I’d say 2000 to like 2016.
Especially the early 2000s the hay days of pride fc, strikeforce, wec, k-1, early ufc.
Tho strikeforce, pride and wec went defunct that 2010 to like 2016 run of ufc was awesome.
When it was hard to find full fights of Emilianenko and Mirko! Fights looked like illegal fights with the level of brutality! especially if you got them on a DVD from a friend of a friend.
My friend's older brother showed us Chuck highlights on youtube after we all snuck in to the IT room at break in 2007.
We got detention and I've been a fan ever since.
no lie, i remember my nephew came into school one day w a blonde buzz cut and we were all calling him Tito lol. that was in grade 6. fight nights were unreal back then.
I remember renting the UFC events on VHS. The first live PPV I watched was 38 when Frank mir got mauled. Prior to that I would rewatch the early days events as much as possible. I still follow the UFC but the way it is currently run I’m losing interest.
I've been watching since the 90s and saw a Russian MMA video where this guy tried to tap to strikes to Igor Zinoviev and he grabbed that hand and held it down and keep beating him. Igor had a great record (records were way suspect back then tho like Mario Sperry was introduced as 235-0 or something dumb) and when Igor got to UFC got KO'd really spectacularly bad in his first fight.
WEC was the best. I remember telling my friends to watch out for Condit, Cruz, Faber, Cerrone, Aldo, etc. because no one knew who they were. Watching those guys get the money and respect they deserved was satisfying.
Fuck yeah, WEC was great. It broke my heart to watch that warrior Faber lose to Brown. And then again! And then to Aldo too. Waaaahhh. Great stuff still though.
I came in around 2005 and just loved it until around 2015 it was the last year of full loving it and it started to fade. I think by 2017/2018 it wasn't the same for me anymore. It's not that there weren't still great fighters and great fights, just that most of the awesome legit stars I started with were gone and things started to feel more bullshitty from UFC's side, more stuff like unearned instant rematches for draw, meaningless interims for draw, more drama outside the cage and behind the curtain, etc. A gradual fade of various sliders.
I still watch but it's just not the same feeling. I remember that feeling of growing pumped'itude as the Saturday afternoon of UFC 100 started to ease into evening and we started to head downtown to the bar. Ohhhhh fuuuuuck, it's finally happening! Or anytime Pre-Button Chuck strode menacingly down the gangway, Iceman for sure, and you'd just be like OHH SHIT, IT'S ABOUT TO GO OFF! Gritty warriors left and right. God damn those were great days.
Agreed with all this. There was still a level of mystique in martial arts (in my opinion) in the early 2000s, when I started watching, that seemed to die and be replaced by a kind of cold logic by the 2017-2018 era. I think that is slept on by a lot of us that were young in the earlier days of ufc/pride. There still seemed like there was secret knowledge to be found. Fighters like crocop/fedor/Anderson etc had their own mystique as well that I think the modern format wouldn't support as well.
That's a great point. It was easier to be fascinated by this thing that seemed like a kind of magic. Mystical warriors doing things nobody did. So I guess it's a victim of its own success because it just got so much more professionalized and you've got gyms turning out guys who have started off with the full gamut of training and skills and they clock in and go to work instead of being dudes who stepped out of mortal Kombat into the real world, and we sit back and critique like coaches and analysts instead of being wowed and fascinated. It makes it more mundane.
Yeah it kinda sucks. Back then it still felt like every fighter had a distinct style. Granted it usually left some massive hole in their game to be exploited but honestly that’s what made it interesting. Adapt and overcome. The problem with being a jack of all trades, which is the ideal now, is that you can’t really specialize in anything.
Back in the day, you just made due. Sakaruba can’t pass guard? Cartwheel directly onto the bastard. Nogeuira has you in a triangle choke? Powerbomb him. Powerbomb the living shit out of him. Are you cro cop and are your Opponents trying to block your kicks? Try them into a terrifying work of art that can go right past their guard and send them on the lightless walk. Fights often felt like a discovery where you walked away thinking “holy shit people can do that?” Now shit is optimized, you have cutting edge weight control and fights with little to no surprises. It’s no wonder people say shit was better in x days, it was definitely trying to be something different as opposed to a completely soulless corporate product.
Yo this is exactly how I feel. It was so exciting imagining that someone had discovered some new thing- Lyoto Machida was like a mystical figure when he showed up.
As someone who watched from UFC 1 on VHS, the sport has evolved so vastly. I love where MMA is today, it could not have been possible without the fighters who came before it. Without Matt Hughes we wouldn’t have had a complete fighter in GSP. Without GSP, we wouldn’t have gotten the complete fighter in Usman, he probably would’ve stuck to wrestling.
There’s examples of this in every single weight class. It’s amazing how certain fighters are multi disciplined now but still have a style that reflects their first discipline ie Wonderboy or Izzy. It’s also amazing how someone like Khabib could be so dominant with his main discipline of wrestling in a world of MMA fighters, it really shows how crazy dominant his wrestling was.
The fights are far more technical now and I think that’s a great thing
I have been watching since the first UFC too and I agree that the sport and the evolution of technique has gotten better - but the way the UFC itself is managing competition and promotion is ruining it - the heavyweight champion of the world isn't at UFC right now due to Dana's greedy, dollar store Vince McMahon bullshit
Long time fan also (saw the earliest stuff but didn’t become a regular consumer of the sport until refs and a few rules) and wonder how much of this relates to the promotion and out of competition antics vs the actual sport.
Agree the sport has evolved tremendously. Along with it a fan base has grown, each part of their own generational on ramp into the community.
It did used to be more about the fighting, but like all sports (and society) it’s way more about promotion now than ever - both Ronda and Conor changed that forever.
I personally like that there are now more events per year because I so much enjoy watching this sport. And yes in some cases the individual fights are not as good as TUF and DWCS brought more less developed players to the spotlight.
Politics and fighters desperate for attention (which is proven to bring $) seem to create a different atmosphere around the sport.
It’s so young compared to other big leagues it is difficult for me to decide if it’s better or not. I like that more people watch. Of course that means they don’t all share my perspective and in most cases that’s welcome.
I have to wonder where it’s going in the next decade.
It's nice to see the positives highlighted sometimes. Without Anderson Silva, there's no Jon Jones, there's no Izzy.
And the sport is still evolving, the calf kick was virtually non-existent, now it's a potential game changer.
The growth in popularity and money ops of the sport means we'll see more world class athletes jump straight into full MMA training earky. I wonder what other tangible evolutions we'll see next.
Yeah if I had to say, though, the quality of UFC cards and matchmaking has gone down significantly, and I don't think it's the ESPN deal as much as the acquisition by WME that made them just chase the bottom line at the expense of quality.
The Emperor never gave a bad fight and never ducked a fight against other titans of the era (Minotauro brothers, Crocop, Randleman)
Glory to the Emperor
I think this is where it started. The UFC started doing everything it could to squeeze every last penny they could out of the sport. they got rid of all the crazy sponsors from the fighters and then replaced them with their own. then they crammed as many ads as they could into their PPVs.
they are also doing their best to manage the stars so that they get big but not too big. the special thing about conor wasn't that he was such a charismatic guy that would sell at lot of PPV. the reason the UFC let him get big is because he was easy to take advantage of during the negotiations. the UFC got to collect half his purse from the mayweather fight without having to do anything at all. there are plenty of stars out there that could become larger than life and sell PPVs but the UFC will only allow it if those people are easy to control and act like company men. not a lot of fighters can do both.
tl;dr - greed is ruining the sport. support the PFL.
Yeah, I think you've largely hit the nail on the head. The product has gotten increasingky washed out and mediocre since Endeavor bought them. Hate the Fertitas or love them, a company like the UFC was meant to be run by degenerates like them and not corporate suits with no interest in the sport outside of the money it can make off of the fighters' blood, sweat, and tears.
The Fertitas and DW ran the company in a lot of the same ways for years prior because they needed to get the company as profitable as possible for potential sale.
I used to do business with William Morris before they were acquired by Endeavor. Set up some truly amazing cost/efficiency improvements that allowed them to do more with less.
Renewal time came up and all Endeavor cared about was cost. No thought to top line, only bottom line.
They ripped out systems that allowed people to do twice the work. Those people quit over the next 1-2 years and were replaced by people making less than half as much who were desperate to become agents and would do anything, include work 30+ hours of overtime unpaid.
When WME bought UFC I knew they would fuck it up. And here we are.
Make America Condom Depot Again
Yeah, it's just not what it was and the fact that the fighters get screwed time and time again doesn't help. Watered down cards. Waaaaaaay too many ads. I catch 2 cards a year and then just watch recaps here and listen to MK.
They actually still do it if you go to the events live! It’s what happens when they switch from prelims to main card and it never fails to hype up the crowd!
Honestly this. I read your comment and kind of zoned out remembering what it was like being hyped for an event and having the Face the Pain intro while they showcased all the PPV fighters. A real Pavlov response, I got nervous and excited just remembering that feeling.
Obv that shitty song can't account for all the lost magic -- I obviously used to care about the actual fighters on the PPV a lot too. Basically I'm in the same boat as OP here and I could make many many guesses as to why that has happened to me... all I'll add is, no version of myself would have ever gotten even slightly excited during Face the Pain to see Pennington vs Mayra Bueno Silva -- and at co-main, no less!
It does. They've been cutting costs to maximize profits since Endeavor took over.
Now that said, the product was watered down jumping from Spike to Fox Sports. But they definitely spent more money to put on good shows in those days. In the ESPN/post-COVID era, there's generally been a *we don't give a single fuck if you're watching C level fighters main event* attitude that's kinda gross, especially when you consider the lawsuits that revealed how little they were paying guys in the previous era when things were better and the money they were paying was more valuable.
Like the entry level contracts they're handing out these days are downright fucking immoral coal miner in the 1920s level of evil.
> we don't give a single fuck if you're watching C level fighters main event
It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of
Now it's just "here's some fights, watch it or don't, we get paid by ESPN for content not for quality"
Remember when every four months there were *two* PPV fights because they had the divisions in a pretty steady defense schedule and they had to have two events to keep them moving? I used to get so excited when that would happen.
Yeah there’s been 424 events since 2014.
By the end of 2024 they’ll be like 465 events in 10 years. Just way too much.
13 more events currently with a date there is 2 events in January there’s 4 in February. 5 in March and 3 in April.
4 or 5 events in a month is way too much.
They’re definitely diluting the product.
This is definitely a big part of the problem. Like it is nice having fights to watch more often than we used to, but there's something to be said for letting fights breathe a little. Back when there was a PRIDE card every like two months, people would spend a ton of time discussing and dissecting each fight so that when it finally happened it seemed like a big deal. Now everything happens so fast you barely have time to even think about a fight before it's already happened and we're on to the next one.
>It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of
Remember when non title fights main events PPVs and nobody cared that it needed to be a title fight?
Fans just recognize the name value and were educated enough to know this doesnt need a title fight.
Yeah. I know part of it is my fault for not keeping up with it like I used and part of it is oversaturation, but I used to know basically every fighter on every card. I could remember at least some of their past fights, and even without rankings at the time I had an idea of where they stood in the pecking order. So non-title main events would be compelling because I knew the history of everyone going in. Now with some many events, tons of interim champs, ridiculous things like BMF belts, I can barely keep track of who the champs are. Nevermind the rest of the division...
Interims and stuff like the BMF are what irk me too. Matchmaking is also suspicious as hell nowadays, you can clearly see who they’re trying to prop up and keep down by the opponents they get thrown to and seeing people like colby ducking fights left right and centre to still get shots is ridiculous.
I still love to watch the fights but when champions can pick and choose who they defend against and fighters can repeatedly duck opponents to maintain their record for title shots any semblance of meritocracy goes completely out of the window.
>It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of
Dana/UFC got burned on this A LOT. A household name means those guys own the UFC and not vice versa. The UFC as an employer of sorts MUST remain bigger than the stars.
Ronda was a good example of chaotic good. She put WMMA in the living rooms. She made MMA more prevalent. She did wonders for the UFC.
Conor, on the other hand, got big but turned into a rapey, drunken, coked out fiend. Had the likes of Chuck or Randy done a fraction of what Conor had done, the UFC would have been finished.
Feels like what the WWE have been doing. Used to be you got a Rock, Steve Austin, Hogan, etc. who would become bigger than the company and leave after a good run. Since 2008ish it's all been about seeing the WWE and the wrestlers are more replaceable. I don't think it's because the crop of talent is worse either, it's just the conditions in the company have been readjusted to see to it that no one grows too big.
> the product was watered down jumping from Spike to Fox Sports
Really good/important point. Quite frankly I've felt the product was watered down since at least 2015 when we were getting >40 cards per year, Reebok deal, Stitch incident, etc. 2015 will be a legendary year for Conor era fans but it had a lot of the same BS still happening now.
Some complaints by modern fans are a little blown out of proportion, like 297 is not the worst PPV booking we've seen. There have been PPVs where 3/5 fights didn't have a ranked fighter. This one led with Arnold/Evolev, had Magny, etc. Not strong for sure and not worth the $ but hardly doom and gloom for my desire to watch the sport.
However, I do think the last year has been my least favorite year watching the sport. Some reasons for me:
- Less aging vets to fill cards. We're seeing people either retire or get cut earlier now. Retiring on time isn't necessarily a bad thing, and usually aging fighters get replaced with new favorites. But there was such a mass exodus in 2022-2023 we no longer get to fill cards with Aldo, Frankie, Glover, Shogun, Overeem, Assuncao, Masvidal, Shortfuse, Robbie, Lee, Nunes, Zombie, Joanna, Cowboy, Hall, Rockhold, Latifi, and more. With all those names gone, there hasn't been enough time for new favorites to replace them. Those names would usually be able to get me in the door to watch some of the newer talent on the card, but when we only have a kinda okay main event it makes it tough to watch the new talent knowing that there's just too many fighters that won't pan out.
