MMA feels like its on the decline

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HW has Aspinall, Sergei and Jones, other than them there really aren’t many good fighters. The Brock era was way better.

LHW- I like Alex, but he’s only champ because JBJ was too lazy to make 205. The early Jones days were way more exciting and stacked

MW- Strickland is cool, Chimaev could have been something but he gets odd match ups and is very inactive.

WW- Leon is your champ, Belal might be your next champ- perhaps the two most boring fighters in the UFC. Shavkat looks promising and Ian Garry, perhaps one of the mentally weakest humans in prize fighting is a contender we have to deal with. We can only hope Islam moves to 170.

LW- Islam, Arman, BSD all exciting, but the rest of the top guys at 155 are old, and half of the top 15 can retire within the year, you’ll have guys like Paddy in the top 10. What a joke lol.

FW and BW are great

Fly- no man should weigh 125lbs.

Oh and WMMA? Come on.

PFL and Bellator have shit marketing. I can’t tell you a single PFL champ, Bellator I know has Usman and Johnny Eblem, but this is “the number 2” promotion in North America? Who the hell is in charge of marketing? I don’t have the slightest idea when their next card is.

Im a fan of ONE, but the Friday AM cards are hard to keep up with.

The UFC is super expensive, I went from buying every card to maybe watching 2 a year. They put out a subpar product at a premium price.

Im sort of losing interest, it went from I couldn’t wait for the next card, to I don’t really care. Anyone else feel the same?

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Welcome to the club.

You’re a little late to the party but it is an eventuality.

Someone will come around (NDA?) claiming you aren’t a real fan and never were because you don’t watch any scrub they throw at you and lap it up.

It is what it is. There are still good fights all the time, I watch the PPVs still but not much else for UFC. Been that way for many years now.

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Yeah, I miss the days of the mega PPVs, not the shit they feed us now

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I used to buy a few a year, when there were a few a year. Like, there was no way in hell i was missing shane vs brock, or chael vs anderson (1 or 2). Now there’s so many it’s hard to keep track. On one hand im happy there’s almost always a fight on any given weekend. On the other, it’s sensory overload and I’m not nearly as invested in fights/storylines as I used to be. I’m also older.

2010 had 24 total events. 2023 had 43 events. Curiously, the number of PPVs per year hasnt changed much over the last decade, but the number of events has almost doubled.

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This thread could have been made any time in the last decade tbh.

It will never again be as good as it was in the mid 00s through early 10s but its established itself as a permanent fixture in the sporting landscape now and will keep on coasting along anyway, and its still pretty good imo even though I dont love it like I used to.

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I liked it in the 90’s. Elbows, nutpunches, and Don “The Predator” Frye’s fear inducing steroid distorted voice. Polar bear Varleans. Then Tank and Tito and Chuck. Garnered some sophistication with GSP. It was still exciting back then. Even when Tank made his useless comeback. Jump forward, Brock was exactly what was needed and UFC knew it.

Nowadays, I barely know the champions names, and across the board they’re all too good so they pointfight each other – Brock would’ve never pointfighted another man, – and it’s bantamweight dwarves that can’t knock each other out even with a sledgehammer filling up half the cards, and women punching air doing 1/2 of what’s left. Really, I like to see women dance and skate and be pretty. I don’t care for seeing them fight.

And no offense to muslims but now we got the Islam vs Islam era in this sport with our Dubai owner overlords. I thought it was bad enough when Matt Hughes thanked God for deciding the outcome of his fights. Fuck this sport.

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MMA is not on the decline. We’re all just getting older and some of you are letting it pass you by. Which is fine. It’s happened to me with other things too. The video game industry has passed me by. The film industry has passed me by. I use to buy several video games every year and I use to live at the local Movie Theater. Now I hardly game at all anymore and I only see the big movies now, nothing like I use to

MMA is arguably the best it’s ever been today

This forum is full of mostly old heads. I’m 30, I’m considered young here

The UFC Page/Forum I’m on, on Facebook, is full of people my age and a lot younger than me. The younger fanbase has a completely different interpretation of todays mma than this forum does. And that’s why I love being on the FB page I’m on. I get a far different age group to discuss mma with who have far different backgrounds and opinions and everything

Everything you guys hate about todays UFC, the younger fanbase loves

The younger fans love the apex

The younger fans love Dana White Contenders Series

The younger fan base loves Fight Night events free on ESPN+

The younger fans base even loves WMMA which you guys treat like Nazi’s. I made fun of WMMA once on this group I’m apart of and I had dozens of dudes calling me out and calling me a bad fan etc.

