I guess you can call this my first thread on here cause the last time I posted here was I think 2010, but I have some things to vent about that have been bothering me for years regarding UFC.
I used to be a big UFC fan back in Pride days but I've really been losing interest in it lately and have found myself watching alternatives like One Championship especially their muay thai stuff. I've even found myself watching silly crap like Streetbeefs, Power Slap, and Redneck boxing to get my fix of violence more than UFC and I used to exclusively only watch MMA for combat sports.
UFC in 2025 lacks talent first of all cause they don't wanna pay for any. I'm sorry cause I know this topic has probably been covered to death, but it's hard to talk about this without addressing the elephant in the room. I think that business model UFC had worked for awhile, but it's starting to really catch up to them and degrade product quality as more potential fighters are persuaded to stay out of the sport and fans are noticing this. If I wanna see guys standing playing rock-em-sock-em robots winging sloppy overhands I can just turn on Streetbeefs and see guys who are in there to have fun as a hobby with more memorable personalities to do this. Take Winged C for example. I know he just got his head kicked off in a UFC contenders match, but he has a fun personality that UFC fighters don't have anymore because they have poor self promotional skill.
That's another thing: the UFC doesn't have any stars anymore like Jon Jones or Conor Mcgregor or Nick/Nate Diaz to attract casual interest, but then it doesn't really have stuff like super high level strikers like Mirko Crocop or elite grapplers like Khabib Nurmagamedov either and I think the reason is again the pay is terrible. I think it helps fans that they went away from the pay-per-view system, but even if it's on Paramount+ I'd rather wait for the fights to appear for free on youtube than pay for paramount plus in order to get UFC content. That could change if they offered a better quality product. In its current state there's no fighters that interest me right now and if I'm not getting that much entertainment out of their free content why sign up for the paid stuff.
I just went on Youtube and watched "greatest fights from 2025" on UFC's channel and then went straight over to "Absolute Mayhem Must-See Fights From 2025 So Far!" on One Championship's page. The difference in fight quality imho was night and day. All of the UFC's best fights were basically Muay Thai bouts with tiny bit of grappling here and there that wasn't really very active and stalled the action. I look at what One Championship has and I see elite level strikers with insane technique and more fast paced and consistent violence. Part of it is the rules. One FC went too far with this rule imho because it stopped fighters good at kneeing out of the clinch, but they made a rule that stopped excessive clinching to speed things up. The UFC really needs to be more aggressive with stand ups like it was back in the Pride days. I didn't see that in the UFC video I mentioned, those fights were really active overall. Sometimes when I watch UFC though I see way too much circling around or inactively holding people down on any random fight on normal card.
Also I get it that muay thai fighters train exclusively in striking; however, the level of striking in the UFC imho hasn't evolved much over 15 years. I don't see guys utilizing stuff like front kicks and elbows that much. Jon Jones did that and totally dominated before he retired. I don't see a replacement for Jon Jones right now with truly elite level striking in the UFC like him. When fighters are encouraged to stand and bang all the time and what you see is a lot of sloppy technique people notice.
And you can have elite level grapplers that make the sport exciting. I mentioned Khabib earlier. That dude would take people down and maul them on the ground. Back in the day Randy Couture had some amazing fights like his second fight against Vitor, his first fight against Chuck Liddel, and his fight against Gabriel Gonzonga where he worked his ground and pound and imho it was exciting to watch.
Nobody wants to see a dude hold a guy on the ground for 15-25 minutes. Unfortunately you see that more often than not in UFC as people who simply want to win neutralize people with wrestling for boring decision wins or instead circle around throwing little pitter patter jabs the whole fight like you commonly see in lighter weight classes in UFC.
In One FC the flyweights and bantamweights starch one another. I watched a fight earlier between Rak and Yoshinari where this atom weight threw a cross that was so pinpoint precise that a shot that barely looked like it had power behind it acted like a gun when off in the arena and shot the dude. The UFC flyweights don't have the technique to consistently pull off those kind of ko's so you have to go to heavier weight classes or you almost never see a knockout.
Take the best fights of the year in UFC and that's like the average fight I'd see on a One Championship card. I don't know if it's the culture or what, people in Japan and Thailand and a few other countries send fighters into kickboxing to fight like warriors. If you want an amazing fight look up Rodtang vs Superlek. They went to war and beyond in that fight. We are talking about two men with over 500 fights combined over their careers teeing off with blood everywhere spending every last bit of energy firing off perfect technique like a machinegun until the last second. I don't even have to pick and choose much when I watch ONE. Even the undercards are a war almost every time. I watched the entire last couple hours of their last card and found myself entertained all throughout. Btw you want a fighter who never puts on a boring fight Johnathan Haggerty. That man is a beast.
In UFC right now the only fighters I get excited about seeing on a card are like Alex Pereira, Jiří Procházka (I had to copy paste that one), Islam Makhachev, Ilia Topuria, Max Holloway, Justin Gatheje, Paddy Pimblet, and a couple others.
The lightweight and welterweight divisions are still interesting, but man, the heavier weight classes are pitiful right now in the UFC.
The UFC did that enshitification private equity thing where they are so saddled by debt they can't afford to attract bigger guys who can play other sports like football for way more money. To be fair I don't see a lot of talented big guys in ONE either probably for the same reason and yes, I know Muay Thai pays their fighters diddly squat too.
You just think the UFC with it's branding and comprising like a 90% market in combat sports would be able to bring something better to the table at heavy weight than Derrick Lewis, Curtis Blades, Ciryl Gane, and Tom Aspinall.
Cause I wanna love UFC again. They don't give me a ton to be excited about is the problem.
If the UFC wants to pay fighters dirt wages this may sound morbid, but their best bet honestly is go into a bunch of impoverished countries and start pulling talent there. Get men with passion into the training facility offering to train them for free and start building up guys from scratch. Start spamming Francis Ngannou's from Cameroon to take brain damage for 5k/5k and beg for a 50k performance bonus and every once in awhile have Dana White toss a random wade of cash at them he won by doubling down on a 17 in blackjack cause this system they have playing monopoly putting other shows in the states out of business to steal their talent is over. They done all that already and their whole roster is pushing 40 now and we are talking about Ciryl Gane getting his 4th title shot.
Something has to give cause even people like me who have watched this stuff for 20 years are getting bored looking for other sources to get our fight fix and I think it's hitting a crisis level for the sport.
