Modern MMA absolutely sucks

The fighters they signed from the Contender Series when it was regional guys were from the same place they signed people from anyway. Now they're putting more international fighters on there they're probably signing higher level talent from there.

"Watered down" means, thanks to an explosion of low-level cards, these regional fighters now comprise a greater percentage of fights than ever before.

The least rankings ever mattered was when #15 or whatever it was ranked Dan Henderson got given a shot at Bisping which was 7 years ago now.

Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? I'm not sure how you came up with this comment. An egregious incident at a time when rankings matter more than they do now is not, in fact, proof that rankings mattered less 7 years ago.
 
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That doesn't seem to be the case.



Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? I'm not sure how you came up with this comment. An egregious incident at a time when rankings matter more than they do now is not, in fact, proof that rankings mattered less 7 years ago.

Why doesn't it seem to be the case. What are you actually basing it on? Last year they signed Ismael Bonfim, Gabriel Bonfim, Mateusz Rebecki, Vitor Petrino, Bo Nickal, Ikram Aliskerov, Nurullo Aliev, Rafael Estevam, Jack Jenkins and more from the series. Are these not good fighters?

Rankings have never mattered. GSP got a shot after years away and skipped the queue. Randy Couture used to get title shots coming off losses etc etc.
 
Ufc has always been a shit tier organization when it comes to production.

Gotta admit, this was an exciting entrance 2,000 years ago.

Be9a.gif
 
Why doesn't it seem to be the case. What are you actually basing it on? Last year they signed Ismael Bonfim, Gabriel Bonfim, Mateusz Rebecki, Vitor Petrino, Bo Nickal, Ikram Aliskerov, Nurullo Aliev, Rafael Estevam, Jack Jenkins and more from the series. Are these not good fighters?

Check my edit.

Rankings have never mattered. GSP got a shot after years away and skipped the queue. Randy Couture used to get title shots coming off losses etc etc.

Do you understand that just because you can find examples in the past does not automatically mean that rankings then were as meaningless as they are now? That your examples actually work against you if, outside of your examples, fights were made according to rankings more than they are now?
 
Check my edit.



Do you understand that just because you can find examples in the past does not automatically mean that rankings then were as meaningless as they are now?

Okay but your edit doesn't really explain anything either. They've had roughly the same amount of events every year since 2014.

I think rankings are roughly about as meaningful as they've ever been. How many people have skipped rankings for title shots recently. Masvidal probably shouldn't have got the second shot against Usman. I can buy Romero not deserving a shot against Izzy coming off losses (but he was kind of the only guy at the time). Maybe I can buy Pereira, but again they needed fresh matchups.
 
i personally enjoy listening to the same intro/outros with the same production for the last 10 years. every unknown fighter that i'm told is legit, always lives up to it in the form of a decision fest snoozer. UFC, the best.
Don't forget about identical uniforms, so cool and not bland at all.
 
Yeah I'm feeling disinterested as well and the generic feeling is a big part of it. I've been far more excited about the NBA playoffs this year and I quit watching basketball 5 years ago. I guess the NBA is kinda generic as well but it's great if you've been away from it for a while.
 
Excited for Dana White's Fight Circus in the near future.
 
Okay but your edit doesn't really explain anything either. They've had roughly the same amount of events every year since 2014.

I said explosion of low-level cards, meaning cards with low-level fighters. I'm beginning to suspect you're deliberately misinterpreting me. Anyways, surely you've noticed how bare the top of cards have been looking recently?

I think rankings are roughly about as meaningful as they've ever been. How many people have skipped rankings for title shots recently. Masvidal probably shouldn't have got the second shot against Usman. I can buy Romero not deserving a shot against Izzy coming off losses (but he was kind of the only guy at the time). Maybe I can buy Pereira, but again they needed fresh matchups.

Skipping rankings for title shots is not the only way rankings can be irrelevant, though there is an incredible glut of line-jumping recently (fighters new to the org, fighters coming out of retirement, etc.) Tying up entire divisions by having champs fight in other weightclasses or superfights means fighters' ascent up the rankings are frozen. Having popular or preferred fighters camp on their ranking despite inactivity or losses is another way to chip away at the relevance of rankings. Having an imaginary BMF belt in which rankings don't even exist is absolutely a definitive shift away from rankings by the organization. They're literally threatening to strip Aljo's belt if he's inactive for three months -- if that happens, the fighter who winds up with it will have never had to beat the champ to take it. Can rankings be any less meaningful than that if being ranked as champion doesn't mean anything?

There are a LOT of ways the relevance of rankings are being chipped away right now.
 
I still have a high interest in watching MMA. A lot of interesting matchups to be made and good fights coming up.
 
I said explosion of low-level cards, meaning cards with low-level fighters. I'm beginning to suspect you're deliberately misinterpreting me. Anyways, surely you've noticed how bare the top of cards have been looking recently?



