Dana to announce at least two more 300 fights today

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Honestly I don’t know because I don’t really follow “stars” or celebrity fighters or pay attention to it other than seeing this or that article on the subject like anyone else. I generally know stars rise and fall and am aware that Russia, Eastern Europe, Mexico and Australia seem to be producing a lot of stars these days for their audiences that have grown like crazy in the past decade.

I pay more attention to divisions I enjoy a lot like LW and MW right now than I do really who is popular where or how much they make or what the company made or this or that. Like for a discussion about stars I’ll google real quick and see Weili has almost 800k instragram followers but I don’t care beyond that because I don’t follow fighters on instagram and don’t even try to follow her or her division. Honestly the only thing I like about WMMA right now is the top 5 and title picture at FLW because its Grasso, Shevchenko, Fiorot, Blanchfield, Barber and Rose and thats interesting but other than that I really don’t even like WMMA in the UFC, personally.

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Hardcore fans everywhere were fans of say Saku or Chuck but todays its different.

I think stars are a lot more “niche” these days.

Casual fans in Mexico are now Grasso and Moreno fans and they are very popular. UFC has grown a lot in Mexico. Look how that Fight Night just did such big numbers or whatever. Sure an older fan watched Renzo vs Tamura on VHS might no think Grasso is a star but the instagram followers and Mexicans and Mexican Americans that pay and travel to see her fight is a different story.

Its a different era, a digital era.

A lot of Muslim fighters have a lot of casual fans as do certain Japanese, Polish, Australian fighters so these fighters are incredibly famous and followed by a niche ethnic or regional fanbase that is more casual instead of the hardcore global fanbase that was smaller but was discussing say Saku, Chuck, Randy, Fedor etc… back when the sport was young and had more hardcore but less casual fans.

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I see your perspective, and it is a fine perspective.

That said, the concept of the ‘star’ has always fueled combat sports; Dempsey, Ali, Mike Tyson, Oscar, Mayweather, Fedor, Brock, Conor, Canelo. Those kind of guys, and their big fights have always appealed to people. Just like a Superbowl has more appeal than a regular season game. When a sport becomes an ‘event’.

It might just be that I am getting more out of touch, but when I look at the traditional ‘marque divisions’ - HW, and LHW. It doesn’t seem very inspiring. And stars in general are lacking.

Anyway, as I begin forget the original point, I remember it was; ‘UFC 300 could do with a better main event’. In that context, I stand by my original perspective.

Top star power at these events:

UFC 100:

Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mir
GSP vs Thiago Alves
Bisping vs Hendo

UFC 200:

Jon Jones vs Daniel Cormier (originally booked)
Brock Lesnar vs Mark Hunt
Jose Aldo vs Frankie Edgar

UFC 300:

Alex Pereira vs. Jamahal Hill
Justin Gaethje vs. Max Holloway
Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukyan

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428

It’s 300. Dana promised something yuuuuge

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429

I like Bo , but him being on the main card is a joke

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Can you imagine the momentum and happiness one is going to be feeling until that co main event hits? It’s gonna be like an all you can eat buffet of lobster and filet mignon, with unlimited rides on Space Mountain, then BAM………the women’s title fight. Like having a kidney stone removed through one’s sinuses with a rusty drain snake.

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When’s the last time they raped our eye holes with someone like this? Bo’s being shoved in my eye and ear cavities and I didn’t pay daddy Dana for that treatment.

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I know right, and a banger of a fight (Figgy/Garbrant is the first fight of the night in a less than half empty arena

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That women’s title fight has to be fucking stopped

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These fights have no place on this card

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I get what you are saying to a degree but looking at those fighters you listed from 100 and 200 compared to 300.

GSP has 4M instagram followers, Bisping has 2M.

Hill only has 300k and he is obviously not very popular yet but Pereira has 2M followers already.

Max has 3M Gaethje has 2M. Charles has 7M.

Edgar has less than 1M. Arman has as many followers as Frankie. Hunt has 23k followers.

Steaming is also huge now. We don’t get the real PPV numbers these days really but BKFC released that for one of their events, they did something like 200k PPV buys but had like 1.5M streams per some company they hired to do the analysis.

I know UFC does not have a peak GSP who has defended the belt 7x in the co-main for this one and I know they don’t have a Brock over from the WWE but overall… UFC as a promotion is way more popular than it was ten years ago. The sport of MMA is way more popular outside of maybe Japan were it seemed to be more popular at the height of PRIDE/K1/Inoki.

UFC sets a new gate record for just about every arena they go to these days.

