This is hardly a new issue. HW was log jammed for YEARS between Cain/JDS/Bigfoot and then later by DC/Stipe/Ngannou. LW recycles the same contenders over and over again, WW is a never ending stream of rematches, FLW recently had a quadrilogy in a 3 year span FFS, and MW is the most barren wasteland of a division I have ever seen with guys who wouldn't be top 10 in a normal era being ranked top 3 for years.
Not to mention we already had to sit through the latter half of Jones' LHW title reign where he dialed it in against completely undeserving title challengers after completely clearing out the division but refusing to go up/getting repeatedly suspended for being a druggy.
Matchmaking in the UFC has become absolutely horrendous in the last decade to the point where fighters are content to sit out and do nothing because the "best vs the best all the time" mentality makes it way too risky to be active. This leads to the exact opposite of what the UFC advertises as we rarely see the top guys fight and we're instead subjected to embarrassingly bad cards and told to f ourselves if we don't like it.
As prize fighting is hardly a legitimate sport (see immediate rematches and title shots coming off of a loss as proof of this), it is extremely foolish that they did away with tune up fights which are an essential part of fighting as they 1) make potential stars look good, 2) make cards more exciting, and 3) build anticipation towards actual marquee fights.
The minute the UFC instituted a BS ranking system, we the audience were immediately doomed. The UFC is hell bent on having the brand itself be the attraction, not the fighters, so now we're supposed to get excited over "generic fighter ranked #13 vs generic fighter ranked #12" just because it's in the UFC... sorry, not buying it. Any fighter who somehow emerges from this self-defeating system with momentum immediately tries to leverage their way into more money/less fights so again, the audience is screwed because people you actually want to see fight are never around because the UFC has a monopoly and takes advantage of their fighters.
They could be making SO much more money if they didn't get lazy with their matchmaking relying on immediate rematches and the ranking system to slap together cards but sadly, they know that the die hard fans are going to watch anything they crap out because they love the sport so there is zero incentive for them to shell out more money or put in more effort. It is truly a sad state of affairs in modern day and it's legitimately depressing to see how far MMA has fallen.
But you know... "the sport has evolved" so much <Lmaoo> it's not like we're seeing more and more one dimensional fighters in the top 5 than ever before because college wrestlers can make more money with their degrees than getting their face smashed in for a few pennies from Venum so wrestling is no longer there to dominate
TL/DR: The UFC has been a shell of itself for years. You should be used to it by now