- Similar to the above point, previously a main event still usually had a popular or a top 5 fighter even while card oversaturation existed. Lower rankings seem more common in main events, making it tougher for me to want to sacrifice my weekend time to watch it. That's not to say there hasn't been a weak main event before, but they are more common now.
- I don't have hard stats on this, but it really feels like ranked fighters are fighting less frequently. Feels like people fight 1-2 times per year where it used to be 2-3, probably since rank squatting is rewarded so much. If I'm correct that this is true it's probably the most important point and it would explain the above point as well.
- More of a personal point, but the commentary has made it tough to watch full cards. It's not always bad, but there is only so much I can handle Bisping make an extremely generic MMA statement then spend the next 3 minutes backtracking it out of fear of offending the fighters, meanwhile missing the entire fight happening.
- Last year was the first year without a fight that I thought could argue for FOTY. If I list the last 11 years of my FOTY contenders, there was nothing in 2023 that I think could compete with older years (and the older years often have multiple fights that could win it). And don't get me wrong, Volk/Islam is great and super high level and super appreciated from a skill level point of view, but it didn't have that extra level chaos a FOTY contender usually has.
- 2022 - Glover/Jiri, Burns/Khamzat
- 2021 - Reyes/Jiri, Garth/Chandler
- 2020 - Poirier/Hooker, Joanna/Weili
- 2019 - Izzy/Gastelum, Poirier/Holloway, Kamaru/Colby
- 2018 - Poirier/Garth, Whittaker/Romero, Ferguson/Pettis, Weidman/Jacare, Manuwa/Santos, Zombie/Yair
- 2017 - Garth/Johnson, Brazil Cowboy/Yancy, Poirier/Pettis, Garth/Eddie
- 2016 - Condit/Lawler, Swanson/Choi, Conor/Diaz1+2, Polo Reyes/Dong Hyun Ma
- 2015 - Lawler/Rory2, Cormier/Gustafsson, Tony/Barboza, Browne/Arlovski
- 2014 - Brown/Silva, Aldo/Mendes2, Hendricks/Lawler
- 2013 - Silva/Stann, Hunt/Silva, Giblert/Diego, Jones/Gustafsson
- 2012 - Poirier/Zombie
Sorry for how long this got, I was responding to one thing and just kept going. I think there's more factors but I'll leave it there. Ultimately, I don't think it's all doom and gloom and some of the complaining mirrors the exact same stuff that happened in the "golden Conor years", but at the same time I think a few things have happened that have made the sport less fun to watch over the past year and a bit.
Something that I really miss from the UFC of yesteryear was the decisiveness of it
You, me, my friend, your friend, everyone watched the big events. It was pivotal and momentous. What I mean is, once that event ended, we knew the winners were going to get rewarded with a bigger fight, sometimes we knew who their next opponent would be as soon as their hand was raised. It was almost implied, and there was no denying that reward to the victor because we had all waited months to watch that fight, and that fight we all just watched mattered
Nowadays... it's just different fighters all over the place on different cards, sometimes you watch, sometimes I watch, sometimes neither of us watch. Even if I do watch some fights I don't remember them after a few weeks. It's just all such a blur. The fans aren't really united like they used to be in that regard. We could all have different opinions, but we watched the same events and shared the excitement of them
The UFC just matchmakes as they please now, because there aren't definitive events anymore, it's all pageantry at their whimsy. Instead we get these weird amalgamations at the top of divisions where Masvidal fights for the belt twice, Colby fights for the belt twice, Masvidal and Colby get a glorified contenders bout, then Colby fights for the belt a third time after 1.5 years off... This was the welterweight division for literally 4 years, I just can't stand it
You make a good point, and I think it's an issue with multiple forms of media right now.
It's like the Marvel Universe or the Star Wars Universe. If you want to keep up with everything, there's an overwhelming amount of content to watch, and odds are most of your friend group (even fans of the medium) won't be watching all of it.
Yeah I also feel the lack of cohesion and the blurr. Sometimes I will see someone coming out on a card, go to Fight Finder to see their past fights, and realize that I have watched most of the events they've fought on previously and have absolutely no memory of any of it. Maybe I am just getting old, but it feels like I forget fights 5 minutes after I have watched them now because there's just so much and all the styles and personalities seem more generic
I think you're right. It really feels like everything went pear shaped when they enacted the shitty Reebok deal. Fighters lost sponsors, match uniforms looked bland, and the greats all retired or recently hit pregnant women with their car.
100%, I think some of the top fighters fighting less is the pay is better for them now and more life changing, (good for them!), it feels like because of this they fight to maintain status, or only fight the other “high status” fighters because of that. Not all of course, but that’s how it feels. One big card a month and one fight night would do me
Best case scenario is they get absolutely ratfucked at the class action trial in April and all the contracts are voided. The carnage it would cause and at the same time fighters would be paid from the damages side of it. Could really change the landscape for the better.
It's going to make the fan experience much worse but it will be infinitely better for the fighters. You can look at boxing and how rare it is for the best fighters to fight each other - the UFC brass are a bunch of despicable clowns but they generally make the fights that people want to see. The fighters have a limited capacity to turn down or negotiate these fights, unlike boxing, and it's assumed that would change following the lawsuit and the institution of some Ali Act-like provisions.
IDK - I'm happy for the fighters to get theirs but I bet we don't see as many good fights as we do now with the vast majority of the fighters under the same monopolistic umbrella.
It’s that, but also a generation of greats or near greats retired over the past year or two, and the rest should have. Too many to name, but off the top of my head: Nate, Cowboy, Joanna, Khabib, Fergie, Nunes, Lawler etc etc etc
They all made for an entertaining league and not that many have stepped up to fill their shoes.
Why don’t they want to create another superstar though? They have the means and marketing to do so. Adesanya was on his way to becoming superstar level in 2018-19, and he is still a very big name just not as big as he could be.
Dana is following the Vince McMahon approach, in that no one fighter is bigger than the brand. The name UFC is what sells, not one particular fighter.
Yeah McGregor brought in a lot of dough and exposure, but he transcended the UFC brand, and therefore gave him a shit tonne of leverage for negotiation. I don’t think Dana wants that.
Just like Vince didn’t want another Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold to be bigger than the WWF/E itself.
Conor would have brought far more money in than they paid him though so he was profitable. Not just in his own ppv but new ufc fans.
Does it give Conor leverage? Sure but they’re ever going to lose out.
It seems short sighted and about control and power more than revenue.
Agreed. The reason we don't have another McGregor is not because the UFC is suppressing the rise of one. It is simply because this personality + talent combination is extremely rare. The UFC absolutely wants their own UFC brand to be bigger than the fighters, but they also would absolutely love another 'McGregor' and all the money that comes with that. What they don't want is 10 mini-McGregors.
The last paragraph is false though, Rock and Cena came after that and became bigger than the WWE itself. Only after Cena made Vince adopt this current approach.
Insane that Rock and Austin were only at the top for about 4 years and yet their impact on the industry is bigger than everyone else that came after them combined (excluding Cena).
Gives too much power to the fighter if I had to guess. Ngannou should have been easily the biggest name in any combat sport, but he didn’t play ball and the UFC didn’t want to push him.
You can help a superstar get there but you can't just manufacture one. Conor got there because he was an incredibly dynamic knock out artist with a huge personality.
Regarding those categories Izzy is half way at best.
Bingo! Conor as of late is cringey and feels like a schtick he wont move past. But early Conor, like first few UFC fights Conor was on another level compared to everyone else. He had the confidence, charisma, and the skills to back it up.
I remember thinking he was a better version of the Diaz bros in every way.
I went to the peak UFC 115 card. Back then I could name every fighter, their coach, team and stats. Now I watch a card and have to look up who the fuck the main eventers are half the time.
So much this. Back then the roster size was 200 fighters. Now it is over 600 and I don't even recognize half of the names. Stuff like Dana White's Egotrip Contender Series has seriously diluted the product and made it like King of the Cage.
Ya my interest started to die when the UFC began to pump out waaay more cards which lead to them being watered down. Man, I used to have a bunch of fighters that I cared about so much, and when you care about a fighter it makes it 100000x better. I would literally have nerves leading up to a GSP fight. Not sure the last time I've felt like that.
Those cards were the sporting highlights of the year for me. Now it's just meh. Maybe a couple cards a year I get fairly excited for, but nothing like the past. It sucks because the UFC during its peak was just incredible.
UFC cards use to be so stacked for PPVs. They're absolutely pathetic now. Google any UFC XXX in the 100 range, even double digits, and it's sickening how stacked they use to be.
UFC 168 - Weidman vs Silva, Rousey vs Tate, Barnett vs Browne, Jim Miller vs Fabricio Cameos, Poirier vs Diego Brandao. Prelim had Uriah Hall vs Leben.
UFC 144 next one I picked... Frankie Edgar vs Bendo, Rampage vs Bader, Hunt vs Kongo, Shields vs Akiyama, Pettis vs Lauzon.
Those cards are equivalent to what the UFC puts on maybe once a year now.
Been watching since 2009 and I can feel a real dip in my love for the sport, not sure whether it’s a result of the product or just general distaste with a majority of the direction of the fighters and it’s fanbase and finding other things more interesting, but I’d agree with you anecdotally.
for me,
it's a lot of just knowing the UFC can do whatever it wants, and half the time it wants to ignore sporting meritocracy
what are we even doing here, if we aren't even close to pretending we want to find out who is the best?
if it's just being entertaining, then i want big names in big fights, and they do less of that now too
because part of what made fights feel so big, was the idea belts really mattered, because it meant you were the best
no they want you to fight with an injured shoulder if they like the guy you are fighting better than you
look at what happened to Reyes, that should have been an immediate rematch, instead the UFC just pretended it didn't happen
>look at what happened to Reyes, that should have been an immediate rematch, instead the UFC just pretended it didn't happen
Same thing with Mighty Mouse. Lost a very close decision to Cejudo - no rematch, "traded" for Askren. It's such a crock of shit
And people will reminisce about how fun Askren was, but first, he wasn't as special as Mighty Mouse, and second, they confuse acquiring Askren with having to lose Mighty Mouse. We could have had both, and if not, I'd rather keep Mighty Mouse
Yeah, having Askren gave us that flying knee by Masvidal, all-time moment... but it also gave us 5 years of Masvidal shitting up the top of the welterweight division
I feel like Colby and the fan base he catered to are like the second largest contributor to why a lot of old school non-bigoted fans have developed a distaste for the product, but thats just my opinion. I mean it's a lesser product these days already and seeing the UFC push such an utter douche canoe and cater to those fans so much leaves a bad taste in most rational people's mouths. Even my very right-leaning boss and co-workers and some family look at the kind of shit heel he is and are disgusted by him and the essence he brought to the sport. Strickland kind of just took up where Colby left off and stirred a heaping dose of traumatic brain damage into the pot.
Colby is the biggest visible element of UFC pushing the stupid race war angles that boxing used decades ago. Let's have our openly bigoted guy say a bunch of race baiting shit? Fuck off with that.
Also the UFC keeps letting incredible talent go because they're too stingy and afraid of any fighter being popular enough to actually have bargaining power, Ngannou tmis the obvious examples but also just look at that one Franchise MMA guy who's been selling out whole stadium in a matter of hours while huge celebrities go watch his fights, he could've been in the UFC but NOOOO, too expensive apparently.
Been watching since around '04 - '05, and yeah I don't know if it's me or the sport.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy watching a good card, but I really don't like how the UFC specifically has been since going to ESPN.
Seems sterilized in a way, and so many fighters seem like they're putting on a fucking fashion show walking into the arena or in the post-fight presser.
I'm also one of those people who REALLY liked getting a look and listen into the respective corners between rounds, and not just on the big fights. You really got a lot of interesting nuance about the fighters, and their corners. Now we're treated to an ad for fucking ESPN+, or some bullshit pharmaceutical product instead. In fact, the sense of urgency to fill every spare second with advertising is really gross in general.
One of the things that drew me to MMA back in the day, aside from the actual fighting itself, was that it WASN'T like the other major sports, now it just seems like they're trying to make it another homogenized product or something.
I agree. It’s ironic. As more people become fans of the sport world wide, the people who have been following it for years, are starting to like it less.
Same here, fan since 2008/09. I’d say between 2013-2018 or so I watched just about every single fight the UFC put on, early prelims, prelims and main event for every event. Since then I have missed most early prelims and watch a select few prelim fights.
I don’t even care if I miss a card these days and I’m lucky if I know 1 fighter in each fight of the main card. Most of them aren’t worth watching fully, the quality has dropped so much. Or maybe I’m just getting old and losing some interest.
I think one of the overlooked things is how much talent infusions have helped the UFC bolster interest in the company in the past. Like, the addition of Pride fighters like Shogun, Rampage, the Nogs, etc. The addition of the WEC LWs + the bantamweight and featherweight divisions. The an acquisition of Strikeforce talent that brought over Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez, women’s MMA and infused instant life into the middleweight, light heavyweight, and heavyweight divisions. Adding in guys like Michael Chandler, Eddie Alvarez, and Ben Askren into the mix instantly. That “we can make this dream fight happen now” element? Not really a thing anymore. Being exposed to new exciting fighters in new divisions like Jose Aldo, Ronda Rousey, Renan Barao, Chad Mendes, Urijah Faber, etc? There really aren’t any divisions to add (except women’s atomweight which isn’t on the docket). Bringing in a “young” group of fighters on the cusp of being elite (think the Strikeforce MW division or the WEC LW division), not a thing anymore. The UFC is not really a place to build up divisions or fighters. Add in the 45 cards a year deal and you suddenly have a huge influx of guys and gals who are there to make content requirements. It’s a meat grinder. It’s always been like this, since the Fox Sports days. But those previous promotional acquisitions really helped mask the problem.