Hell the younger fanbase even enjoys Power Slap

So no. MMA is not dying. You’re getting older and not evolving with the sport. It happens. It’s natural. You gotta adapt simple as that. I for one will not let the sport I love pass me by and leave me in the dust. You can call me a fanboy or Dana white dick sucker or whatever it is Bary always calls me that’s fine. But the only constant in life is change. And I will change with mma

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As older, I don’t think it’s about “evolving with the sport”. I think it’s the same thing as tuning into a 100 meter race with Usain Bolt: to see him win in spectacular fashion. To the casual observer, you can pretend MMA is so evolved and great. It’s not. Brock Lesnar would wreck shop. I LOVE BROCK!

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Yes the HW and LHW divisions have gotten worse. But that’s not the UFCs fault. That’s a fighter thing not a promotion thing

I guarantee in 2005 all ufc fans would have loved to have more UFC’s per year

Now we get plenty per year. And everyone here complains

If they don’t see McGregor or Diaz or Masvidal on the main event they bitch and moan like casuals. It’s crazy to me

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Agreed. Royce would tap any from this new UFC generation.
And I’d like to add that John L Sullivan would KO Tyson Fury and Dick Butkus would cut though any modem NFL line with a chainsaw through melted butter.
These damn panty-waist whipper-snapppers are soft.

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The 125 135 and 145 weight divisions are so good right now. They’re carrying the sport/promotion

If you’re one of those freaks who doesn’t like shorter people fighting then I don’t know what to tell you. You’re a casual I guess. Most of the best fighters of all time or the best today are the smaller divisions

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This man has jokes

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I’m 46 and have watched from the beginning. For me it’s eb and flow. The older I get the busier I’ve become and the UFC holds more and more cards. So it’s harder than ever to keep track of everything. There was a point that I could name fighters in all kinds of promotions WEC, Strikeforce, Pride, Bellator, IFL, Dream etc. nowadays I could name a handful of Bellator/PFL fighters. UFC has dominated the market with shows and Bellator/PFL have shots themselves in the foot constantly. I’ll still watch what I can because mma is the one thing I geek out on but price hikes and miss management year after year makes it harder and harder.

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Yes the price hikes are really the only thing I complain about. Thankfully I watch with 2 other people normally so we split the price evenly

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How’re you going to say LW is too old but FW and BW are great? FW is just as old if not older, and less interesting. BW is just less interesting unless you’re into the Merabs, Sterlings and “Yadongs” of the world.

How’re you also going to say “No man should weigh 125” AND “I’m a fan of ONE”? :laughing:

The things that lead to declining interest as I see them are:

  1. Cards are too filled with lower weight and WMMA fights which are evenly matched and end up being stalemates for the most part. Or one dominates but the loser is still too good to be put in any real danger. These kinds of fights tend to run together, making the participants unmemorable.

  2. The sport has gone global, making it harder to get into fighters’ personalities as half of them speak no or broken English. If these foreign fighters aren’t absolute killers in the cage, they run together and become very easy to forget.

In other words, there are generally too few standouts. Someone like Mike Perry should have been held on to over any number of random interchangeable guys.

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It’s unfortunate about the whole USA/ESPN thing.

There are easy ways to actually pay the UFC directly while getting PPVs reasonably. Just not with forced ESPN there.

I’m ~$25/month for an all-inclusive package.

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I don’t like 125. 135 and 145 are great. But you’re gonna tell me this is the best LW to MW has looked??

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Despite the protests of the older generation about how the modern product is filled with Conor wannabe’s doing a pro wrestling schtick….the product is more bland and sterile and streamlined to be sport-like than ever in modern times, and the oldheads are wishing they had their more pro wrestling style MMA product back

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Not sure how to break it to you but the way Conman and others are handed title shots (he is even still being brought up for one unironically) is the exact opposite of sport-like and is 110% pro wrasslin.

Maybe you have a point in some regards but this is not a pure sport at all.

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Those were awesome times.

There are still awesome PPVs once in a blue moon, but more often there are just awesome fights that are sprinkled across several otherwise lame $80 PPVs instead of the old $35 mega cards.

And of course there are the classic top-to-bottom lame PPVs with one fight you think “this could be decent” that winds up falling flat on its face.

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