What happened to rankings and the best fighting the best. I'm a little lost with the UFC and how they do things. How do you explain a BMF belt I thought the baddest man was the champion.
HEAVYWEIGHT
CHAMPION
Apparently, they HAVE to be their own fight pickers, because of all the people who think it's THEIR responsibility to promote instead of the... promotion. Ya know, like anyone sensible might expect.
And we don't even have the Ali-act yet. Imagine how shitty things will be once they get all the "rights" that sherdoggers believe they should have.
I always called it the 3 P's. Pay, protection, and power.
The most prevalent issue that comes to people's minds is
pay. And although that should be higher across the board, there's already a problem of athletes getting paid too much. Pay has always been sports' way of substitution
protection, which is where the real argument should be. Talking about these "independent" but extremely dependent contracts so they can be non-employed employees, a lack of union, insurance, pension. I don't think athletes need to live in lavish mansions, but they should damn sure be able to take care of themselves at 80 after putting their bodies on the line for years. Like I said above, pay has always been the substitute. You give some guy 15 million dollars because of their body and no financial advisement nor insurance on that body and then get to go "Well, that's their fault" when all of that's gone on pills not even 5 years after they're retired.
Power, though is exactly the problem you're talking about. The shit that ruined boxing because the athletes now have control over the things they shouldn't have control over. Yeah, there's always shit taking advantage of them, but the answer is giving them a shield, not a sword in return. We've had fucking champions dictating what the opponent can wear, and the level of the belt (which basically determines fouling), and hell, even champions CHANGING THE WEIGHT LIMIT on where they're defending their belt. At a time in MMA where we're all arguing about the lack of universality of rules, can you imagine how fucked up things would get if this happened? Shame is, I don't see examples like this being too far off. If Conor beats Chandler, I will not be surprised to see him try to get a shot against Leon for the belt at maybe 175-180.
If we want incentivize athletes to continue in this sport, they need more protection, they could use more pay, but they damn sure don't need the power.