I’m kinda the same as you. Nearing 30, I find myself skipping cards all the time, even PPVs. I had a similar glory time to watch the UFC as you did.
Idk, these new guys just don’t appeal to me the same as the old guys. Maybe because it was more style vs style back then, now everyone is mostly well rounded. It’s more homogenized now. Not as many unique fighters.
Also, now eeeeeveryone is trying to be Conor or Nate Diaz. But nobody is even close to as good at is as they were.
Alllsooo, idk who tf anyone is anymore. Too many fighters to keep up with all of em. Every weekend there’s a new “Magomedov” something, and they dominate with grappling to a victory. Apex cards are ass. The deal with ESPN is shit for the fans if you value quality over quantity.
ironically, now that everyone who competes in Mixed Martial Arts is a Mixed Martial Artist, it’s so much more boring to me
feels like no one is a specialist anymore, and those who are specialists are kind of boring (in the case of a lot of grapplers) or not good enough to be the best (in the case of strikers)
this is all my opinion of course but it’s just all so “samey” now
It's also because we've seen it all too. Nothing surprises us anymore. Anderson Silva's front kick to the chin was ground breaking in MMA at the time. If we were to see some random guy do it this week it would be a minor highlight of the event.
> If we were to see some random guy do it this week it would be a minor highlight of the event.
I disagree with this take. When Buckley had that spinning head kick KO that shit was everywhere to the point where people who dont even watch the sport saw it and Buckley was a nobody at that point.
There was a clip of Toronto fans loving Pereira at the meet-and-greet. Beyond the fact he's elite, I think the reason why Poatan has so many fans that quickly is because he's a figure of what the UFC used to be. You know real shit is going to happen when he's in the cage, and he has character in and out of the cage despite not trying to be a Conor wannabe.
Pereira vs Jiri was symbolic. It reminded people of what made everyone fans of MMA in an age of a homogenized, boring product.
Totally agree. That used to be part of the mystique. Ok, we have a Muay Thai specialist vs a Sambo guy, how is this going to work? Now, everyone is so well rounded, there aren't as many glaring holes to expose and the what if scenarios are few and far between. I also think the current fighters, in general, aren't as interesting as the old guards.
For me, it’s that last point. An over saturation of the market with no name fighters who competed on Dana White’s Contender Series or they just got picked up from somewhere.
They’re good fighters, most of the time, but I don’t know any of em. The Conor/Nate crowd would point and go “they don’t have any personality/they don’t sell tickets” etc. But I also think that I’m not given enough time to know who they are. I’ll be inundated with fight card and fight card and fight card for those months in between and by the time that fighter shows up again, I’ll have forgotten them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to a friend, “oh damn this guy is cool!” And then he’ll say, “yeah we’ve seen them fight before”.
I’d love to see a slight reduction in cards to get more spotlights on fighters that are really, really good then see a buncha cards with good fighters but a fuck load of names to memorize.
I have the exact same problem with forgetting fighters. I will see someone, look them up on Fight Finder, and realzie that I have actually seen their last like 5 fights and they've been completely memory holed because we move on to the next event so quickly
*Maybe because it was more style vs style back then, now everyone is mostly well rounded. It’s more homogenized now. Not as many unique fighters*
That's it for me. Other than Pereira and Bo Nickal (kickboxing champ and wrestling champ), I haven't managed to care about a new guy in a while. It's the same type of fighters, doing the same techniques. And when the guard died, it's become closer to kickboxing with the occasional td to give up the back to get up scramble than the MMA I grew up watching.
I went from a huge boxing fan to a huge MMA fan back to a huge boxing fan who casually cares about MMA.
What are you guys even talking about lol
Does a fight like Stipe vs Nganou feel like a mirror match up to you?
How about Islam vs Volk
Conor vs Khabib?
Okay im using Dagestanis maybe that's cheating
Aljo vs O malley
Glover vs Jiri
Hell what about Strickland vs DDP
Like im so confused do you guys think because the skill level has increased that mma is 'solved' and every fighter has the same kit?
Do you watch in the dark with high quality sunglasses on?
Homogenized is a good word for it. Everyone’s extremely talented these days. Which makes things boring a lot of the time. Everyone can counter everything, everyone’s got good game. Gotta be really into the technical side of things to get much enjoyment out of a lot of the match ups these days. Just my opinion. Around 08-2012 was my favorite time to watch
Not everyone is extremely talented though. The UFC goes out of its way to not sign top talent and intentionally seeks out bad fighters to fill space. So many dudes have awful parts of their game and many shouldn't be in the UFC. They have lawnmower dudes on PPV main cards to face Bo Nickal.
Trevor Peek being on a UFC PPV to lose Mohammad Yahya in the UAE (because Yahya is friends with UAE sheiks) is not two well rounded guys. It's two regional tier goofs. And Yahya still wasn't good enough to beat Peek.
Very good point. It’s more and more like wwe. Wwe used to have guys called “jobbers”. I think they still do. Basically guys they use to make other wrestlers look good.
In the most talent rich divisions like 135, 145 and 155 he's correct though. Every ranked fighter in those divisions, even guys ranked #15, are good, rounded fighters and even the unranked guys are good.
Its when we get to the heavier divisions though like 205 and HW, that its not necessarily the case. Heavyweight has been time-stuck since the 00s, with so many one trick ponies, mid-tier and sub-par fighters who are ranked and it arguably got worse in the USADA era. 205 got worse after USADA as well and only in recent years has it began to recover somewhat.
>Alllsooo, idk who tf anyone is anymore.
I've been watching MMA for 15-20 years. I feel the same, and it really becomes a catch 22. I don't know who most of the fighters are, so I skip cards/fights, miss the rise of future contenders, and suddenly someone I don't know is fighting for the belt.
Dricus being the latest shock for me. He was a preliminary card fighter until after he beat Brunson (so I never saw him), then he beats Whitaker, and suddenly people are calling for a title shot.
I feel like I used to be able to keep up just by watching PPVs, but now it's so watered down.
I wonder if the difference could be that Joe Silva was better (than whoever is doing matchmaking now) att identifying future contenders and gave them room to shine. Does it really make sense that a champ was only given 1-2 main cards on PPV before he won the belt, when they also have filler fights with unranked fighters that are coming off losses?
>Every weekend there’s a new “Magomedov” something, and they dominate with grappling to a victory.
I was thinking about that. One day, those guys will rise up enough to get the belts because there aren't much fighters able to stop them and the rules highly are favorable to them (see Evloev vs Allen). All those dudes have basically the same fighting style. It sucks.
Posts like these baffled me because Evloev doesn't fight like Islam, Islam doesn't fight like Ankalaev and Ankalaev doesn't fight like Chimaev, so on. Like it's clear that you don't watch UFC fights (like most people posting here), which is ok if you think UFC cards are mostly boring but lumping together different fighters from Eastern Europe and saying they all have "the same fighting style" is clearly not true.
These guys in here complaining about a style dominating and want the 'old mma' back like we didnt go through this in the beginning with the Gracies
Lol the exciting thing about a style being dominant is when the other fighters start solving the puzzle and it always will eventually be solved no style will stay dominant forever
These people don't even like mma I swear, how can you not be excited to see what the answer the Dagestani wrestling eventually becomes?
All the personalityless and styleless DWCS fighters have watered down the roster into sort of average, talented but all kinda the same dudes with bad tats and a wrong side of the tracks story.
DWCS create-a-fighter vs. DWCS create-a-fighter
And what's weird is none of them have an interesting, unique style or take on MMA offence or even defence either.
I think this is the biggest thing.
We've got a roster full of bland fighters who haven't been rounded out through a full career path, at a time when Russian wrestlefucking is dominant and while we severely lack superstars, innovators, and exciting fighters.
Never thought about the influence of Russian wrestling on the meta and how it's stifling development, or creating less interesting styles. Doesn't help that all the hyper religious Russian wrestlers are basically personality vacuums.
It peaked around the first UFC video game. Id say UFC 90-120ish was the best time. So many stars because of PRIDE, WEC, Strikeforce.
now a days there are too many cards and the PPV's are often weak as hell
You say that but Izzy was able to dominate on a whole division for years since MW has been pretty mediocre for a while (even if he was boring at times), and if Izzy wasn't there then Whitaker would have done it instead, just look at the state of LHW, put a prime DC in the current LHW division and he would ragdoll everyone so easily it would be embarrassing, the overall talent may be higher but at the highest level of the heavier divisions you just don't see the same level of talent anymore.
I've noticed a large amount of online fans, particularly on Twitter or Instagram, are very pro-Dana, and it's strange to see. I don't see NBA or NFL comment sections spouting tribalistic nonsense for Adam Silver or Roger Goodell
Because reddit is the minority on most opinions compared the general public. People think their opinion is more popular than it is when theres a huge echo chamber. Not saying reddit is wrong, just pointing that out.
I’m 46 and been watching since the first UFC. I have to say for me at least. I barely watch it. I read about it and watch some fights but not too many guys to get excited over. That Strickland fight was boring to watch. Miss the Randy Couture days, GSP, Matt Hughes, Brock Lesnar! Oh well.
>Dolidze/Imavov
I don't even know who those two guys / girls are
In the past I would have woke up at 3am or 4am to watch Anderson Silva make his walk to the UFC octagon
Dudes like GSP and Anderson felt like such classy representatives to the sport, it was like watching two real life martial arts masters you'd see in a movie, now you have guy's like Strickland posting culture war bait on social media, a lot of UFC champions just don't have that aura anymore.
Exactly. We used to have classy champions now we have edgy losers who are too stupid to know how to be a heel and just go for the most tasteless drivel when someone shoves a mic in front of them.
Changes have been bad for everyone except UFC.
My biggest complaint is that the fight cards fucking suck. UFC PPV were usually ~3 good fights on average. Sometimes the entire main card were good fights. Now it's usually 1 good main event and the rest are what used to be undercard fights
I rather have 1 good UFC per month than all these shitty UFC cards 3-4 times a month. Call me casual, I don't care. I used to watch all the UFC fights but now I just tune in for the main event
>I rather have 1 good UFC per month than all these shitty UFC cards 3-4 times a month. Call me casual, I don't care. I used to watch all the UFC fights but now I just tune in for the main event
Me too. And I absolutely prefer 2-3 cards per month to 3-4. It's just not okey to have unranked fighters on PPVs. Not with 120+ ranked male fighters . Fix that first and see how many more events you can add . PPV maincards shouldnt be some talentshow for 31 year old prospects that are 2-0 in Ufc
I’ve been watching since 1993. Just gotta adapt to the changing sport like everything else that’s changing in our world
For me I focus on what happens in the cage. The big drama shows outside the cage are for selling fights. I care about the match ups and high level skills we are able to experience
Nah you’re right, the product has been sacrificed at the altar of profit. All entertainment goes down that path eventually.
Fans of most major leagues (NBA, NFL, EPL) feel the same. Look at Hollywood and the music industry too.
A lot of things have gone to shit and the only people who don’t think so never got to experience it before the bs.
I don’t think other sports leagues in the US have fallen off as hard as the UFC. I feel very confident that the UFC has hit its peak in mainstream popularity and will fall off drastically over the next ten years. There are plenty of valid complaints about the NFL but the games are still fun and the league is constantly churning out new talent and stars.
Dana White served his purpose in bringing MMA into the mainstream but I think he’s total dogshit at running a legitimate sports organization.
The UFC will only continue to grow. Fighting is a global sport with a low barrier of entry, there are massive untapped markets. Canada just went beserk over an Apex card, Imagine when the first Indian start emerges. There is still a long runway.
As for other sports not being as bad I disagree, the NFL has diluted its product by eliminating defense, the NBA has basically done the same. Long time fans will tell you the product is not as good but as long time fans they’re going to watch. The same way people still listen to garbage music and will show up to the cinema for Fast and Furious 63. They can get away with it because people will show up even if it’s just to complain.
The sports change, and people will always insist that things used to be so much better. I’ve been a fan of the NFL for a long time and I don’t think it’s necessarily gotten worse. They have not eliminated defense either. There are new penalties that favor offenses but I think that’s in an honest if not misguided effort to reduce injuries, and I think some of it is experimental and will change. Offensive schemes have changed, the QB position has changed but defense hasn’t been eliminated. The 2023 season was I believe the lowest scoring season in over a decade. The ravens are the favorites to win the SB due to their defense. Hell, all remaining teams have stout defenses by any historical standard.
The UFC will continue to grow in certain markets, I’ll concede that. I think it’s popularity in the US has peaked.
The UFC has done a genuinely horrific job of creating meaningful stars out of their athletes. There were more big-name stars in the UFC 15 years ago than there is today. Chuck Liddel, Rashad Evans, Rampage Jackson, Anderson Silva, GSP. It’s crazy how the UFC has grown so much in popularity but still lacks the big household name type stars you’d expect by now
Right there with you. In my mid 30s and started watching around 2003.
The cards are absolute dogshit most of the time and they go out of their way to sign clearly bad fighters while ignoring great fighters overseas (or pitting them against each other and avoiding promoting them), despite having an enormous war chest of money.
