Will there be another UFC competitor soon?

[Garnet_StrongerThanYou]

Strike force and Pride were actual companies with top tier talent.

Where the fighters came over and started knocking out UFC talent, showing the talent level is not as far apart back then as Dana thought.

Bellator is not that. Just a bunch of washed up guys fighting for a paycheque. No Overeems, Lawlers, Woodleys and Shields over there.

as long as I watched MMA there was top tier talent outside the UFC.

Now I don’t see any.

 

[SteveColdStone]

Goldenboy MMA. Just wait.

 

[ferrisjso]

First want to remind people than it 2011,2012 Strikeforce was seen as a joke(I made fun of people in high school for saying Strikeforce was just as good and I was wrong) and we should have learned something.

Bellator is as serious a competitor to the UFC as Strikeforce seemed to be. It's clearly number 2 but it's clearly a major org at this point and "is x Bellator division better than x UFC convos" are no longer jokes. That's pretty much the test to be a major org IMO and Bellator the last few years has passed.

Before people jump on this and say UFC's clearly better, Pride was considered superior to the UFC and UFC was considered even more superior to Strikeforce and the mergers proved these things just weren't true(or at least it was much closer than it seemed). While in terms of depth Bellators clearly worse ,at the top of every division it's debatable at this case and most of the Bellator stars have had some success against elite UFC fighters. Bellators come a VERY long way from where it was in 2013 when it was seen as a joke(Bjorns business strategy of appealing to nostaglia for GP's applied to tournaments with lower tier talent was stupid to say the least). Also in terms of 125,135 the UFC never was clearly the number one organization the way it was in the other divisions, those are just their least proifitable divisions so no one really cares. Shooto was a major org in terms of the WEC classes for a very long time though I don't think it is now as UFC and ONE have most of that market.

I do think UFC deserves more credit for Bellators rise than Bellator though because the UFC who'd been absorbing every major competitor(or at least that competitors talent) since the Pride scandal(WFA, WEC, Pride, Strikeforce, Tachi Palace reversed course and started almost welcoming competition. In the mid 2010s they just went in the opposite direction(no way they do reebok deal if concentrating all the talent was still a priority) and started throwing talent away and I'm convinced they did it on purpose to avoid losing anti trust lawsuits. In 2014 UFC probably is a monopoly today it isn't and I think that's at least in part intentional. UFC was at it's best as a monopoly but business wise keeping the top 5 guys who either aren't draws/ probably won't win a belt isn't worth the potential mortal cost catching them all could have had for their business. From their perspective the UFC brand already equaled MMA to so much of the US population that letting Bellator have comparable talent wouldn't be the same threat Pride or Strikeforce had been. If Bellator actually were better than the UFC the UFC's brand would make that largely irrelevant.

I don't think ONE is a major org talent wise in terms of larger divisions(only in 135,145 like Shooto and Tachi Palace used to) don't think the larger champs would cut it in the UFC or Bellator but finance and business wise it is as ONE's made their business sort of talent proof as they've focused on national pride for all of these asian countries with huge populations. Can see ONE surpassing the UFC as a global business with far inferior talent because it's appealing to a market that has a higher future ceiling.

 

[Gio]

Khabib's Eagle Fighting Championship will soar soon

 

[GangGangGang]

PFL will potentially surpass Bellator in NA in the next few years. But I dont think so. Boxing is still doing decent and the biggest direct competitor. Tyson/Jones reportedly did 1.2 mil.

 

[Dreyga_King of Sherbums]

Strike force and Pride were actual companies with top tier talent.

Where the fighters came over and started knocking out UFC talent, showing the talent level is not as far apart back then as Dana thought.

Bellator is not that. Just a bunch of washed up guys fighting for a paycheque. No Overeems, Lawlers, Woodleys and Shields over there.

as long as I watched MMA there was top tier talent outside the UFC.

Now I don’t see any.

No... it's not happening.

Here is the thing UFC is corporation worth approximately 6- 10 billion dollars and generates around a billion dollars in revenue a year. That shit isn't easy to duplicate. In fact it's damn near impossible to do without a lot of luck and some genius planning.

Sadly for competitors the UFC has over 25 years of building up global brand recognition while being virtually unchallenged in the market. The UFC is currently in the process of expanding into the Chinese market, the fastest growing sports market in the world second only to the US. If the UFC is successful in becoming a well recognized brand in China they could quite easily double their current value.

If that were to happen. There will be no way that any companies without the backing of BILLIONS of dollars could conceivably compete with the UFC in any meaningful way.

There is no way VIACOM the parent company of Bellator, valued at 12 billion dollars, will ever go all in fully commit all of it's resources to MMA in the same way UFC does. They are primarily mutli-media company and Bellator only exist to diverse their entertainment portfolio.

And it will be shocking if ONEFC is around in 10 years. And all other foreign MMA promotions will never beat the UFC in the US market, the world's largest sporting market.

The only viable way the UFC is going down is either there is some major economic collapse or US laws or changed in specifically to weaken the company. The former may happen if they lose the Anti-Trust Lawsuit or Andrew Yang sets out to specifically target the company but that's very unlikely. Even then the UFC still far more established that every MMA company in the world and will still have the resources to easily fend them off.

The most likely outcome is that UFC will become a nigh-untouchable global sport franchise just a couple rungs down the ladder from the NBA, NFL and soccer.

 

[FIGHTING TALK]

Main reason UFC are keeping Joe Rogan on is so he doesn’t join a different org, particularly Bellator.