I know WMMA has watered down UFC for hardcore fans and with weekly UFC and PFLlator/ACA/ONE/KSW having a lot of talent signed it feels like some UFC fighters don’t belong in the old UFC of ten years ago and I know the the digital age is different than the previous era but the sport has more casual fans than ever before.

Of course UFC 300 could do with a better more “in demand” main event but I just don’t think things always work out, Nunes Tate ended up the main event of 200 and life went on.

Now when you talk about HW and LHW being the marque divisions… twenty years ago in 2004 I think UFC only had like 7-9 HW fights that entire year. They had Sylvia, Mir and Arlovski and that was it. 90% of the best HW’s were all in PRIDE. HW has not always driven UFC success. UFC was also tiny back then compared to today in terms of revenue and popularity.

PRIDE had a very active, stacked and entertaining HW division back then and they did huge live events. I get that its missing now. No argument there. Nobody loved the 2003-2007 PRIDE HW division more than me.

I also know 2010-2012 was an incredible era for HW as well because you had Fedor, Crocop, Big Nog, Barnett, Kharitonov, Werdum, Overeem, Arlovski etc… all still around plus you had JDS, Cain, Brock, Carwin, Mir, DC, Stipe, etc… all having arrived as well and you had fun stuff going on in smaller markets like Pudz vs Butterbean, Monson vs Oleynik, Overeem vs Duffee, Ishii vs Sylvia, etc… you also had cool legends fights like Randy vs Coleman.

Every time you turned around in 2010-2012 you could find a good HW fight fight featuring an all-time great HW and it was awesome.

That is for sure missing right now. No argument there.

I think Stipe Jones in 2024 is a total joke how they have handled that situation.

A fighter who has not won a fight in four years should never get a title shot in the sport’s biggest promotion, he should be fighting Pudz in front of 50k Polish fans at KSW but UFC is gonna UFC.

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^ It is an interesting paradox.

The popularity of UFC, and MMA, has grown 100 times since Tuf started. I remember some major sports orgs, like the BBC, didn’t even house the sport on their website. It was a truly new thing.

So you give the example of Max and Justin having more followers than some of the older fighters. But, of course, the older fighters could not have ever gotten the same amount of followers. UFC/MMA was relatively new, gaining popularity, and Instagram/social media was new when they were in their prime.

So, let’s do a thought experiment. I want you to give a rating out of /10, for your personal level excitement level for the following fights, when they happened. Let’s see if that reveals anything. Maybe I am out of touch, and you see the fights the same way as in the past. Or maybe there is something true about UFC’s declining star power.

20 fights.

I know it is not an entirely fair comparison because I am drawing from a wide time fame vs the narrow one that is now. But I want to see if we are (sometimes) still hitting the peaks, as we did in the past. Modern big fights in bold.

Give your ratings /10

  1. Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mir II
  2. Alex Pereira vs. Jamahal Hill
  3. O’Malley vs Chito Vera
  4. Jon Jones vs Daniel Cormier
  5. Volk vs Islam II
  6. GSP vs Nick Diaz
  7. Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukya
  8. Conor vs Khabib
  9. Strickland vs Izzy
  10. Chuck vs Tito II
  11. Justin Gaethje vs. Max Holloway
  12. Francis vs Stipe II
  13. Bisping vs Hendo
  14. Leon vs Usman III
  15. Brock Lesnar vs Velasquez
  16. Volk vs Topieria
  17. GSP vs BJ II
  18. Izzy vs Alex II
  19. Machida vs Shogun II
  20. Overeem vs Brock Lesnar
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The UFC has no choice but to turn into pro boxing. Multiple belts for the same weight classes (they’re already doing it, interim belts), and they’ll add a couple more weight classes, maybe 2. They are proving more events=more money because the casuals are gobbling up the diarrhea.

We held the line as long as we could gentlemen. It’s been an honor, faggots.

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Me rating the twenty fights you listed on a 1/10 scale is not that helpful though. I’m a man in my 40’s. I can’t get excited for a MMA fight or any sport the way a kid in his teens or 20’s can. Its different as you age.

I don’t watch baseball but baseball fans probably remember the baseball when they were 10-30 as more exciting than the baseball they watch when they are 50-80.

Old people don’t get that excited about stuff, they are old and beaten down by life.

My excitement for the sport peaked with PRIDE but I’m still very interested in stuff like the UFC LW and MW divisions as well as the top 10 BW’s.

I was never too worried about stuff like Brock like a WWE fan would be. I see your first fight listed is Brock vs Mir II. I was interested in that fight yeah but I’m way more interested in say 7., Oliveira vs Tsarukyan because Charles is one of my all time favorite fighters and I’ve followed his entire UFC career.

