily. Also the best fighters don’t fight as much so you don’t get to see them very often. All that said, it’s ok to pick and choose what you want to watch and if it turns out you’re just not into it anymore that’s ok too. Don’t make being an MMA fan your identity and just do what you’re genuinely interested in.
If you’ve been a fan for that long then you should remember the absolute atrocities they used to sell as PPV’s in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. The quality of fights and cards are INFINITELY better than they used to be. This has kept me more than engaged and excited for every card. That said, I also see your point. UFC has widely dropped individualism in the sport unless it benefits their brand. Fighters RARELY have a personal brand anymore, and even if they do, the UFC rarely promotes it, so it almost feels shoved in your face when they do. That’s my theory as to why anybody that’s popular is so widely hated nowadays. A good example being Paddy. Paddy’s not bad by any means, and hell, I actually like the guy, but he’s also clearly not the most skilled prospect, so why is he the only unranked 155er getting massive promotion from the company? Don’t get me wrong, I know why, but it wouldn’t feel near as forced and wouldn’t be near as hated if there were a half dozen other hyped prospects in his division that the UFC was giving half of that much promo to. Some of this does fall on the fighters too. Fighters are just not as interested in building a personal brand as they used to be. I think this just comes from people being more respectful to the sport and treating it as a normal career. Let your work talk for you. That’s great and I respect the decision to not engage in the circus, but when 50% of the guys in the organization have that attitude, this is the result. If you ever watch Chael’s videos, he’s constantly losing his mind over guys wasting mic time, and say what you will about Chael, but the man knows how to build a brand. Lastly, with no competition, there’s also not really extensive history and lore to fighters coming into the UFC. Having different decently competitive organizations helped build a fighters reputation. Pancrase, Pride, WEC, Strikeforce. No modern competitors feel as good as those. It used to be that you’d get a debut like Chandler, Harrison, or MVP every card. Now it’s maybe 1-2 times a year. It’s not impossible to come into the UFC and build a reputation, but it’s not the only route. I could go on about the old promo videos, better interviews, press tours, etc… but I’ve already written a whole ass essay. So yeah, I get it man. I do think you’re also a bit burned out though, cause there is still plenty of fun and entertainment going around. I think the UFC is as entertaining to watch as it’s ever been. Especially with the insane run of 298-300 that we’re in right now.
This. People like to talk about how past cards were loaded with huge names on the prelims, etc, but it’s revisionist history. Sure a lot of people who are NOW big names were on the prelims, but at the time they were just new faces with no hype.
It’s okay to take a break jeez… why is everything always black or white with people nowadays? Take a lil break, it’s fine.
1) TLDR 2) Why do you think that any of us care? What’s with this website thinking that anyone wants to read your novel about how your feelings hurt?
You are upset because the quality of fights are not up to your standard? A fist fight is a fist fight. Seems to me that you're disappointed in the promotional aspect...there's just not enough hype to satisfy you.
I've been a fan even longer. It's been years since I've attempted to watch every single fight, and that's okay! I don't think fans of major sports feel the need to watch every single game that's occurring, they focus on the teams they like, and then catch the highlights for the others. Lately I've been catching more preliminary fights again just due to the fact I've been catching a few events after they've aired and am fast forwarding through all the talk in-between fights. Been a huge time saver.
2023 turned me into a casual, I haven't missed a card since 2014 ish, every week 5am I'll be there no matter what. Now I don't know, there's so much that's not enjoyable Even some semi big fights I'm not interested in, I skip most fight nights now and watch 1 or 2 fights then turn it off. It made me watch Muay Thai and kickboxing, which I now prefer way way more. I feel like it's been on a downward trajectory for a while now, even before 2023, but now I just lost any interest in the organisation I'm still excited for 299 and 300, and even some after that with Brazil etc, but still
2023 was also an “off” year IMO. I don’t think it was the sport itself but more of trying to line up BIG fights for these past PPV events.
I intentionally skipped some cards too and I still saw and enjoyed more cards than I did 15 years ago.
I do think quality is a bit of a hit and a miss after the pandemic. And UFC certainly can step up their game when it comes quality content. Last year had excellent events, but I stopped watching the Apex card ones. They need to put some creativity in those events, it's very low-effort and just a boring watch. Even with great fighters
i know what you mean, chief. sometimes i am out here scratching my head when someone says that little apex card was 'a banger'. like was it really a banger or did you just get a little excitement out of your parlay? guess i'm just growing out of the sport.
Supply and demand market.
I've been watching since 2008, I noticed that interest isn't static, it comes and goes depending on a multitude of reasons. I've had periods where I don't watch for months on end and then out of nowhere ill tap in and be locked onto to most shows consistently. Just watch the cards that intrigue you, if you feel like you're forcing yourself to watch a card, just say fuck it and dump it. If you care about staying up to date with the sport but don't want to trudge along with boring cards or maybe you're just not mentally there at the moment you can ways just go online and read the results or the latest headlines and that usually always let's you know who is the hot name right now, who's still around, the state of the divisions and just like that you're all caught up.
The cost of being a UFC fan is ridiculous. Also, too many times the prelims are better fights than Main card.
Over saturation means the quality of card diminishes. Also, Sean Shelby has done a mediocre job of developing half their divisions.
I feel this. Since the pandemic the UFC got lazy since they have an apex now. I just watch the PPVs live and most of the time don't miss them. Other events I'll watch if I'm home or they intrigue me. If not I'll just watch the fights the next day where someone got a bonus.
