I've been following MMA since the Pride Cro Cop days and the way that UFC operates is bad for the sport if you can call MMA a sport at all because UFC monopoly took away all the legitimacy.
It's just a huge entertainment industry and a greedy corporation. Fighters get paid like crap, you have guys like Stipe Miočić who will fight for the HW title and he has a part-time job. He might not get the fight at all because he was told that he's not popular enough and in UFC you get title shots based on popularity. If you're a draw and earn money for the UFC you get free title shots and protection like Conor and Ronda. It forces fighters to act like they're in WWE-style circus to hype the fights to ******ed UFC fanbase.
Everything that UFC does is for the sake of the financial well being of the company, it doesn't have any clear format or rules. Decent fighters got cut for being "boring" even though they'd be top 5-10 in their weightclass (Jake Shields for example who has wins over several current top 10 WWs).
On paper the structure looks fine with supposedly "the best fighting the best" but in reality UFC has a really small talent pool and most of the fighters are either Americans or Brazilians. They don't atract top fighting talent of the world and just hype up whoever they sign because it's the cheaper way. The fans will buy almost anything, they bought the Ronda hype after all. You have legit MMA talent outside the UFC. If boxing was run by an UFC-like organization who knows how much legit talent would be left outside.
Boxing is just too global and too big to have an UFC-like organization having a complete monopoly over the sport. If MMA ever grows that big it will have similar structure to what boxing has now, it's inevitable. Hell it wasn't long ago that you had two big organizations with UFC and Pride, there was also Strikeforce out of which half of the current UFC champions came from.
UFC also protects the top stars and doesn't push for superfights. GSP vs Silva never happened neither did Jones vs Silva, Pettis vs Aldo, Jones vs Cain and so on. There are fewer weight divisions but the champ of that division is not expected to fight anyone from other divisions.
The reason why UFC is large is because it has a lot of money since they're paying hardly anything to fighters and get most of the money they earn with PPVs, TV deals and other stuff. They invest that money in promoting the company, UFC 189 and UFC 194 were heavily promoted, that's why all that hype was there. They invested millions in Conor with all that media tour and all the promos, I think Dana White said they'll be happy if they break even with UFC 189 because the event was basically an investment and promotion for MMA.
A lot of boxing fans don't follow MMA that much and aren't informed about the UFC enough, that's why they think boxing should have similar structure but in reality it would absolutely kill boxing.
It's just a huge entertainment industry and a greedy corporation. Fighters get paid like crap, you have guys like Stipe Miočić who will fight for the HW title and he has a part-time job. He might not get the fight at all because he was told that he's not popular enough and in UFC you get title shots based on popularity. If you're a draw and earn money for the UFC you get free title shots and protection like Conor and Ronda. It forces fighters to act like they're in WWE-style circus to hype the fights to ******ed UFC fanbase.
Everything that UFC does is for the sake of the financial well being of the company, it doesn't have any clear format or rules. Decent fighters got cut for being "boring" even though they'd be top 5-10 in their weightclass (Jake Shields for example who has wins over several current top 10 WWs).
On paper the structure looks fine with supposedly "the best fighting the best" but in reality UFC has a really small talent pool and most of the fighters are either Americans or Brazilians. They don't atract top fighting talent of the world and just hype up whoever they sign because it's the cheaper way. The fans will buy almost anything, they bought the Ronda hype after all. You have legit MMA talent outside the UFC. If boxing was run by an UFC-like organization who knows how much legit talent would be left outside.
Boxing is just too global and too big to have an UFC-like organization having a complete monopoly over the sport. If MMA ever grows that big it will have similar structure to what boxing has now, it's inevitable. Hell it wasn't long ago that you had two big organizations with UFC and Pride, there was also Strikeforce out of which half of the current UFC champions came from.
UFC also protects the top stars and doesn't push for superfights. GSP vs Silva never happened neither did Jones vs Silva, Pettis vs Aldo, Jones vs Cain and so on. There are fewer weight divisions but the champ of that division is not expected to fight anyone from other divisions.
The reason why UFC is large is because it has a lot of money since they're paying hardly anything to fighters and get most of the money they earn with PPVs, TV deals and other stuff. They invest that money in promoting the company, UFC 189 and UFC 194 were heavily promoted, that's why all that hype was there. They invested millions in Conor with all that media tour and all the promos, I think Dana White said they'll be happy if they break even with UFC 189 because the event was basically an investment and promotion for MMA.
A lot of boxing fans don't follow MMA that much and aren't informed about the UFC enough, that's why they think boxing should have similar structure but in reality it would absolutely kill boxing.
Comment