UFC is only one step away from being WWE at this point. Politics are now playing a role just like they did in the WWE.
UFC desperately wants guys like Cain, Condit and Gus as champions. Rankings don't matter. It's all about business and politics and it's completely unacceptable. If in any other sport, a team or player was given a rematch because the promotion wanted them to win, there would be outrage.
As MMA fans, we just accept it and we shouldn't. UFC needs to decide if they are a sport and if rankings matter of if they just want to be a entertainment company that makes fights on a whim to sell PPVs. You can't be both. It's becoming a circus.
This, but people have been deluded to think this resembles anything close to a real sport. it hasn't forever. The way it is now, the UFC can never BE a sport, as a business it has a conflict of interest from the get go
In reality its entertainment dressed up with a vaneer of sporting legitimacy such that it can maintain consistency for the viewer but in reality its simply the best way to extract the most cash from the cow (us MMA fans).
At worst, the UFC is simply a money making exercise USING MMA as the mechanism to turn profit. Part of me thinks it could be a paper plane contest or thumb wrestling for all they care as long as it was profitable.
The stupid thing is, people are deluded in thinking Zuffa are really in this to help mixed martial arts. I do think Dana and the Frettitas love MMA, but they are conflicted as the bottom line is if MMA benefits, its more to do with being an enabler to make Zuffa more money. When push comes to shove, the motive is not to grow MMA for the sake of MMA, its to grow MMA so they can make more money.
My worry is that if MMA ceases to be as profitable in the future, look at Zuffa dropping it like a stone.
But lol, a sport this is not, and to think its some kind of bastion of integrity when looking down on entertainment like Pride, that's also amusing