UFC and its growing list of gatekeepers/bermudatriangler's

Tell them what, they should forfeit their rankings and every golf player should play the US Opens and may the best man win? Sure good luck with that. Let's see what they'll say to that. I suppose you think they'd say, sure, let us have a 30000 people tournament and by the time it starts again next year, Nike will know who to sign to a sponsorship contract. Obviously the guy won't make it through that tournament again, perhaps ever, but that way maybe Nike can sponsor the winner for a week and then that's that? Media would just love to sit in front of a new dude every year. Then everyone could hold interviews with him only and all the rest of the guys will be poor as fuck. Then if he loses all of 12 people will show up to watch the 30000 golfers they don't know and Nike will stop sponsoring anybody in the sport. Then nobody will want to learn it any more and all the golf courses would go bankrupt quickly. But hey, maybe that one dude you really like that seems stuck making millions now could possibly one day have the honor of being the Champion for the week that it's worth, probably not though. Chances do not really get better for them, but then again it won't matter since you will have destroyed the sport. Maybe I can tell to golfers and tennis players that they need to forfeit their rankings to make it more interesting for you, I doubt they would listen to such a dumb proposal though.

Tennis players don't play 3 times a year. They play over 50 matches a year and there are almost 2000 ranked players in the world. There aren't 2000 players in the UFC.

Tennis also has no weight classes. They have one champion for the males and one for females. There is clear world number 1 at all times. They may not win Wimbledon, but yet still be number 1 based on their points, because they won the most important matches. For this to work in MMA you need 50 fights a year or so. Imagine tennis rankings and tournaments in MMA. Cain would be below JDS right now for fuck's sake. How would that work in your great idea TS? Takes a beating, gets crowned Champion regardless. That would go over well with MMA. Hey maybe in 10 years Cain will have won enough big fights to warrant a number one spot. Tennis is not MMA. They don't fight often enough for it to be comparable.

Tennis players don't train in teams, they may have a main training partner, but they usually train individually. They have no issue playing against their training partners either. They don't wreck people for a living, they hit a ball.

And I could go on and on and on about differences in those sports that make them very hard to compare. You simply can't compare these sports. The only thing they really have in common is that they have individuals competing against each other.

And what you propose is not playing out Wimbledon new every year. You already have that. The winner of UFC 145 is not automatically the winner of UFC 146 and UFC 147 and so on and so forth. Every event has main fights and winners of those in fighting as well. You propose to have no clear number one for sponsors and fans to cling to, which you can promote, break into new markets with, etc. You want to strap them of this which they worked all their life to earn for no reason at all.

What you want is to strip everyone of all their points and to restart the atp world rankings after a certain time, which you say would give good tennis players that can't win major tournaments a much better shot at making it to the first place in the rankings, where you rake in the sponsorship cash. And you claim this would make it more interesting. It's nonsense though. They don't do that, because then it would be impossible to have clear seeds to major tournaments and people wouldn't come to watch them. Tennis is organized in a way that lets the best play the major tournaments and some lesser players play a qualifier, which is a mini-tournament that lets lesser players get into a big field provided they make it through those rounds.

People on the Challenger and ITF tours play hard to make it to the ATP rankings and get into bigger tournaments or even qualifiers. The same happens in MMA. People win locally, they win regionally, then in big organizations and lastly they get a shot in the UFC. Then they work their way up. If they can't reach the very top it doesn't mean the system is wrong. Not every good tennis player is highly ranked in the ATP. Some of them dominate the Challenger tour and do not even try their hand at Wimbledon. Some players only play sand, regardless of being ranked high. They may chose not the play in Wimbledon at all and they might still be in the top 10 and rake in millions because of it.

Stripping them of all points and having everyone always start at the same level, I suppose the ATP level and seeding them into Wimbledon would give you a 3 months tournament. This is not how it works in the real world.

You get the points you got last tournament and you defend your points. They don't arbitrarily restart the rankings to give some middle of the road guy a shot at being the best for no good reason other than you claiming it would give their existence more purpose.

And on and on and on, I could go. You are not even close to being the Michael Jordan of tennis.