Besides age, another reason MMA may not seem as exciting to you is because there are not fast paced tournaments anymore like in the PRIDE and DREAM days. Weekly UFC, APEX UFC plus all the Bellator, PFL, ONE, RIZIN, KSW shows give fans way more options than they want really and it also has the stars spread out on more cards than older fans over 40 are comfortable with.

Another factor is you can only watch a sport be born and grow once, we watched NHB/MMA be born out of vale tudo from 93 to 2003. It can’t keep that new and fresh feel to older people forever. Not with endless MMA now available 24/7 in the digital age.

I will say when it was time for Khabib Conor and Khabib Gaethje to go down and Oliveira Chandler and Oliveira Makhachev…I looked forward to those fights as much as anything on your list, its just I’m on the wrong side of 40 now, I’m not a teenager waiting for the big Rickson vs Saku fight to happen.

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No 165 belt debut??

Episode 6 Boo This Man GIF by Archie Comics

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Fair enough. But, just to clarify, by excitement I didn’t mean real excitement. Being nervous, jumpy, counting the days, ‘one more sleep’ (as Anik says), or something like that.

I just meant in the sense that it attracts your attention. Something that you make time for it, find it interesting. Not going to miss it. Like a good Superbowl.

So when Tyson Fury vs Joshua finally comes about, I would say I am very excited for that. But not nervous, hyped up, jumpy. Just, there is 99% chance I will watch it, and be very interested in it.

In boxing, there are a potential bunch of fights I will feel that way about:

Fury vs Joshua
Fury vs Usyk
Beterbiev vs Bivol
Tank vs Loma/Haney/Teo
Canelo vs Benavidez
Canelo vs Bud
Benavidez vs Beterbiev/Bivol.

I used to feel that way about past UFC matches. But I can pick out less these days.

The recipe for being a star is dominance + personality (expressed via speech or fighting style).

Let’s look at the current Champions, who have both those things.

Leon - No.
Du Plessis - No.
Alex - Potential, but not dominant.
Jon Jones - Yes, but doesn’t fight anymore.
Islam - Dominant, but no personality. But great fighter.
Volk>Ilia - Volk great. Iliia - potential.
Sean O’Malley - Potential star.
Pantoja - No
Pennington - No.
Grasso - No.
WeiLi - I like WeiLi.

Compare to past UFC Champions, of a few years ago;

Jon Jones - Star
Anderson - Star
GSP - Star
Cain - Good
LW - Changed a lot, but was good. Frankie etc
FW - Aldo/Conor - Stars.
Dillashaw - Ok/bad guy.
Ronda - Star
JJ - Good. Dominant.

So, for whatever reason, the current stack of top fighters, are not as dominant, and just not quite the same as the past.

In my opinion, anyway.

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442

Yeah I agree, the current champs don’t seem to have as much “star power” as some past champs but I do feel the UFC promotion has more star power as a whole than ever before.

Like they top 100 UFC fighters who are active have more global fans than 100 UFC fighters ever had in history.

Clearly Anderson is a much bigger star than the current champ Du Plessis but is he bigger than Adesanya? Anderson has 5M instagram followers, Adesanya has 15M.

Strickland has become very popular recently.

For example, if you stop and look at the MW’s…I can take 15 current MW’s who have more global casual fan following, recognition and support than any 15 from the past. This is in part because MMA is more global now and has more casual fans like other big sports.

Du Plessis
Strickland
Adesanya
Whittaker
Costa
Vettori
Allen
Craig
Perreira
Muniz
Curtis
Borralho
Aliskerov
Vieira
Nickal

You add their popularity up and they have more global fans than 15 MW’s ever had in UFC history.

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Like UFC put a O’Malley vs Sterling replay up on youtube two weeks ago and it has 3.2M views and thats just a youtube replay.

Their Embedded series before a PPV will do like 0.5 to 2M views just for that.

They have like 18M followers on youtube.

Seems a pretty big following when you consider where the sport came from.

In short they don’t have a new Conor, Ronda or Brock right now and no GSP has a belt but the UFC itself has never been more popular globally.

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Yes, I agree. The UFC promotion is phenomenal. I read they bring in $1.3 billion in revenue per year.

And the internet/social media in general is a totally different thing to the past. When Anderson beat Vitor there were no Youtubers, except for Bloodstain Lane, who got 500 views, at 360 res. The world has changed. The credit for those big social media numbers goes to the tech engineers, not the fighters.

So just image if a fighter/star today went on a 12 fighting winning streak, with a ton of personality, like Anderson did, like Jon Jones did, like Conor did, like GSP did etc.

Someone who could that today would get 30+ million Insta followers, and be a transcendent star. But there isn’t anyone doing it.

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