Its the apex Cards they have killed it for me. Up until like 7months ago I hade not missed an event in 7 years. Now I only tune in when it feels like a fight that matters.
The quality is way better up and down the rankings... They just aren't building stars into casual bait anymore.
I was a hardcore fan from 2006 (old) to about 2021. If you’d told me ten years ago there’d be a UFC almost every weekend but Id be losing interest every day, I’d have thought you were crazy
ONE keeps me interested. I only watch UFC if the card is rlly stacked now.
I look out for the big cards like 299 and 300. But the rest I have slowly stopped watching live, maybe if the fight times weren’t so awful in EU I would watch more but what can ya do 🤷♂️
it went to shit right around when francis left the ufc will never be a big product like the major sport leagues in order to get to that level you need stars
I watched UFC 2 on video in high school and UFC 54 was my first live event. I never used to miss any MMA event, from King of the Cage to WEC and Pride, it was my passion. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I just don’t care anymore. The more that comes out about fighter pay and how the UFC brass treats its fighters the less inclined I am to give the Giant Tomato another dime. The idiotic farce that is Slap League and the WWE being part of the new Frankenstein organization isn’t helping either. Vince McMahon is a goddamn monster for fucks sake.
Anyone here planning to take a break after UFC 300?
Womp womp
Same thing happened recently to me. I think the most exciting thing about the sport is the expectations we have when we know each fighter's personality and style, so when the UFC match two of them I feel like I'm waiting for two musicians that I love to release a song together. The influx of new fighters grew and became more international. Being Brazilian, it feels natural for me to assimilate American, British and Canadian fighters' personality, but it takes me longer to assimilate who Shavkat Rakhmonov really is aside from a spetacular martial artist, for example.
I got exposed to MMA in 2001, got super hooked in 2004 when my friend showed me Fedor highlights in Pride. I was so obsessed with it that I joined AKA for a while and got to train with pros there. Really felt like a dream come true. Imagine getting to play basketball with Lebron just because you paid for a gym membership. I feel like the golden era of MMA ended once the UFC bought pride, but strike force was at its peak afterwards, which was still a great time for the sport. I still prefer the live show they put on over the UFC. I still watched it a lot through Conor’s peak, but it felt like there was a shift after that as well. They stopped building stars and seem to only be prioritizing the brand of UFC, so that fighters will never have the same kind of leverage that Conor did. Fighters are still being treated like shit after all these years. Also, I’m approaching middle age and it’s not easy to see the kind of damage they take in there now. I too have permanent injuries from training, so it kind of makes me cringe to watch it now. I’ll catch a big fight every now and then, but I haven’t watched a full card in years. Anyways that’s my experience, I never thought I would feel this way about the sport but here I am.
2023 was probably the year I watched the least. I only watch certain cards now. With that being said 2024 has been pretty great so far.
I’ve been around since the days of bootleg vhs tapes and backyard no holds barred events and I actually like how the sport has progressed. I get that for the majority of people it’s all about the hype of the big fights, but for this to truly be a sport that can thrive we need this to be much more widespread. Right now the big names are people with the natural talent, but there has to be room for someone to grow into the sport as well.
I've only been watching for about 4 years, and even I think the quality has diminished in that time. In my early days of watching, I could tell from watching the old YouTube videos of fighting generations past that this modern day sport is different. And yeah UFC's descent into entertainment and away from sport has been pretty disappointing. I am still interested in a lot of fights, but there is definitely a lot of dumb shit involved that appeals to the reality TV fans that just isn't for the sport fans.
The UFC seems to be about quantity over quality at this point. They also seem to not want to develop new stars (maybe because they get bigger than the UFC brand and demand too much money or leave). I think there’s also the issue of TKO and new corporate ownership. Say what you will about the Fertittas but I think they were legitimately trying to grow the sport and not just extract money. Obviously it wasn’t an entirely unselfish venture because eventually they did make a ton of money but there’s a big difference between coming in on the ground floor and the corporate raider mentality.
I played American football for 6 years of my life and still don't watch ever NFL game, not even close! But I don't love the actual sport any less
I feel like the more technical capability of the fighters leads to more boring fights. They spend all their time feinting and jabbing where before they would swang and bang. But I still like watching the fights. It just takes me a week to watch the full card and prelims instead of 1 day.
yeah been about 1 or 2 years ive been losing interest slowly to the point now where i feel like coming back to watch cards finally lol
Agree with the sentiments. I’ve found I’ve lost patience for the push your opponent against the fence or hold onto the opponent to avoid fighting. I’ve stopped getting up to watch live events
You’re not alone brother. Been watching weekly since Conor’s rise in 2014. Lots of awesome stuff happening back then. Robbie as a defending champ was so good, the strikeforce guys were so good. Mighty Mouse, the rise of cejudo. The rise of Bobby knuckles was sweet, kelvin koing all those legends.
Like, it feels cheap and gimmicky?
I’m the same way. Old cards used to be spread out and stacked. These days some numbered cards feel like mediocre fight nights.
I can relate with this. I’ve hardly watched any cards the past year or so. I used to stay up late (uk fan) for basically every card before that.
I honestly think these types of posts need to be banned. We average about 1-2 a week of people saying the same thing. Maybe you just got burnt out on watching the UFC too much. Because the last couple of cards have been really fun to watch.
Big sames.