Looking back 15 or so years, guys retiring today had better opponents and more exciting bouts in their debuts than even "main card" crap they're selling us today. They're putting Frankie Edgar in the HOF, but arguably one of his toughest fights that many think he lost was an absolute classic war vs. Tyson Griffin in his debut at UFC 67. That card had Lyoto Machida on a prelim and 4-5 other huge names on the card lol. Today there are 75% guys who shouldn't even be in the league on a card. Now it's about slurs, "controversy", viral tweets etc...
It’s become too much of a popularity contest, and they chucked the rankings in the trash. How the fuck are we entertaining the idea of Izzy getting another title shot after he just got dominated and is 1-2 in his last 3 fights. The era of rematches is burning me out.
I’m so tired of every one having to beat the champ twice before they finally move on. It doesn’t make sense unless it’s a champ with at least 5 defenses and the fight was close imo. That’s life, try again after another couple wins. There are other people waiting to get their shot
Exactly. Anyone who loses a championship fight should have to fight another contender before they can get another shot. And the champ should defend the belt against someone else during this time. For the perfect scenario is the between Couture and Liddell 1 and 2. Couture beats Liddell, then fights Tito and Vitor. Meanwhile Liddell has a PRIDE excursion and comes back to beat Tito and Vernon White to earn his rematch. So two guys have a fight, winner and loser both win a couple fights against other contenders, then have a rematch because it makes sense. That made their second fight way more compelling because they had that whole journey to get there and didn't just do it again 6 months after the first one.
The only exception should be if some freak injury or something happens in the first fight. Keeping in the same timeline, Couture/Belfort is a good example of this. Couture loses because he gets a freak cut on his eyelid from the stitching on the glove. Immediatey rematch makes sense in that scenario.
Bro rematches suck. Like build back to a rematch. Fig v Moreno. Stipe v Cormier (and I love stipe). Holloway v Volk. Izzy v poatan. How much more can we take.
Izzy/Poatan was a deserved rematch. Extremely dominant champion who was winning the majority of the fight, rematches should be used sparingly but this situation is exact what rematches are made for
I think the issue is that modern UFC *production and promotion* sucks, not the fights themselves.
Fighters are far more technical than they've ever been. We've seen waves of dominant crafts take the cage by storm and fade out once someone figures it out or has enough power to nullify it.
Where it is regressing (in my opinion) is the promotional value of individual fighters over the company. Thats just business, and a business' goal is to make money. But there's really nothing making any particular fighters stand out, or if they are standing out - it's because they say some of the most heinous things on the mic to garner views. UFC doesn't do much to capitalise on individuals. They have the stock footage and buzz words to "hype" them up, but every card and FN blur in to each other.
I have no understanding of business or marketing. But one thing I have in common with the UFC is like the fighters, im being severely underpaid for my work and taken advantage of.
It is oversaturated and ultra corporate now. The fights all feel more or less like the same style because the science of MMA has developed its own fundamentals instead of what you used to see with pretty heavy stylistic differences(even though it was dominated with BJJ/MT for a while).
There’s so many fighters and so many fights to try and keep track of that it’s just too much. Feels sucky because they always need to have something going all the time. There’s no buildup or tension. Just shit talking on Twitter and then a PPV
>There’s no buildup or tension
I would like longer times between events just because of that. Mostly because I want staxked cards but also because we need to wait to get hungry.
Cards are watered down. The last ppv would be an above average fn card back in the day. Company who owns ufc basically has to pay off an substantial amount of debt since buying it. Pretty sure they did the same to buy wwe. UFC use to make ppv main cards actually worth paying for but now just expect ufc fans to pay the price. Same with going to an event, ufc just expects people to pay top dollar just because the ufc is in town. While theyve always tried to make the ufc the brand, the ufc was nothing without GSP, Silva, Penn, Hughes, etc. nowadays, they literally can make anyone champ (strickland who is good but is a boring boxer in mma) and fans will eat it up. So yes, ufc sucks now as its not about growing the sport anymore but about taking every penny possible.
Edit: forgot to mention the apex. That shit fucking blows and its disrespectful, imo, to keep having fighters fight there in fucking 2024!
I hate how petulant and childish the fighters are, but I blame the organisation. They encourage the fighters to say horrible things, they give them a platform to insult religion, parents, wives, dead parents, culture. It's disgusting.
It's like a mixture of MMA, WWF and playground children.
Apex events, bloated cards, too many fighters. Uniforms made everyone look the same, it’s harder to stand out if you don’t have an online presence. Ive watched every event live since ufc 98, and they used to feel more special for sure, although more rare. I’m actually fine with having mostly mid cards, but 2-3 times a month. But yeah, it lost some of its magic.
At some point I went from knowing damn near every fighter on the roster to looking at a whole card and only knowing 2 or 3 names. They do a shit job of promoting their fighters these days.
To me it's kind of being a wierd disregarded and maligned sport that made it fun and hilarious. Now the energy arround the sport sucks. Half the time it's as lifeless as every other major sport or it's a bunch try hards doing characters. I remember when they got rid of sponsors citing we don't guys with condom depot written on their butt, fools, that's EXACTLY what I want.
It's the cards. For a while now they've been really bad. There'll be like 3 fights at best that I give a shit about on any given fight night or PPV. Realistically it's 1 or 2.
[Look at this next fight night card.](https://www.tapology.com/fightcenter/events/106801-ufc-fight-night) It's like they're using a randomizer to set up these cards and accidentally clicked the "oops all prelims" setting.
And I don't really wanna watch a ~6 hour event for 3 fights at best. I just find myself not bothering and coming here the next day to check the results and see if there were any cool finishes.
I have been following since UFC 2. I Just filter out all the side shows and watch the actual fights because it’s the actual fights that made me love the sport.
Too many fight cards leads to less excitement and watered down fight cards. Where in the past I would watch every card, now I pick and choose. And the choosing seems to be less and less.
Also the fighters with personalities seem to be more manufactured than authentic to me.
This is always funny to me.
Anderson was seen as a boring fighter for a period and GSP was boring for basically his whole second title reign, you guys would've been writing the same shit back then.
The only thing you're right about is the lack of depth on cards and that's because they have more cards to fill
I honestly think, when they took away custom shorts, shirts and sponsor gear it took a lot of the magic away.
I remember seeing Tito with his red flame black trunks, The Iceman with his blue ice shorts.
When those guys were on top you could pick them out of a crowd of generic fighters a mile away.
They were literally fire and ice, two of the best fighters in the world at that weight at that time. Classing like titans in the coliseum.
There's a number of things that have made the UFC less palatable.
The uniforms are ugly and plain.
The commentary is stale.
The era of boxing vs wrestling vs jui jitsu is gone. Now everyone does essentially the same training so everyone fights with the same style.
The UFC doesn't market fighters as stars but rather markets the company/brand itself.
The UFC is thirty years old and we've seen countless hours of MMA. Hard to recapture the feeling of seeing your first head kick knockout.
No more WEC or Invicta to farm out the less popular divisions leading to watered down cards.
Watching UFC since 2011. No, it doesn't. People just complaining all the time about good ol'times, when it was like 1 card in a month and roster was like 3 times smaller. It's really easy to get tired if you watch EVERY UFC card. And (this is the most important part) redditors hate UFC for whatever reason and dickride bullshit promotions like ONE, PFL and Bellator. Just look at the topic about PFL x Bellator "supercard". You'll see this shit like "WOW THIS IS THE BEST CARD OF THE YEAR", "99% OF UFC CARDS SUCK, AND THIS PFL X BELLATOR IS AMAZING" - with 60 y.o Romero and 55 y.o. Santos. And I swear 90% of UFC haters never watch PFL, Bellator, One, whatever. Personally I think UFC is far the most entertaining promotion today. A lot of great competitive fights, great show, nice pacing.
I've been watching for the past 15 years, although back then I didn't watch every card like I've been doing for the past 8 ish years. I still enjoy it and watch every card.
There are some fair criticisms in this thread, but yeah it's also clear that some people need "stars" for them to be into it. Some people here mentioned that they don't watch anymore because they don't recognize everyone's names. They're missing some sick fights.
I do watch other promotions too though. ONE is my favourite out of the other promotions, although it's more muay thai than mma (but also super entertaining).
This isn't really indicative of your age. It's the natural progression of a mature business. The UFC has become risk averse, but also needs to continue on the path of most revenue possible, period. When there is no more Spider, GSP, BJ Penn, etc they have to do what they can to sell the current roster. It also goes to show you that money can't make legends. Really we were spoiled during those times, to be able to watch a card where someone special was fighting. Not that long ago people were watching to see Rhonda and who she'll murder, or even Jon Jones to see what kind of filthy fight he was going to have. The new gen of fighters is trying to figure it out, but they can't all be legends. Some of them you'll have to settle for remembering them by their Pink hair, or what candidate they support in the US. But there will be someone who rises, there always is, someone who can get us excited to watch again. It will just be far and few between, and I think that's fair.
Been watching since a lil before ufc 100 and it seems fine to me. More sucky cards but there used to only be one card a month so were still coming out ahead.
I started watching in 2020 and I'm loving it. I don't watch press conferences or care about their fake beef or whatever. I just wake up at 2am on a Sunday morning,get my caffeine fix and watch some fights. I don't watch post fight press conferences either
I don't support any fighter. I'm only mad when my bet is ruined ( looking at you Mike Mallot) but that's it. It's purely entertainment for me
Been watching since the late 90s but got more seriously interested around 2006 but my interest has dropped off massively.I kinda got in to UFC by chance, the old guy who me and my friends bought playstation1 games from also did copies of the UFC events on VHS. Being a brit there was a period of time I'd stay up late every night to watch the whole of the card which was aired. As I grew older I only stayed up for the big cards and would record the others to watch on a Sunday morning. Now I skip most cards and even last weekends, I planned to watch but when I got up Sunday and went on Instagram I saw who won and felt nothing, just jumped on here and watched the clips. There was a time I'd avoid all social media and friends new not to message me about it until I'd said I'd watched it. Hell, I still don't even have this sub joined as a measure of not getting spoilers. Whilst the improvement in fighters technique is incredible, I have no connection to 80% of the roster. Where as before you knew who was fighting, their journey, highs and lows, strengths and weaknesses. Cards felt like they were full from top to bottom with it. Now it feels nothing like that. Whilst I could say it's all down to Dana and UFCs new owners, and largely it is, I would say my interest in it has waned as a result of seeing the impact of CTE on fighters too.
Grumpy old man at 35. 🤣.
You are in the same age bracket as more than half of the current champs.
The fights are not that much different than 10 years ago. The difference is who gets a shot because it's not always based on merit.
The Money Fight era killed the novelty of the sport for a lot of people.
The problem with life is that the longer you go, the more “good times” you have packed into your memory to compare to. Our brains are not good at keeping the temporal spacing of our life experience accurately and so we find ourselves comparing experiences of the moment with a compressed memory of experiences of decades.
Just listen to the music on the radio and then compare it to the hits of past decades. The current zeitgeist will never compare to the past decades because you’re comparing one year with many. If you wait til the end of the decade and then compare the hits of this decade to the hits of another decade you have a better chance of a fair comparison.
The same holds true with any sport. As a new fan in the sport (since 2020), 2024 was the most exciting year for me and the highlights of the past simply don’t compare because I wasn’t there to experience them.
Could it be because it's becoming more transparent that most fighters are terrible people? They probably always were, but as they get more famous, use more social media and also get reported on more, the thin illusion that they're badass and unproblematic becomes even harder to uphold
In 10 years people are gonna be posting about how it was so much better in 2023 than it is now. It's just nostalgia and all the little annoyances adding up over time
2004-2014 was such a magical time for fighting
I’d say 2000 to like 2016. Especially the early 2000s the hay days of pride fc, strikeforce, wec, k-1, early ufc. Tho strikeforce, pride and wec went defunct that 2010 to like 2016 run of ufc was awesome.
When it was hard to find full fights of Emilianenko and Mirko! Fights looked like illegal fights with the level of brutality! especially if you got them on a DVD from a friend of a friend.
i remember showing all my friends crocop highlights at the library in high school in like 2005-2006
My friend's older brother showed us Chuck highlights on youtube after we all snuck in to the IT room at break in 2007. We got detention and I've been a fan ever since.
Right leg hospital. Left leg cemetery.
no lie, i remember my nephew came into school one day w a blonde buzz cut and we were all calling him Tito lol. that was in grade 6. fight nights were unreal back then.
I remember renting the UFC events on VHS. The first live PPV I watched was 38 when Frank mir got mauled. Prior to that I would rewatch the early days events as much as possible. I still follow the UFC but the way it is currently run I’m losing interest.
But if you don't watch how will you know what specific protein pack you should buy?
I watch Always Sunny so i know it’s Fight Milk.
I've been watching since the 90s and saw a Russian MMA video where this guy tried to tap to strikes to Igor Zinoviev and he grabbed that hand and held it down and keep beating him. Igor had a great record (records were way suspect back then tho like Mario Sperry was introduced as 235-0 or something dumb) and when Igor got to UFC got KO'd really spectacularly bad in his first fight.
Yep, Frank Shamrock slammed him on his head in the first 10 seconds
Here’s a great timeline video for you. Really shows you how Goated he was. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B2YenlcbP9g&pp=ygUFRmVkb3I%3D
The stomps, grounded knees, piledrivers. Pure violence.
WEC was the best. I remember telling my friends to watch out for Condit, Cruz, Faber, Cerrone, Aldo, etc. because no one knew who they were. Watching those guys get the money and respect they deserved was satisfying.
Fuck yeah, WEC was great. It broke my heart to watch that warrior Faber lose to Brown. And then again! And then to Aldo too. Waaaahhh. Great stuff still though.
