Hardly any cards in Europe.
Even when they organize events in Europe they're usually way inferior than even the most mediocre American cards.
The UFC didn't even bother to organize an event yet in most European countries.
Hard for people in Europe to watch due to time difference. The UFC doesn't want to adapt to the European audience like Formula One.
They cut European fighters quicker than the Americans and don't promote them.
They don't want to sign fighters like Minakov. Didn't respect Fedor. Didn't want to resign Mousasi.
Don't start about Conor or Bisping, I don't consider Anglosphere as part of Europe culturally, those guys speak English and are treated differently by the Americans. And even Conor never had a big fight in his home country in a more acceptable time zone for us.
As a European fight fan, I don't have much interest in UFC. Pride was much better for us. Boxing is also much better for us, a lot of big fights take place in Europe in acceptable time to watch. Just this year we had Breidis vs Usyk, Dorticos vs Gassiev and Groves vs Eubank Jr., fights that I could watch live as an European man.
You answered your own question. You liked Pride because it was time zone friendly. However in North America we always had to watch at God awful times if we could even get a stream or PPV. There will always be a time difference and it sucks. However if you don't want to watch during that crap time for you there is an alternative. You can always watch at the time you want on FP or buy the PPV that evening for yourself ,just don't look at the results for the hours in between .
My guess is you wouldn't want to do that. Spend the cash on a PPV, especially when many European countries have them included with cable packages. To counter your arguement in North America if we want to watch a PPV live we have to fork out 65 plus dollars on it every time. So there's good and bad to every situation.
Reason the UFC has more shows with bigger cards in NA is simple economics. Nothing to do with culture, country or race. It's down to dollars, a UFC event in NA can bring in a live gate of up to and over ( I think once or twice) 10 Mil dollars . Ticket prices can be crazy. In most European countries fans won't pay that much money, when have we seen a gate of over 1 Mil USD ( not counting BR and IR) since you don't include those counties in your assessment? Don't think ever!
Same goes for viewers. The bulk of fans are in NA and Brazil. There are cards in Brazil and many fighters but the UFC still doesn't mak a fraction of the cash it does compared to the USA and Canada.
As far as fighters go I disagree that European fighters get cut faster than others. May appear that way because there certainly aren't as many of them but there are a LOT of one and done NA fighters that have been in the UFC. The issue is skill set. For years there's been fighters from Japan, Poland the UK that have stepped in the Octagon and got destroyed. Mostly because their wrestling was terrible. That is changing.. Look at England or Australia ten or more years back. Fighters got murked in the Octagon from those places because of no wrestling. Now days they are catching up..
I ask you this, where are you from? How many MMA schools with top level coaches are in your area and how long have they been around? You may have your own answer there. If under fifteen years and not many schools how do you expect there to be more fighters from where you are from. Sure in time there will be.
As far as the Fedor comment, that is just BS. The UFC tried a few times to sign him. I always thought it was because of PED testing in the USA. Then when he did sign with Strikeforce, it didn't end well.
