I don't think that's true at all. Very few fights between top guys have one guy winning all the exchanges. Much more important than winning every exchange is determining over the course of the fight as a whole when the exchanges occur and in what dimension of the fight in such a way as to give yourself the best chance at winning more of them than your opponent. If you're a wrestler you don't have to finish every TD, but you better be able to make most of the exchanges wrestling exchanges rather than striking ones, and you better win the majority of those exchanges if you want to win. Likewise if you're a striker you don't have to stuff every TD, but you better be able to stuff enough of them and make your opponent pay for coming in to make sure you get your chances to work at distance. Usually when you see dominant champions what they're good at is not winning every exchange, they're good at making almost every exchange happen in their preferred dimension. Jones and DJ in the clinch, GSP in wrestling off of strikes, Aldo in keeping the fight in mid-kickboxing range, etc. You can see that too in fights where champs have problems. Look at Anderson Silva: most of his fights he was very good at keeping people on the edge of his punching range, and he'd just fuck them up from there. But when someone came in with the intention to make all the exchanges wrestling exchanges (the first Chael Sonnen fight), Silva got manhandled for 4.5 rounds and was only saved by Sonnen's Achilles heel lack of submission defense. Cormier later did the same thing to him; even if that fight was on short notice Silva still didn't have an answer for someone who could force the fight into wrestling exchanges.
Well, i expressed myself not well, i kinda wanted to say the same thing but the point was the goal should be winning every exchange.
Aldo fights at mid kickboxing range because it's where he has the best changes to win every exchange, same thing with Jones and DJ in the clinch, obviously at the highest level nobody is gonna win every exchange, literally, but that should be the goal, and to attain that you need to fight safe, fight smart and know your opponent.
Today we don't see fights like this anymore
The best kickboxer ever pulling guard from standing because he had a guillotine that wasn't even tight, than got mounted by the superior grappler and the grappler got reversed from mount because the kickboxer bridged holding his wrists, something you see from a one stripe white belt.
Back in the day i remember a lot of fights where one guy mounted the opponent, gassed try to finish and then got his ass kicked, but that was in the past.
The difference between mma 10 years ago and today is like the difference between some of the blue and purple belts world championships matched in bjj compared to the black belts.
A lot of the blue and purple belts matches are super exciting, one guy mount the opponent, the opponent escapes, take his back... and the match ends 11-14.
That rarely happens at black belt, a lot of the matches end with advantage points and there is a lot of stalling because one mistake and the fight is lost.
Another great example is Woodley, Tyron Woodley fought the perfect fight against Maia, he didn't won every exchange, literally, but it was pretty damn close to perfection, he didn't gave Maia anything to work with, that's high level mma in 2017.
That fight maybe wasn't exciting but Woodley minimized his chances to lose and shut down Maia completely.
GSP made his career doing this, the guy was the first modern, ultra prepared mma fighter, always fought safe, but he always won.
If there are fighters that brawl like Robbie Lawler is not that they try to be exciting, but that is where they thrive and they have the biggest change to win, but still everything is properly thought, Lawler didn't came out gun blazing against Woodley like he did against Cerrone, and against MacDonald he took two rounds to read the opponent.