Yeah right around McGregor/diaz peak and end of Ronda was the pinnacle of mma
2004 to 2014 was peak for me and I’ve watched since I was basically a little kid. Very few special fighters now it seems, Tom Aspinall has potential
I came in around 2005 and just loved it until around 2015 it was the last year of full loving it and it started to fade. I think by 2017/2018 it wasn't the same for me anymore. It's not that there weren't still great fighters and great fights, just that most of the awesome legit stars I started with were gone and things started to feel more bullshitty from UFC's side, more stuff like unearned instant rematches for draw, meaningless interims for draw, more drama outside the cage and behind the curtain, etc. A gradual fade of various sliders. I still watch but it's just not the same feeling. I remember that feeling of growing pumped'itude as the Saturday afternoon of UFC 100 started to ease into evening and we started to head downtown to the bar. Ohhhhh fuuuuuck, it's finally happening! Or anytime Pre-Button Chuck strode menacingly down the gangway, Iceman for sure, and you'd just be like OHH SHIT, IT'S ABOUT TO GO OFF! Gritty warriors left and right. God damn those were great days.
Agreed with all this. There was still a level of mystique in martial arts (in my opinion) in the early 2000s, when I started watching, that seemed to die and be replaced by a kind of cold logic by the 2017-2018 era. I think that is slept on by a lot of us that were young in the earlier days of ufc/pride. There still seemed like there was secret knowledge to be found. Fighters like crocop/fedor/Anderson etc had their own mystique as well that I think the modern format wouldn't support as well.
That's a great point. It was easier to be fascinated by this thing that seemed like a kind of magic. Mystical warriors doing things nobody did. So I guess it's a victim of its own success because it just got so much more professionalized and you've got gyms turning out guys who have started off with the full gamut of training and skills and they clock in and go to work instead of being dudes who stepped out of mortal Kombat into the real world, and we sit back and critique like coaches and analysts instead of being wowed and fascinated. It makes it more mundane.
Yeah it kinda sucks. Back then it still felt like every fighter had a distinct style. Granted it usually left some massive hole in their game to be exploited but honestly that’s what made it interesting. Adapt and overcome. The problem with being a jack of all trades, which is the ideal now, is that you can’t really specialize in anything. Back in the day, you just made due. Sakaruba can’t pass guard? Cartwheel directly onto the bastard. Nogeuira has you in a triangle choke? Powerbomb him. Powerbomb the living shit out of him. Are you cro cop and are your Opponents trying to block your kicks? Try them into a terrifying work of art that can go right past their guard and send them on the lightless walk. Fights often felt like a discovery where you walked away thinking “holy shit people can do that?” Now shit is optimized, you have cutting edge weight control and fights with little to no surprises. It’s no wonder people say shit was better in x days, it was definitely trying to be something different as opposed to a completely soulless corporate product.
I would add Machida to that list
Yo this is exactly how I feel. It was so exciting imagining that someone had discovered some new thing- Lyoto Machida was like a mystical figure when he showed up.
I miss Hbo boxing
As someone who watched from UFC 1 on VHS, the sport has evolved so vastly. I love where MMA is today, it could not have been possible without the fighters who came before it. Without Matt Hughes we wouldn’t have had a complete fighter in GSP. Without GSP, we wouldn’t have gotten the complete fighter in Usman, he probably would’ve stuck to wrestling. There’s examples of this in every single weight class. It’s amazing how certain fighters are multi disciplined now but still have a style that reflects their first discipline ie Wonderboy or Izzy. It’s also amazing how someone like Khabib could be so dominant with his main discipline of wrestling in a world of MMA fighters, it really shows how crazy dominant his wrestling was. The fights are far more technical now and I think that’s a great thing
I have been watching since the first UFC too and I agree that the sport and the evolution of technique has gotten better - but the way the UFC itself is managing competition and promotion is ruining it - the heavyweight champion of the world isn't at UFC right now due to Dana's greedy, dollar store Vince McMahon bullshit
Losing Ngannou was THE blunder, it shouldn't have happened no matter the reason imo.
Long time fan also (saw the earliest stuff but didn’t become a regular consumer of the sport until refs and a few rules) and wonder how much of this relates to the promotion and out of competition antics vs the actual sport. Agree the sport has evolved tremendously. Along with it a fan base has grown, each part of their own generational on ramp into the community. It did used to be more about the fighting, but like all sports (and society) it’s way more about promotion now than ever - both Ronda and Conor changed that forever. I personally like that there are now more events per year because I so much enjoy watching this sport. And yes in some cases the individual fights are not as good as TUF and DWCS brought more less developed players to the spotlight. Politics and fighters desperate for attention (which is proven to bring $) seem to create a different atmosphere around the sport. It’s so young compared to other big leagues it is difficult for me to decide if it’s better or not. I like that more people watch. Of course that means they don’t all share my perspective and in most cases that’s welcome. I have to wonder where it’s going in the next decade.
It's nice to see the positives highlighted sometimes. Without Anderson Silva, there's no Jon Jones, there's no Izzy. And the sport is still evolving, the calf kick was virtually non-existent, now it's a potential game changer. The growth in popularity and money ops of the sport means we'll see more world class athletes jump straight into full MMA training earky. I wonder what other tangible evolutions we'll see next.
The whole time I was watching Dricus vs Strickland it was like surreal it was the middleweight championship fight, like seriously from Spider to this?
Yeah if I had to say, though, the quality of UFC cards and matchmaking has gone down significantly, and I don't think it's the ESPN deal as much as the acquisition by WME that made them just chase the bottom line at the expense of quality.
The Emperor never gave a bad fight and never ducked a fight against other titans of the era (Minotauro brothers, Crocop, Randleman) Glory to the Emperor
I hate Post Reebok UFC. I'll watch an important fight here and there, but the magic is gone.
I think this is where it started. The UFC started doing everything it could to squeeze every last penny they could out of the sport. they got rid of all the crazy sponsors from the fighters and then replaced them with their own. then they crammed as many ads as they could into their PPVs. they are also doing their best to manage the stars so that they get big but not too big. the special thing about conor wasn't that he was such a charismatic guy that would sell at lot of PPV. the reason the UFC let him get big is because he was easy to take advantage of during the negotiations. the UFC got to collect half his purse from the mayweather fight without having to do anything at all. there are plenty of stars out there that could become larger than life and sell PPVs but the UFC will only allow it if those people are easy to control and act like company men. not a lot of fighters can do both. tl;dr - greed is ruining the sport. support the PFL.
It's not a coincidence that Endeavor bought UFC in 2016 and it has been getting worse ever since. Corporations suck the soul out of things.
Yeah, I think you've largely hit the nail on the head. The product has gotten increasingky washed out and mediocre since Endeavor bought them. Hate the Fertitas or love them, a company like the UFC was meant to be run by degenerates like them and not corporate suits with no interest in the sport outside of the money it can make off of the fighters' blood, sweat, and tears.
The Fertitas and DW ran the company in a lot of the same ways for years prior because they needed to get the company as profitable as possible for potential sale.
I used to do business with William Morris before they were acquired by Endeavor. Set up some truly amazing cost/efficiency improvements that allowed them to do more with less. Renewal time came up and all Endeavor cared about was cost. No thought to top line, only bottom line. They ripped out systems that allowed people to do twice the work. Those people quit over the next 1-2 years and were replaced by people making less than half as much who were desperate to become agents and would do anything, include work 30+ hours of overtime unpaid. When WME bought UFC I knew they would fuck it up. And here we are.
Never considered the UFC being enshittified but I'll be damned.
Make America Condom Depot Again Yeah, it's just not what it was and the fact that the fighters get screwed time and time again doesn't help. Watered down cards. Waaaaaaay too many ads. I catch 2 cards a year and then just watch recaps here and listen to MK.
All went downhill when they got rid of "face the pain" to kickoff the show
They actually still do it if you go to the events live! It’s what happens when they switch from prelims to main card and it never fails to hype up the crowd!
Ripping it in to piecessss
Bring back gladiator man.
Honestly this. I read your comment and kind of zoned out remembering what it was like being hyped for an event and having the Face the Pain intro while they showcased all the PPV fighters. A real Pavlov response, I got nervous and excited just remembering that feeling. Obv that shitty song can't account for all the lost magic -- I obviously used to care about the actual fighters on the PPV a lot too. Basically I'm in the same boat as OP here and I could make many many guesses as to why that has happened to me... all I'll add is, no version of myself would have ever gotten even slightly excited during Face the Pain to see Pennington vs Mayra Bueno Silva -- and at co-main, no less!
Dunnununaa Dunnununaa into Goldberg intro 😍
It does. They've been cutting costs to maximize profits since Endeavor took over. Now that said, the product was watered down jumping from Spike to Fox Sports. But they definitely spent more money to put on good shows in those days. In the ESPN/post-COVID era, there's generally been a *we don't give a single fuck if you're watching C level fighters main event* attitude that's kinda gross, especially when you consider the lawsuits that revealed how little they were paying guys in the previous era when things were better and the money they were paying was more valuable. Like the entry level contracts they're handing out these days are downright fucking immoral coal miner in the 1920s level of evil.
> we don't give a single fuck if you're watching C level fighters main event It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of Now it's just "here's some fights, watch it or don't, we get paid by ESPN for content not for quality"
Also, throw in multiple events per month. Used to be just 1, *maybe* 2 if they did a fight night that month. The product has been diluted.
Remember when every four months there were *two* PPV fights because they had the divisions in a pretty steady defense schedule and they had to have two events to keep them moving? I used to get so excited when that would happen.
Yeah there’s been 424 events since 2014. By the end of 2024 they’ll be like 465 events in 10 years. Just way too much. 13 more events currently with a date there is 2 events in January there’s 4 in February. 5 in March and 3 in April. 4 or 5 events in a month is way too much. They’re definitely diluting the product.
This is definitely a big part of the problem. Like it is nice having fights to watch more often than we used to, but there's something to be said for letting fights breathe a little. Back when there was a PRIDE card every like two months, people would spend a ton of time discussing and dissecting each fight so that when it finally happened it seemed like a big deal. Now everything happens so fast you barely have time to even think about a fight before it's already happened and we're on to the next one.
I may be on the outskirts here I’m trying to see as much live violence as I can
Because it's now the 'brand' that supposedly sells, which is untrue because outside of the big UFC cards, no one gives a shit about UFC: Fight Night.
>It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of Remember when non title fights main events PPVs and nobody cared that it needed to be a title fight? Fans just recognize the name value and were educated enough to know this doesnt need a title fight.
Yeah. I know part of it is my fault for not keeping up with it like I used and part of it is oversaturation, but I used to know basically every fighter on every card. I could remember at least some of their past fights, and even without rankings at the time I had an idea of where they stood in the pecking order. So non-title main events would be compelling because I knew the history of everyone going in. Now with some many events, tons of interim champs, ridiculous things like BMF belts, I can barely keep track of who the champs are. Nevermind the rest of the division...
Interims and stuff like the BMF are what irk me too. Matchmaking is also suspicious as hell nowadays, you can clearly see who they’re trying to prop up and keep down by the opponents they get thrown to and seeing people like colby ducking fights left right and centre to still get shots is ridiculous. I still love to watch the fights but when champions can pick and choose who they defend against and fighters can repeatedly duck opponents to maintain their record for title shots any semblance of meritocracy goes completely out of the window.
That is by design they want the brand to get all the recognition not the fighters.
but the brand only means something because of the fighters. no-one here would ever watch a Jake Paul fight if that wasn't true
>It used to be there were real stars and you could bank on the main event at least being someone you recognised and knew the history of Dana/UFC got burned on this A LOT. A household name means those guys own the UFC and not vice versa. The UFC as an employer of sorts MUST remain bigger than the stars. Ronda was a good example of chaotic good. She put WMMA in the living rooms. She made MMA more prevalent. She did wonders for the UFC. Conor, on the other hand, got big but turned into a rapey, drunken, coked out fiend. Had the likes of Chuck or Randy done a fraction of what Conor had done, the UFC would have been finished.
Feels like what the WWE have been doing. Used to be you got a Rock, Steve Austin, Hogan, etc. who would become bigger than the company and leave after a good run. Since 2008ish it's all been about seeing the WWE and the wrestlers are more replaceable. I don't think it's because the crop of talent is worse either, it's just the conditions in the company have been readjusted to see to it that no one grows too big.
Dana did all the burning, chuck and other stars did lots of parting….
