I still love MMA and a majority of all other combat sports but UFC has a tendency with certain cards to just be a gigantic advertisement that has some sports going on during it. Once UFC dropped the Pay-per-view model and started streaming on Paramount, I kind of though that the advertising was going to get worse and maybe it did maybe it didn't, but when I watching these things I can't help but feel like they have just run wild with the commercials going so far as to have mini commercials in the corners of your screen when a fight has kind of gone stale, as well as having the announcers plug certain products between rounds and sometimes, DURING rounds.
It didn't help matters much that the headliner of this particular event starred Aljamain Sterling, a fighter that I kind of loathe because he has earned his nickname of "The Human Backpack" by going for hugs at every available opportunity. He has tried to shake this and at one point even changed his nickname to something else, but the people who got accustomed to him being an almost exclusively grappling fighters will not allow him to change that. I watched one round and saw that it appeared as though the guy is trying to do more striking to be more appealing to the crowd, but as soon as things go a little bit awry he immediately returns to his default mode of shooting for takedowns and then slowly moving into positions that normally don't result in anything other than getting points.
When I later saw the final result of a decision victory for Sterling, I was not surprised, this is how that guy gets a vast majority of his victories.
This is typical of him. All of his limbs are being used to make it so that his opponent cant get him off, but frequently none of them are being used to actually do any damage. Why? because you score points for having ground control and octagon control and the powers that be determined quite some time ago that if you are in a "dominant position" this means you have octagon control. Many other fighters in the past have used this tactic and most of them ended up being kind of loathed as well. Many hardcore fans and even Joe Rogan call people who don't appreciate this sort of tactic as "a bunch of casuals who don't understand the sport" and ok, that's fair enough but we came here to be entertained, not to see a guy that can crawl on another guy and make is so he can't get shaken off. Save that crap for the BJJ and wrestling tournaments.
Sterling wasn't the only problematic factor though. If you look at that main card every single fight but one went to decision and if you bothered to watch the undercards, and I can't imagine very many did, all but ONE of those were also decisions.
I suppose there is a chance that the promoters realized that Sterling was not going to be much of a draw to most non-purists and put a bunch of other people on the card that have similar strategies as he does on purpose.
For me, the only Aljamain Sterling fight I have seen that I genuinely enjoyed was when Sean O'Malley KO'd him even though Sterling was using his usual tactics.
It's gotten to the point with me that I almost never bother to actively watch these events anymore and while I knew this one was happening, I just switched over to it to see if it was exciting yet and most of the time when I switched back to paramount a commercial was going on and most of the other times the long ringwalks where they are also talking about products, or every now and then there was actually some "fighting" going on that once again was just a bunch of hugging contests with men and women huffing and puffing on the ground hoping to get top position.
UFC's numbers are up as far as how much money they are making, and I can't understand how that is possible. I guess a lot of people still like this sort of thing? I'm not one of them, that is for sure.