I used to be enthusiastic about every single UFC event that would take place. I would look forward to them, talk for weeks with other enthusiasts before the events the happened about what we all thought the outcome would be, and then on the day of the event me and my group of friends would all get together and watch it together. Sometimes this would be at a sports bar, other times it would be at one of our houses.
These days, most of the time the events come and go and none of my once very-dedicated group of sports fans didn't even know the event even happened.
Why? Overexposure.
Well, it's not just overexposure. It is also because somewhere along the line a group of fighters started to figure out that it was far safer to win by wrestling and grappling and this lead to almost all of the champions in all weight classes being exactly that kind of fighter. Daegestani fighters are the biggest perpetrators of this, but that might be racially insensitive. I just know that when a guy comes to the octagon looking like a Khabib Nurmagomedov clone, there is a good chance the match is going to be a 15-25 minute hugging contest.
There were some funny threads on Reddit as well as some petitions that were calling for the UFC to change their name to UHC or the "Ultimate Hugging Championship." Purists and people who are paid to support the sport no matter what, including Joe Rogan would defend the sport during these boring fights going so far as to call the crowd "a bunch of casuals" when they would boo the fighters after a nearly half an hour of two guys rolling around on the ground doing almost zero damage to one another.
It got so bad that there was talk about tweaking the rules as far as ground time is concerned in order to get more exciting fights. Most fights were ending in decision victories and the people who held belts seemed to almost always be playing defensively in order to retain their championship. They weren't trying to win, they were trying to "not lose."
That was boring.
But that isn't even the major problem. The problem was that no matter how much of your attention UFC had, they wanted a little bit more.
Not only do they have an event every damn week (sometimes more than one a week) they also have their other branded content such as "contender series" and the reality show "The Ultimate Fighter" was overload that I didn't stay interested in for very long.
It was just too much. Something that was only happening once a month was now on nearly every damn day in some form or another and the hype was constant as well. We were getting UFC thrown at us all day every day and as it turns out most people don't actually like it that much. It became a game of the most popular fighters getting the top fights rather than who the best were and that is no bueno when it comes to sport that is supposed to be about who is truly the toughest in the world.
This graph doesn't even take into account the most recent years but you can see how the amount of fights have just exploded over the years to the point of IMO, well beyond market saturation.
Since 2018, viewership has been waning as well as overall interest. Rarely do I ever hear any friends of mine so much as talking about MMA anymore whereas it used to be one of our favorite topics.
The upcoming White House UFC should have been a major draw despite the obvious negative press it is going to get because it is on Trump's birthday, but the card is just kind of lacking.
There are reports of arenas not selling out but this can be attributed to price gouging on the part of ticket resellers and this is something that seriously needs to be addressed. The price written on your ticket as opposed to what you paid for it can often be a 10x sort of situation and that is just wrong.
I have never attended a UFC event even though I live in a city that hosts several of these every year.
Although some of the information presented is no longer true that this guy presets, he makes a very good overall case.
The thing is, despite the negativity by a lot of long-time fans, the UFC is making more money than ever and since sports are all about money and not really about the sport, there is no reason to believe that they are going to change anything about this. Once the money starts to dip then they might. In the meantime I am actually more excited about Jake Paul's upcoming "retiree fights" than I am about the next several major UFC events.
It's just too much at this point and I don't think they will pull it back either. I don't see myself bothering to live watch any event in the near future and myself and my friends rarely ever talk about the sport at all. This is a shame because it used to be one of our favorite things. The giant that brought it to the forefront that is UFC, got greedy and now we are all.... just kind of bored.