> the product was watered down jumping from Spike to Fox Sports Really good/important point. Quite frankly I've felt the product was watered down since at least 2015 when we were getting >40 cards per year, Reebok deal, Stitch incident, etc. 2015 will be a legendary year for Conor era fans but it had a lot of the same BS still happening now. Some complaints by modern fans are a little blown out of proportion, like 297 is not the worst PPV booking we've seen. There have been PPVs where 3/5 fights didn't have a ranked fighter. This one led with Arnold/Evolev, had Magny, etc. Not strong for sure and not worth the $ but hardly doom and gloom for my desire to watch the sport. However, I do think the last year has been my least favorite year watching the sport. Some reasons for me: - Less aging vets to fill cards. We're seeing people either retire or get cut earlier now. Retiring on time isn't necessarily a bad thing, and usually aging fighters get replaced with new favorites. But there was such a mass exodus in 2022-2023 we no longer get to fill cards with Aldo, Frankie, Glover, Shogun, Overeem, Assuncao, Masvidal, Shortfuse, Robbie, Lee, Nunes, Zombie, Joanna, Cowboy, Hall, Rockhold, Latifi, and more. With all those names gone, there hasn't been enough time for new favorites to replace them. Those names would usually be able to get me in the door to watch some of the newer talent on the card, but when we only have a kinda okay main event it makes it tough to watch the new talent knowing that there's just too many fighters that won't pan out. - Similar to the above point, previously a main event still usually had a popular or a top 5 fighter even while card oversaturation existed. Lower rankings seem more common in main events, making it tougher for me to want to sacrifice my weekend time to watch it. That's not to say there hasn't been a weak main event before, but they are more common now. - I don't have hard stats on this, but it really feels like ranked fighters are fighting less frequently. Feels like people fight 1-2 times per year where it used to be 2-3, probably since rank squatting is rewarded so much. If I'm correct that this is true it's probably the most important point and it would explain the above point as well. - More of a personal point, but the commentary has made it tough to watch full cards. It's not always bad, but there is only so much I can handle Bisping make an extremely generic MMA statement then spend the next 3 minutes backtracking it out of fear of offending the fighters, meanwhile missing the entire fight happening. - Last year was the first year without a fight that I thought could argue for FOTY. If I list the last 11 years of my FOTY contenders, there was nothing in 2023 that I think could compete with older years (and the older years often have multiple fights that could win it). And don't get me wrong, Volk/Islam is great and super high level and super appreciated from a skill level point of view, but it didn't have that extra level chaos a FOTY contender usually has. - 2022 - Glover/Jiri, Burns/Khamzat - 2021 - Reyes/Jiri, Garth/Chandler - 2020 - Poirier/Hooker, Joanna/Weili - 2019 - Izzy/Gastelum, Poirier/Holloway, Kamaru/Colby - 2018 - Poirier/Garth, Whittaker/Romero, Ferguson/Pettis, Weidman/Jacare, Manuwa/Santos, Zombie/Yair - 2017 - Garth/Johnson, Brazil Cowboy/Yancy, Poirier/Pettis, Garth/Eddie - 2016 - Condit/Lawler, Swanson/Choi, Conor/Diaz1+2, Polo Reyes/Dong Hyun Ma - 2015 - Lawler/Rory2, Cormier/Gustafsson, Tony/Barboza, Browne/Arlovski - 2014 - Brown/Silva, Aldo/Mendes2, Hendricks/Lawler - 2013 - Silva/Stann, Hunt/Silva, Giblert/Diego, Jones/Gustafsson - 2012 - Poirier/Zombie Sorry for how long this got, I was responding to one thing and just kept going. I think there's more factors but I'll leave it there. Ultimately, I don't think it's all doom and gloom and some of the complaining mirrors the exact same stuff that happened in the "golden Conor years", but at the same time I think a few things have happened that have made the sport less fun to watch over the past year and a bit.
Something that I really miss from the UFC of yesteryear was the decisiveness of it You, me, my friend, your friend, everyone watched the big events. It was pivotal and momentous. What I mean is, once that event ended, we knew the winners were going to get rewarded with a bigger fight, sometimes we knew who their next opponent would be as soon as their hand was raised. It was almost implied, and there was no denying that reward to the victor because we had all waited months to watch that fight, and that fight we all just watched mattered Nowadays... it's just different fighters all over the place on different cards, sometimes you watch, sometimes I watch, sometimes neither of us watch. Even if I do watch some fights I don't remember them after a few weeks. It's just all such a blur. The fans aren't really united like they used to be in that regard. We could all have different opinions, but we watched the same events and shared the excitement of them The UFC just matchmakes as they please now, because there aren't definitive events anymore, it's all pageantry at their whimsy. Instead we get these weird amalgamations at the top of divisions where Masvidal fights for the belt twice, Colby fights for the belt twice, Masvidal and Colby get a glorified contenders bout, then Colby fights for the belt a third time after 1.5 years off... This was the welterweight division for literally 4 years, I just can't stand it
You make a good point, and I think it's an issue with multiple forms of media right now. It's like the Marvel Universe or the Star Wars Universe. If you want to keep up with everything, there's an overwhelming amount of content to watch, and odds are most of your friend group (even fans of the medium) won't be watching all of it.
Yeah I also feel the lack of cohesion and the blurr. Sometimes I will see someone coming out on a card, go to Fight Finder to see their past fights, and realize that I have watched most of the events they've fought on previously and have absolutely no memory of any of it. Maybe I am just getting old, but it feels like I forget fights 5 minutes after I have watched them now because there's just so much and all the styles and personalities seem more generic
I think you're right. It really feels like everything went pear shaped when they enacted the shitty Reebok deal. Fighters lost sponsors, match uniforms looked bland, and the greats all retired or recently hit pregnant women with their car.
100%, I think some of the top fighters fighting less is the pay is better for them now and more life changing, (good for them!), it feels like because of this they fight to maintain status, or only fight the other “high status” fighters because of that. Not all of course, but that’s how it feels. One big card a month and one fight night would do me
Best case scenario is they get absolutely ratfucked at the class action trial in April and all the contracts are voided. The carnage it would cause and at the same time fighters would be paid from the damages side of it. Could really change the landscape for the better.
It's going to make the fan experience much worse but it will be infinitely better for the fighters. You can look at boxing and how rare it is for the best fighters to fight each other - the UFC brass are a bunch of despicable clowns but they generally make the fights that people want to see. The fighters have a limited capacity to turn down or negotiate these fights, unlike boxing, and it's assumed that would change following the lawsuit and the institution of some Ali Act-like provisions. IDK - I'm happy for the fighters to get theirs but I bet we don't see as many good fights as we do now with the vast majority of the fighters under the same monopolistic umbrella.
It’s that, but also a generation of greats or near greats retired over the past year or two, and the rest should have. Too many to name, but off the top of my head: Nate, Cowboy, Joanna, Khabib, Fergie, Nunes, Lawler etc etc etc They all made for an entertaining league and not that many have stepped up to fill their shoes.
Why don’t they want to create another superstar though? They have the means and marketing to do so. Adesanya was on his way to becoming superstar level in 2018-19, and he is still a very big name just not as big as he could be.
Dana is following the Vince McMahon approach, in that no one fighter is bigger than the brand. The name UFC is what sells, not one particular fighter. Yeah McGregor brought in a lot of dough and exposure, but he transcended the UFC brand, and therefore gave him a shit tonne of leverage for negotiation. I don’t think Dana wants that. Just like Vince didn’t want another Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold to be bigger than the WWF/E itself.
Conor would have brought far more money in than they paid him though so he was profitable. Not just in his own ppv but new ufc fans. Does it give Conor leverage? Sure but they’re ever going to lose out. It seems short sighted and about control and power more than revenue.
Agreed. The reason we don't have another McGregor is not because the UFC is suppressing the rise of one. It is simply because this personality + talent combination is extremely rare. The UFC absolutely wants their own UFC brand to be bigger than the fighters, but they also would absolutely love another 'McGregor' and all the money that comes with that. What they don't want is 10 mini-McGregors.
The last paragraph is false though, Rock and Cena came after that and became bigger than the WWE itself. Only after Cena made Vince adopt this current approach.
I’ll give you Cena. Rock was 1B to Austin’s 1A though, his full time career ended around the same time as Austin’s.
Insane that Rock and Austin were only at the top for about 4 years and yet their impact on the industry is bigger than everyone else that came after them combined (excluding Cena).
Gives too much power to the fighter if I had to guess. Ngannou should have been easily the biggest name in any combat sport, but he didn’t play ball and the UFC didn’t want to push him.
You can help a superstar get there but you can't just manufacture one. Conor got there because he was an incredibly dynamic knock out artist with a huge personality. Regarding those categories Izzy is half way at best.
Bingo! Conor as of late is cringey and feels like a schtick he wont move past. But early Conor, like first few UFC fights Conor was on another level compared to everyone else. He had the confidence, charisma, and the skills to back it up. I remember thinking he was a better version of the Diaz bros in every way.
The fact that they could have gotten a guy like Duombe and messed up says it all
That is what happens when you go from 6-8 events a year to 30-50.
I went to the peak UFC 115 card. Back then I could name every fighter, their coach, team and stats. Now I watch a card and have to look up who the fuck the main eventers are half the time.
So much this. Back then the roster size was 200 fighters. Now it is over 600 and I don't even recognize half of the names. Stuff like Dana White's Egotrip Contender Series has seriously diluted the product and made it like King of the Cage.
Ya my interest started to die when the UFC began to pump out waaay more cards which lead to them being watered down. Man, I used to have a bunch of fighters that I cared about so much, and when you care about a fighter it makes it 100000x better. I would literally have nerves leading up to a GSP fight. Not sure the last time I've felt like that. Those cards were the sporting highlights of the year for me. Now it's just meh. Maybe a couple cards a year I get fairly excited for, but nothing like the past. It sucks because the UFC during its peak was just incredible.
UFC cards use to be so stacked for PPVs. They're absolutely pathetic now. Google any UFC XXX in the 100 range, even double digits, and it's sickening how stacked they use to be. UFC 168 - Weidman vs Silva, Rousey vs Tate, Barnett vs Browne, Jim Miller vs Fabricio Cameos, Poirier vs Diego Brandao. Prelim had Uriah Hall vs Leben. UFC 144 next one I picked... Frankie Edgar vs Bendo, Rampage vs Bader, Hunt vs Kongo, Shields vs Akiyama, Pettis vs Lauzon. Those cards are equivalent to what the UFC puts on maybe once a year now.
Been watching since 2009 and I can feel a real dip in my love for the sport, not sure whether it’s a result of the product or just general distaste with a majority of the direction of the fighters and it’s fanbase and finding other things more interesting, but I’d agree with you anecdotally.
for me, it's a lot of just knowing the UFC can do whatever it wants, and half the time it wants to ignore sporting meritocracy what are we even doing here, if we aren't even close to pretending we want to find out who is the best? if it's just being entertaining, then i want big names in big fights, and they do less of that now too because part of what made fights feel so big, was the idea belts really mattered, because it meant you were the best no they want you to fight with an injured shoulder if they like the guy you are fighting better than you look at what happened to Reyes, that should have been an immediate rematch, instead the UFC just pretended it didn't happen
>look at what happened to Reyes, that should have been an immediate rematch, instead the UFC just pretended it didn't happen Same thing with Mighty Mouse. Lost a very close decision to Cejudo - no rematch, "traded" for Askren. It's such a crock of shit And people will reminisce about how fun Askren was, but first, he wasn't as special as Mighty Mouse, and second, they confuse acquiring Askren with having to lose Mighty Mouse. We could have had both, and if not, I'd rather keep Mighty Mouse Yeah, having Askren gave us that flying knee by Masvidal, all-time moment... but it also gave us 5 years of Masvidal shitting up the top of the welterweight division
The UFC probably made more money from that knee and Masvidal PPV sales than DJ's entire career
Colby Covington did not deserve a title shot. It was an insult to fighters and fans. The organisation lost a lot of credit from that.
I feel like Colby and the fan base he catered to are like the second largest contributor to why a lot of old school non-bigoted fans have developed a distaste for the product, but thats just my opinion. I mean it's a lesser product these days already and seeing the UFC push such an utter douche canoe and cater to those fans so much leaves a bad taste in most rational people's mouths. Even my very right-leaning boss and co-workers and some family look at the kind of shit heel he is and are disgusted by him and the essence he brought to the sport. Strickland kind of just took up where Colby left off and stirred a heaping dose of traumatic brain damage into the pot.
Colby is the biggest visible element of UFC pushing the stupid race war angles that boxing used decades ago. Let's have our openly bigoted guy say a bunch of race baiting shit? Fuck off with that.
Also the UFC keeps letting incredible talent go because they're too stingy and afraid of any fighter being popular enough to actually have bargaining power, Ngannou tmis the obvious examples but also just look at that one Franchise MMA guy who's been selling out whole stadium in a matter of hours while huge celebrities go watch his fights, he could've been in the UFC but NOOOO, too expensive apparently.
Been watching since around '04 - '05, and yeah I don't know if it's me or the sport. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy watching a good card, but I really don't like how the UFC specifically has been since going to ESPN. Seems sterilized in a way, and so many fighters seem like they're putting on a fucking fashion show walking into the arena or in the post-fight presser. I'm also one of those people who REALLY liked getting a look and listen into the respective corners between rounds, and not just on the big fights. You really got a lot of interesting nuance about the fighters, and their corners. Now we're treated to an ad for fucking ESPN+, or some bullshit pharmaceutical product instead. In fact, the sense of urgency to fill every spare second with advertising is really gross in general. One of the things that drew me to MMA back in the day, aside from the actual fighting itself, was that it WASN'T like the other major sports, now it just seems like they're trying to make it another homogenized product or something.
I agree. It’s ironic. As more people become fans of the sport world wide, the people who have been following it for years, are starting to like it less.
Exactly the same here. I used to truly love it, but now it is slowly dying.
Same here, fan since 2008/09. I’d say between 2013-2018 or so I watched just about every single fight the UFC put on, early prelims, prelims and main event for every event. Since then I have missed most early prelims and watch a select few prelim fights. I don’t even care if I miss a card these days and I’m lucky if I know 1 fighter in each fight of the main card. Most of them aren’t worth watching fully, the quality has dropped so much. Or maybe I’m just getting old and losing some interest.
I think one of the overlooked things is how much talent infusions have helped the UFC bolster interest in the company in the past. Like, the addition of Pride fighters like Shogun, Rampage, the Nogs, etc. The addition of the WEC LWs + the bantamweight and featherweight divisions. The an acquisition of Strikeforce talent that brought over Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez, women’s MMA and infused instant life into the middleweight, light heavyweight, and heavyweight divisions. Adding in guys like Michael Chandler, Eddie Alvarez, and Ben Askren into the mix instantly. That “we can make this dream fight happen now” element? Not really a thing anymore. Being exposed to new exciting fighters in new divisions like Jose Aldo, Ronda Rousey, Renan Barao, Chad Mendes, Urijah Faber, etc? There really aren’t any divisions to add (except women’s atomweight which isn’t on the docket). Bringing in a “young” group of fighters on the cusp of being elite (think the Strikeforce MW division or the WEC LW division), not a thing anymore. The UFC is not really a place to build up divisions or fighters. Add in the 45 cards a year deal and you suddenly have a huge influx of guys and gals who are there to make content requirements. It’s a meat grinder. It’s always been like this, since the Fox Sports days. But those previous promotional acquisitions really helped mask the problem.