Skipping rankings for title shots is not the only way rankings can be irrelevant, though there is an incredible glut of jumping the line recently (fighters new to the org, fighters coming out of retirement, etc.) Tying up entire divisions by having champs fight in other weightclasses or superfights means fighters' ascent up the rankings are frozen. Having popular or preferred fighters camp on their ranking despite inactivity or losses is another way to chip away at the relevance of rankings. Having an imaginary BMF belt in which rankings don't even exist is absolutely a definitive shift away from rankings by the organization. They're literally threatening to strip Aljo's belt if he's inactive for three months -- if that happens, the fighter who winds up with it will have never had to beat the champ to take it. Can rankings be any less meaningful than that if being ranked as champion doesn't mean anything?

There are a LOT of ways the relevance of rankings are being chipped away right now.

They've always had bare cards at times though. Alex Caceres, Artem Lobov, Paddy Holohan, Yancy Medeiros, Paige VanZant, Shamil Abdurakhimov, Alex Cowboy, Ryan LaFlare etc have all headlined UFC cards, never mind just being near the top of them.

I see where you're coming from with the second point but when has that not been the case. New guys have always jumped straight in if they had a profile. All the top Strikeforce dudes did it. Eddie Alvarez did it, Lombard did it.

Champ/Champ has been going on for a while now. I don't mind it, if someone is absolutely dominant in a division then I think it's cool to see them have a crack at the champion above. I do think it should be at least 3 defences before they do though.
 
Im with you, I haven't been watching fights like I use to. I think I would watch them more if they had more non-Saturday events, but I got tired of dedicating 4-5 hours to fighting when there is actually only 20-30 minutes of action in that time frame.
 
They've always had bare cards at times though.

Now it's persistent and seems to be the model they're going to use moving forwards.

I see where you're coming from with the second point but when has that not been the case. New guys have always jumped straight in if they had a profile. All the top Strikeforce dudes did it. Eddie Alvarez did it, Lombard did it.

Champ/Champ has been going on for a while now. I don't mind it, if someone is absolutely dominant in a division then I think it's cool to see them have a crack at the champion above. I do think it should be at least 3 defences before they do though.

You're describing things that happened at various times in the past -- how can I explain to you that they're all happening now, ongoing and simultaneously, while being combined with bullshit we've never seen before? This is significantly different than what has happened in the past.
 
Gotta admit, this was an exciting entrance 2,000 years ago.

Be9a.gif
And it was right around this time that Genki Sudo came around, but the UFC never tried to utilize him correctly. Genki had awesome entrances.
 
Now it's persistent and seems to be the model they're going to use moving forwards.



You're describing things that happened at various times in the past -- how can I explain to you that they're all happening now, ongoing and simultaneously, while being combined with bullshit we've never seen before? This is significantly different than what has happened in the past.

It's always been persistent though. I feel people look at the past through rose tinted glasses and forget that cards have always been full of what people describe as regional level fighters now.

I think there's always been a lot of politics going on with title shots. If you're talking about the next likely title shots then how many would you say are especially undeserved?
 
It's always been persistent though. I feel people look at the past through rose tinted glasses and forget that cards have always been full of what people describe as regional level fighters now.

I feel people who don't want to acknowledge the UFC's shift away from being a meritorious sport will go online and give any excuse they can criticize people who refuse to do the same. Like you did in this thread.

I think there's always been a lot of politics going on with title shots. If you're talking about the next likely title shots then how many would you say are especially undeserved?

Now we're taking a step backwards to where you're again pretending that the state of things now is how things have always been or that this discussion is only about undeserved title shots.

Every shitty thing you can point to in the past happened at different times -- you can point to the passage of time between each shitty thing you're mentioning. Now, they've been normalized and are all happening right now, at one time, as the regular functioning of the UFC's business model. To make matters worse, they're also innovating all kinds of new bullshit which degrades the UFC as a sport even further.

At this point there's no point in us continuing the discussion. You clearly just want to defend the UFC and I don't feel like typing the same thing out forever and ever. Ciao.
 
I feel people who don't want to acknowledge the UFC's shift away from being a meritorious sport will go online and give any excuse they can criticize people who refuse to do the same. Like you did in this thread.



Now we're taking a step backwards to where you're again pretending that the state of things now is how things have always been or that this discussion is only about undeserved title shots.

Every shitty thing you can point to in the past happened at different times -- you can point to the passage of time between each shitty thing you're mentioning. Now, they've been normalized and are all happening right now, at one time, as the regular functioning of the UFC's business model. To make matters worse, they're also innovating all kinds of new bullshit which degrades the UFC as a sport even further.

At this point there's no point in us continuing the discussion. You clearly just want to defend the UFC and I don't feel like typing the same thing out forever and ever. Ciao.

Justify why the signings they make now are any different from the signings they made at any point since the card expansion then. Were the glory days when mediocre fighters like Sam Alvey could go on win streaks?
 
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