Wow. Thanks for putting your heart into this reply.
You do make sense, especially the first two paragraphs. They play a lot more matches then I originally thought.

But like the other said, I just want the Rich Franklin's to still be relevant and still have the chance of a title fight without having to pull a Chael Sonnen.
 
Wow. Thanks for putting your heart into this reply.
You do make sense, especially the first two paragraphs. They play a lot more matches then I originally thought.

But like the other said, I just want the Rich Franklin's to still be relevant and still have the chance of a title fight without having to pull a Chael Sonnen.

Hmm yeah I get that. I think he still is relevant as long as he pulls in great money as a fighter, pulling the crowd and marketing himself to sponsors. Let's be honest. Rich is one hell of a fighter STILL. I'm still a big fan.

Chael got the shot, because nobody else stepped up, no? sure he got interest in himself and made it an option through marketing, but likewise Sharapova demands more money than Federer to start at a tournament. A certain young Russian lady made millions over millions marketing herself and was never the champ. he got that much money, because millions of people came to see her, bought the products she advertised for and she was recognized. She wasn't irrelevant by any means. If you care only about being a good fighter, then you will be less marketable and pull in less money. You can become the champ or maybe not, but part of it is entertainment still. Wanderlei has millions of fans to this day. We tune in to watch him fight and he gets great money. So all is well, even if he doesn't get handed a title like Chael could have been.

No problem about putting in the time. It' worth thinking about thee things for sure, but there really isn't an easy solution to your issue and it really wouldn't be much of a big deal if there wasn't such a massive disconnect between opportunities for champions vs. everyone else. If the champ makes 10 million a year and the number 2 makes 1 million with bonus money and the number 3-10 make anywhere from 100 grand to a million mainly depending on their marketability that kind of sucks, but I see no way around it. That also happens in tennis and other sports or anywhere really. Snookie or whatever her name is is making millions. Should she be paid 10 times what a great engineer gets? I don't know, she makes the TV stations tens of millions and the engineer probably doesn't, so she might be worth that money by making herself marketable.

That sucks. It should be about the fights, but life ain't fair and I really don't think Rich would want to be handed a belt again, so you feel he is still relevant. He probably wants to earn the belt, so it has meaning to him or if he can't do that, he just wants to give us entertaining fights, so that people want to watch him.

This is getting to be an interesting thread for me at least. Good job for a first thread, even though this idea has been brought up and dismissed a million times, this may still be the best version of this thread that I've read.
 
Man great idea, who ever does this would crush the UFC, damn why hasn't anyone made a tournament format promotion yet? Jeez sounds sooo amazing..
 
It just doesn't work like that in combat sports, there are no seasons or playoffs, no free agents, no trades. What TS says is only a problem if there is a dominant champ and the #2 guy is a clear #2 who just can't beat the champ.

Also Rashad is not in that conversation because he only lost once although he never threatened Jones he wasn't destroyed and could potentially make adjustments and give Jones a tougher fight. It's not like Franklin and Edgar who have lost twice to the champ.
 
Would love to see legit UFC openweight GP(will never happen though, you gotta protect the cash cows), but the idea of a champion forfeiting the belt every year in a combat sport is ridiculous.
 
GP? maybe. stripping the champion of his belt every year? hell no.

you cant take away something a guy has worked his but off to get just because you feel bad for the other fighters, the champion is the champion for a reason and if you cant beat him then you cant complain or claim to be the best.
 
Grand prixs should roll around once in a while to keep people motivated, for sure. Don't think division belts should be relinquished automatically though.
 
what should be changed is how they match up fighters in the ladder. #1 (champ) should defend the belt from anyone in the top 5 ONLY, top 2 or 3 for purists. that's how a ladder works.

jones/chael, jones/vitor, aldo/edgar, cain/jds, gsp/diaz doesnt make sense. also other non title matchups like rory/penn, glover/maldonado, shogun/vera, mendez/mckenzie/whatshisface.

gsp/condit, bendo/edgar, mighty mouse/uncle creepy were the only meaningful title fights in 2012
 
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