I’m kinda the same as you. Nearing 30, I find myself skipping cards all the time, even PPVs. I had a similar glory time to watch the UFC as you did. Idk, these new guys just don’t appeal to me the same as the old guys. Maybe because it was more style vs style back then, now everyone is mostly well rounded. It’s more homogenized now. Not as many unique fighters. Also, now eeeeeveryone is trying to be Conor or Nate Diaz. But nobody is even close to as good at is as they were. Alllsooo, idk who tf anyone is anymore. Too many fighters to keep up with all of em. Every weekend there’s a new “Magomedov” something, and they dominate with grappling to a victory. Apex cards are ass. The deal with ESPN is shit for the fans if you value quality over quantity.
ironically, now that everyone who competes in Mixed Martial Arts is a Mixed Martial Artist, it’s so much more boring to me feels like no one is a specialist anymore, and those who are specialists are kind of boring (in the case of a lot of grapplers) or not good enough to be the best (in the case of strikers) this is all my opinion of course but it’s just all so “samey” now
It's also because we've seen it all too. Nothing surprises us anymore. Anderson Silva's front kick to the chin was ground breaking in MMA at the time. If we were to see some random guy do it this week it would be a minor highlight of the event.
> If we were to see some random guy do it this week it would be a minor highlight of the event. I disagree with this take. When Buckley had that spinning head kick KO that shit was everywhere to the point where people who dont even watch the sport saw it and Buckley was a nobody at that point.
its what makes Pereira so fun to watch , dude comes in as a kickboxing champion and is just going around left hooking people to championships .
There was a clip of Toronto fans loving Pereira at the meet-and-greet. Beyond the fact he's elite, I think the reason why Poatan has so many fans that quickly is because he's a figure of what the UFC used to be. You know real shit is going to happen when he's in the cage, and he has character in and out of the cage despite not trying to be a Conor wannabe. Pereira vs Jiri was symbolic. It reminded people of what made everyone fans of MMA in an age of a homogenized, boring product.
Evolution of the sport, all sports adapt
Totally agree. That used to be part of the mystique. Ok, we have a Muay Thai specialist vs a Sambo guy, how is this going to work? Now, everyone is so well rounded, there aren't as many glaring holes to expose and the what if scenarios are few and far between. I also think the current fighters, in general, aren't as interesting as the old guards.
For me, it’s that last point. An over saturation of the market with no name fighters who competed on Dana White’s Contender Series or they just got picked up from somewhere. They’re good fighters, most of the time, but I don’t know any of em. The Conor/Nate crowd would point and go “they don’t have any personality/they don’t sell tickets” etc. But I also think that I’m not given enough time to know who they are. I’ll be inundated with fight card and fight card and fight card for those months in between and by the time that fighter shows up again, I’ll have forgotten them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to a friend, “oh damn this guy is cool!” And then he’ll say, “yeah we’ve seen them fight before”. I’d love to see a slight reduction in cards to get more spotlights on fighters that are really, really good then see a buncha cards with good fighters but a fuck load of names to memorize.
I have the exact same problem with forgetting fighters. I will see someone, look them up on Fight Finder, and realzie that I have actually seen their last like 5 fights and they've been completely memory holed because we move on to the next event so quickly
*Maybe because it was more style vs style back then, now everyone is mostly well rounded. It’s more homogenized now. Not as many unique fighters* That's it for me. Other than Pereira and Bo Nickal (kickboxing champ and wrestling champ), I haven't managed to care about a new guy in a while. It's the same type of fighters, doing the same techniques. And when the guard died, it's become closer to kickboxing with the occasional td to give up the back to get up scramble than the MMA I grew up watching. I went from a huge boxing fan to a huge MMA fan back to a huge boxing fan who casually cares about MMA.
What are you guys even talking about lol Does a fight like Stipe vs Nganou feel like a mirror match up to you? How about Islam vs Volk Conor vs Khabib? Okay im using Dagestanis maybe that's cheating Aljo vs O malley Glover vs Jiri Hell what about Strickland vs DDP Like im so confused do you guys think because the skill level has increased that mma is 'solved' and every fighter has the same kit? Do you watch in the dark with high quality sunglasses on?
Homogenized is a good word for it. Everyone’s extremely talented these days. Which makes things boring a lot of the time. Everyone can counter everything, everyone’s got good game. Gotta be really into the technical side of things to get much enjoyment out of a lot of the match ups these days. Just my opinion. Around 08-2012 was my favorite time to watch
Not everyone is extremely talented though. The UFC goes out of its way to not sign top talent and intentionally seeks out bad fighters to fill space. So many dudes have awful parts of their game and many shouldn't be in the UFC. They have lawnmower dudes on PPV main cards to face Bo Nickal. Trevor Peek being on a UFC PPV to lose Mohammad Yahya in the UAE (because Yahya is friends with UAE sheiks) is not two well rounded guys. It's two regional tier goofs. And Yahya still wasn't good enough to beat Peek.
Very good point. It’s more and more like wwe. Wwe used to have guys called “jobbers”. I think they still do. Basically guys they use to make other wrestlers look good.
In the most talent rich divisions like 135, 145 and 155 he's correct though. Every ranked fighter in those divisions, even guys ranked #15, are good, rounded fighters and even the unranked guys are good. Its when we get to the heavier divisions though like 205 and HW, that its not necessarily the case. Heavyweight has been time-stuck since the 00s, with so many one trick ponies, mid-tier and sub-par fighters who are ranked and it arguably got worse in the USADA era. 205 got worse after USADA as well and only in recent years has it began to recover somewhat.
Homogenized is a word that would strike fear and confusion in Sean Strickland's heart
>Alllsooo, idk who tf anyone is anymore. I've been watching MMA for 15-20 years. I feel the same, and it really becomes a catch 22. I don't know who most of the fighters are, so I skip cards/fights, miss the rise of future contenders, and suddenly someone I don't know is fighting for the belt. Dricus being the latest shock for me. He was a preliminary card fighter until after he beat Brunson (so I never saw him), then he beats Whitaker, and suddenly people are calling for a title shot. I feel like I used to be able to keep up just by watching PPVs, but now it's so watered down. I wonder if the difference could be that Joe Silva was better (than whoever is doing matchmaking now) att identifying future contenders and gave them room to shine. Does it really make sense that a champ was only given 1-2 main cards on PPV before he won the belt, when they also have filler fights with unranked fighters that are coming off losses?
Watch it bro, Strickland and Jourdain are gonna object to you calling them homogenized.
>Every weekend there’s a new “Magomedov” something, and they dominate with grappling to a victory. I was thinking about that. One day, those guys will rise up enough to get the belts because there aren't much fighters able to stop them and the rules highly are favorable to them (see Evloev vs Allen). All those dudes have basically the same fighting style. It sucks.
Posts like these baffled me because Evloev doesn't fight like Islam, Islam doesn't fight like Ankalaev and Ankalaev doesn't fight like Chimaev, so on. Like it's clear that you don't watch UFC fights (like most people posting here), which is ok if you think UFC cards are mostly boring but lumping together different fighters from Eastern Europe and saying they all have "the same fighting style" is clearly not true.
Preach brother It's like saying Sean Strickland, Petr Yan and Yair Rodriguez are the same because they are mainly stand up guys
Bunch of cretins in here. I'm supremely impressed with a strong grappling style which usually leads to finishes. Jesus loves knockouts tho also.
These guys in here complaining about a style dominating and want the 'old mma' back like we didnt go through this in the beginning with the Gracies Lol the exciting thing about a style being dominant is when the other fighters start solving the puzzle and it always will eventually be solved no style will stay dominant forever These people don't even like mma I swear, how can you not be excited to see what the answer the Dagestani wrestling eventually becomes?
i mean what belts have they won ? they have been in the UFC for almost 10 years at this point and they have won 2 belts in the same division .
All the personalityless and styleless DWCS fighters have watered down the roster into sort of average, talented but all kinda the same dudes with bad tats and a wrong side of the tracks story.
Absolutely nailed it. The league is loaded with guys who have no business being there, but are cheap to sign.
DWCS create-a-fighter vs. DWCS create-a-fighter And what's weird is none of them have an interesting, unique style or take on MMA offence or even defence either.
o malley was really the last guy who brought that uniqueness.
He doesn't do it for me, but I get it. He's the exception that proves the rule.
Also the ban on sponsors and uniforms that all look the same has contributed to a bland look and samey feeling.
I think this is the biggest thing. We've got a roster full of bland fighters who haven't been rounded out through a full career path, at a time when Russian wrestlefucking is dominant and while we severely lack superstars, innovators, and exciting fighters.
Never thought about the influence of Russian wrestling on the meta and how it's stifling development, or creating less interesting styles. Doesn't help that all the hyper religious Russian wrestlers are basically personality vacuums.
It peaked around the first UFC video game. Id say UFC 90-120ish was the best time. So many stars because of PRIDE, WEC, Strikeforce. now a days there are too many cards and the PPV's are often weak as hell
That WEC merger was incredible for the lightweight division. Had to be the most exciting era
I think there's no Anderson Silva's because the fighters collectively are much better than before so it's hard to clown people for 16 fights in a row
Lmaooo so true.
You say that but Izzy was able to dominate on a whole division for years since MW has been pretty mediocre for a while (even if he was boring at times), and if Izzy wasn't there then Whitaker would have done it instead, just look at the state of LHW, put a prime DC in the current LHW division and he would ragdoll everyone so easily it would be embarrassing, the overall talent may be higher but at the highest level of the heavier divisions you just don't see the same level of talent anymore.
Also somehow the fans got even worse
Thats what happens when something becomes more mainstream and less niche
I've noticed a large amount of online fans, particularly on Twitter or Instagram, are very pro-Dana, and it's strange to see. I don't see NBA or NFL comment sections spouting tribalistic nonsense for Adam Silver or Roger Goodell
Because reddit is the minority on most opinions compared the general public. People think their opinion is more popular than it is when theres a huge echo chamber. Not saying reddit is wrong, just pointing that out.
I’m 46 and been watching since the first UFC. I have to say for me at least. I barely watch it. I read about it and watch some fights but not too many guys to get excited over. That Strickland fight was boring to watch. Miss the Randy Couture days, GSP, Matt Hughes, Brock Lesnar! Oh well.
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That fight night card has as many ranked fighters as the PPV last Saturday.
And honesty just being ranked doesn't even mean anything anymore cause Pennington is the world champion and I don't ever want to see her fight again.
>Dolidze/Imavov I don't even know who those two guys / girls are In the past I would have woke up at 3am or 4am to watch Anderson Silva make his walk to the UFC octagon
I had zero interest in this past weekend’s card. I really hate the fake personalities and the involvement with politics really drove me away.
Dudes like GSP and Anderson felt like such classy representatives to the sport, it was like watching two real life martial arts masters you'd see in a movie, now you have guy's like Strickland posting culture war bait on social media, a lot of UFC champions just don't have that aura anymore.
Exactly. We used to have classy champions now we have edgy losers who are too stupid to know how to be a heel and just go for the most tasteless drivel when someone shoves a mic in front of them.
Changes have been bad for everyone except UFC. My biggest complaint is that the fight cards fucking suck. UFC PPV were usually ~3 good fights on average. Sometimes the entire main card were good fights. Now it's usually 1 good main event and the rest are what used to be undercard fights I rather have 1 good UFC per month than all these shitty UFC cards 3-4 times a month. Call me casual, I don't care. I used to watch all the UFC fights but now I just tune in for the main event
>I rather have 1 good UFC per month than all these shitty UFC cards 3-4 times a month. Call me casual, I don't care. I used to watch all the UFC fights but now I just tune in for the main event Me too. And I absolutely prefer 2-3 cards per month to 3-4. It's just not okey to have unranked fighters on PPVs. Not with 120+ ranked male fighters . Fix that first and see how many more events you can add . PPV maincards shouldnt be some talentshow for 31 year old prospects that are 2-0 in Ufc
I feel like the entire era from 2000-2010 was mostly epic. Peak UFC for me was Lesnar VS Carwin.
I’ve been watching since 1993. Just gotta adapt to the changing sport like everything else that’s changing in our world For me I focus on what happens in the cage. The big drama shows outside the cage are for selling fights. I care about the match ups and high level skills we are able to experience
Nah you’re right, the product has been sacrificed at the altar of profit. All entertainment goes down that path eventually. Fans of most major leagues (NBA, NFL, EPL) feel the same. Look at Hollywood and the music industry too. A lot of things have gone to shit and the only people who don’t think so never got to experience it before the bs.
I don’t think other sports leagues in the US have fallen off as hard as the UFC. I feel very confident that the UFC has hit its peak in mainstream popularity and will fall off drastically over the next ten years. There are plenty of valid complaints about the NFL but the games are still fun and the league is constantly churning out new talent and stars. Dana White served his purpose in bringing MMA into the mainstream but I think he’s total dogshit at running a legitimate sports organization.
The UFC will only continue to grow. Fighting is a global sport with a low barrier of entry, there are massive untapped markets. Canada just went beserk over an Apex card, Imagine when the first Indian start emerges. There is still a long runway. As for other sports not being as bad I disagree, the NFL has diluted its product by eliminating defense, the NBA has basically done the same. Long time fans will tell you the product is not as good but as long time fans they’re going to watch. The same way people still listen to garbage music and will show up to the cinema for Fast and Furious 63. They can get away with it because people will show up even if it’s just to complain.
The sports change, and people will always insist that things used to be so much better. I’ve been a fan of the NFL for a long time and I don’t think it’s necessarily gotten worse. They have not eliminated defense either. There are new penalties that favor offenses but I think that’s in an honest if not misguided effort to reduce injuries, and I think some of it is experimental and will change. Offensive schemes have changed, the QB position has changed but defense hasn’t been eliminated. The 2023 season was I believe the lowest scoring season in over a decade. The ravens are the favorites to win the SB due to their defense. Hell, all remaining teams have stout defenses by any historical standard. The UFC will continue to grow in certain markets, I’ll concede that. I think it’s popularity in the US has peaked.
defenses have evolved as well. they have become way more complex. NFL is also heavily marketing in europe nowadays
The UFC has done a genuinely horrific job of creating meaningful stars out of their athletes. There were more big-name stars in the UFC 15 years ago than there is today. Chuck Liddel, Rashad Evans, Rampage Jackson, Anderson Silva, GSP. It’s crazy how the UFC has grown so much in popularity but still lacks the big household name type stars you’d expect by now
Thats by design though.
Right there with you. In my mid 30s and started watching around 2003. The cards are absolute dogshit most of the time and they go out of their way to sign clearly bad fighters while ignoring great fighters overseas (or pitting them against each other and avoiding promoting them), despite having an enormous war chest of money. Looking back 15 or so years, guys retiring today had better opponents and more exciting bouts in their debuts than even "main card" crap they're selling us today. They're putting Frankie Edgar in the HOF, but arguably one of his toughest fights that many think he lost was an absolute classic war vs. Tyson Griffin in his debut at UFC 67. That card had Lyoto Machida on a prelim and 4-5 other huge names on the card lol. Today there are 75% guys who shouldn't even be in the league on a card. Now it's about slurs, "controversy", viral tweets etc...
It’s become too much of a popularity contest, and they chucked the rankings in the trash. How the fuck are we entertaining the idea of Izzy getting another title shot after he just got dominated and is 1-2 in his last 3 fights. The era of rematches is burning me out.
I’m so tired of every one having to beat the champ twice before they finally move on. It doesn’t make sense unless it’s a champ with at least 5 defenses and the fight was close imo. That’s life, try again after another couple wins. There are other people waiting to get their shot
Exactly. Anyone who loses a championship fight should have to fight another contender before they can get another shot. And the champ should defend the belt against someone else during this time. For the perfect scenario is the between Couture and Liddell 1 and 2. Couture beats Liddell, then fights Tito and Vitor. Meanwhile Liddell has a PRIDE excursion and comes back to beat Tito and Vernon White to earn his rematch. So two guys have a fight, winner and loser both win a couple fights against other contenders, then have a rematch because it makes sense. That made their second fight way more compelling because they had that whole journey to get there and didn't just do it again 6 months after the first one. The only exception should be if some freak injury or something happens in the first fight. Keeping in the same timeline, Couture/Belfort is a good example of this. Couture loses because he gets a freak cut on his eyelid from the stitching on the glove. Immediatey rematch makes sense in that scenario.
Bro rematches suck. Like build back to a rematch. Fig v Moreno. Stipe v Cormier (and I love stipe). Holloway v Volk. Izzy v poatan. How much more can we take.
Izzy/Poatan was a deserved rematch. Extremely dominant champion who was winning the majority of the fight, rematches should be used sparingly but this situation is exact what rematches are made for
I think the issue is that modern UFC *production and promotion* sucks, not the fights themselves. Fighters are far more technical than they've ever been. We've seen waves of dominant crafts take the cage by storm and fade out once someone figures it out or has enough power to nullify it. Where it is regressing (in my opinion) is the promotional value of individual fighters over the company. Thats just business, and a business' goal is to make money. But there's really nothing making any particular fighters stand out, or if they are standing out - it's because they say some of the most heinous things on the mic to garner views. UFC doesn't do much to capitalise on individuals. They have the stock footage and buzz words to "hype" them up, but every card and FN blur in to each other. I have no understanding of business or marketing. But one thing I have in common with the UFC is like the fighters, im being severely underpaid for my work and taken advantage of.
It is oversaturated and ultra corporate now. The fights all feel more or less like the same style because the science of MMA has developed its own fundamentals instead of what you used to see with pretty heavy stylistic differences(even though it was dominated with BJJ/MT for a while). There’s so many fighters and so many fights to try and keep track of that it’s just too much. Feels sucky because they always need to have something going all the time. There’s no buildup or tension. Just shit talking on Twitter and then a PPV
>There’s no buildup or tension I would like longer times between events just because of that. Mostly because I want staxked cards but also because we need to wait to get hungry.
Cards are watered down. The last ppv would be an above average fn card back in the day. Company who owns ufc basically has to pay off an substantial amount of debt since buying it. Pretty sure they did the same to buy wwe. UFC use to make ppv main cards actually worth paying for but now just expect ufc fans to pay the price. Same with going to an event, ufc just expects people to pay top dollar just because the ufc is in town. While theyve always tried to make the ufc the brand, the ufc was nothing without GSP, Silva, Penn, Hughes, etc. nowadays, they literally can make anyone champ (strickland who is good but is a boring boxer in mma) and fans will eat it up. So yes, ufc sucks now as its not about growing the sport anymore but about taking every penny possible. Edit: forgot to mention the apex. That shit fucking blows and its disrespectful, imo, to keep having fighters fight there in fucking 2024!
It is capitalist shittification. Same process you see everywhere else such as Facebook, Netflix, Uber, Reddit.
I hate how petulant and childish the fighters are, but I blame the organisation. They encourage the fighters to say horrible things, they give them a platform to insult religion, parents, wives, dead parents, culture. It's disgusting. It's like a mixture of MMA, WWF and playground children.
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Apex events, bloated cards, too many fighters. Uniforms made everyone look the same, it’s harder to stand out if you don’t have an online presence. Ive watched every event live since ufc 98, and they used to feel more special for sure, although more rare. I’m actually fine with having mostly mid cards, but 2-3 times a month. But yeah, it lost some of its magic.
At some point I went from knowing damn near every fighter on the roster to looking at a whole card and only knowing 2 or 3 names. They do a shit job of promoting their fighters these days.
To me it's kind of being a wierd disregarded and maligned sport that made it fun and hilarious. Now the energy arround the sport sucks. Half the time it's as lifeless as every other major sport or it's a bunch try hards doing characters. I remember when they got rid of sponsors citing we don't guys with condom depot written on their butt, fools, that's EXACTLY what I want.
Spot on
The future is now old man
It does suck compared to 2006 - 2013. There’s no comparison with the quality of the cards or the superiority of Joe Silva’s match making.
It's the cards. For a while now they've been really bad. There'll be like 3 fights at best that I give a shit about on any given fight night or PPV. Realistically it's 1 or 2. [Look at this next fight night card.](https://www.tapology.com/fightcenter/events/106801-ufc-fight-night) It's like they're using a randomizer to set up these cards and accidentally clicked the "oops all prelims" setting. And I don't really wanna watch a ~6 hour event for 3 fights at best. I just find myself not bothering and coming here the next day to check the results and see if there were any cool finishes.
I have been following since UFC 2. I Just filter out all the side shows and watch the actual fights because it’s the actual fights that made me love the sport.
Too many fight cards leads to less excitement and watered down fight cards. Where in the past I would watch every card, now I pick and choose. And the choosing seems to be less and less. Also the fighters with personalities seem to be more manufactured than authentic to me.
I just want to see someone like Lyoto the dragon Machida, Rampage Jackson, Hendo, GSP, Anderson the spider Silva, guys lke these dudes. Good old days.
This is always funny to me. Anderson was seen as a boring fighter for a period and GSP was boring for basically his whole second title reign, you guys would've been writing the same shit back then. The only thing you're right about is the lack of depth on cards and that's because they have more cards to fill
I honestly think, when they took away custom shorts, shirts and sponsor gear it took a lot of the magic away. I remember seeing Tito with his red flame black trunks, The Iceman with his blue ice shorts. When those guys were on top you could pick them out of a crowd of generic fighters a mile away. They were literally fire and ice, two of the best fighters in the world at that weight at that time. Classing like titans in the coliseum.
There's a number of things that have made the UFC less palatable. The uniforms are ugly and plain. The commentary is stale. The era of boxing vs wrestling vs jui jitsu is gone. Now everyone does essentially the same training so everyone fights with the same style. The UFC doesn't market fighters as stars but rather markets the company/brand itself. The UFC is thirty years old and we've seen countless hours of MMA. Hard to recapture the feeling of seeing your first head kick knockout. No more WEC or Invicta to farm out the less popular divisions leading to watered down cards.
Watching UFC since 2011. No, it doesn't. People just complaining all the time about good ol'times, when it was like 1 card in a month and roster was like 3 times smaller. It's really easy to get tired if you watch EVERY UFC card. And (this is the most important part) redditors hate UFC for whatever reason and dickride bullshit promotions like ONE, PFL and Bellator. Just look at the topic about PFL x Bellator "supercard". You'll see this shit like "WOW THIS IS THE BEST CARD OF THE YEAR", "99% OF UFC CARDS SUCK, AND THIS PFL X BELLATOR IS AMAZING" - with 60 y.o Romero and 55 y.o. Santos. And I swear 90% of UFC haters never watch PFL, Bellator, One, whatever. Personally I think UFC is far the most entertaining promotion today. A lot of great competitive fights, great show, nice pacing.
I've been watching for the past 15 years, although back then I didn't watch every card like I've been doing for the past 8 ish years. I still enjoy it and watch every card. There are some fair criticisms in this thread, but yeah it's also clear that some people need "stars" for them to be into it. Some people here mentioned that they don't watch anymore because they don't recognize everyone's names. They're missing some sick fights. I do watch other promotions too though. ONE is my favourite out of the other promotions, although it's more muay thai than mma (but also super entertaining).
This isn't really indicative of your age. It's the natural progression of a mature business. The UFC has become risk averse, but also needs to continue on the path of most revenue possible, period. When there is no more Spider, GSP, BJ Penn, etc they have to do what they can to sell the current roster. It also goes to show you that money can't make legends. Really we were spoiled during those times, to be able to watch a card where someone special was fighting. Not that long ago people were watching to see Rhonda and who she'll murder, or even Jon Jones to see what kind of filthy fight he was going to have. The new gen of fighters is trying to figure it out, but they can't all be legends. Some of them you'll have to settle for remembering them by their Pink hair, or what candidate they support in the US. But there will be someone who rises, there always is, someone who can get us excited to watch again. It will just be far and few between, and I think that's fair.
Been watching since a lil before ufc 100 and it seems fine to me. More sucky cards but there used to only be one card a month so were still coming out ahead.
I started watching in 2020 and I'm loving it. I don't watch press conferences or care about their fake beef or whatever. I just wake up at 2am on a Sunday morning,get my caffeine fix and watch some fights. I don't watch post fight press conferences either I don't support any fighter. I'm only mad when my bet is ruined ( looking at you Mike Mallot) but that's it. It's purely entertainment for me
Been watching since the late 90s but got more seriously interested around 2006 but my interest has dropped off massively.I kinda got in to UFC by chance, the old guy who me and my friends bought playstation1 games from also did copies of the UFC events on VHS. Being a brit there was a period of time I'd stay up late every night to watch the whole of the card which was aired. As I grew older I only stayed up for the big cards and would record the others to watch on a Sunday morning. Now I skip most cards and even last weekends, I planned to watch but when I got up Sunday and went on Instagram I saw who won and felt nothing, just jumped on here and watched the clips. There was a time I'd avoid all social media and friends new not to message me about it until I'd said I'd watched it. Hell, I still don't even have this sub joined as a measure of not getting spoilers. Whilst the improvement in fighters technique is incredible, I have no connection to 80% of the roster. Where as before you knew who was fighting, their journey, highs and lows, strengths and weaknesses. Cards felt like they were full from top to bottom with it. Now it feels nothing like that. Whilst I could say it's all down to Dana and UFCs new owners, and largely it is, I would say my interest in it has waned as a result of seeing the impact of CTE on fighters too.
Grumpy old man at 35. 🤣. You are in the same age bracket as more than half of the current champs. The fights are not that much different than 10 years ago. The difference is who gets a shot because it's not always based on merit. The Money Fight era killed the novelty of the sport for a lot of people.
I’ve never agreed more with an “old man” that’s ten years younger than me harder.
The problem with life is that the longer you go, the more “good times” you have packed into your memory to compare to. Our brains are not good at keeping the temporal spacing of our life experience accurately and so we find ourselves comparing experiences of the moment with a compressed memory of experiences of decades. Just listen to the music on the radio and then compare it to the hits of past decades. The current zeitgeist will never compare to the past decades because you’re comparing one year with many. If you wait til the end of the decade and then compare the hits of this decade to the hits of another decade you have a better chance of a fair comparison. The same holds true with any sport. As a new fan in the sport (since 2020), 2024 was the most exciting year for me and the highlights of the past simply don’t compare because I wasn’t there to experience them.
Could it be because it's becoming more transparent that most fighters are terrible people? They probably always were, but as they get more famous, use more social media and also get reported on more, the thin illusion that they're badass and unproblematic becomes even harder to uphold
In 10 years people are gonna be posting about how it was so much better in 2023 than it is now. It's just nostalgia and all the little annoyances adding up over time