I have been following football (soccer) the last ten years really intensively. In the beginning, around the late 90's and early millenium, the teams played with a different mind set. It was all about winning and play "total football" that Holland introduced, which means that everyone is attacking and everyone is defending. That resulted in fan-likeable games with high scores and a lot of beautiful techniques.
After around 2005 though, the sport really became tactical and every team played according to their abilities. The managers became more as a scout and scouted the opponents in order to neutralize their strenghts. That has resulted in less funnier matches for a neutral fan. Of course the fans of the smaller teams like this since their teams are playing more efficient and actually winning more games than before.
I am concerned that this is slowly happening in MMA. Game plans have always been a part of the game, however the game plans are slowly starting to become more of a "we need this to grind out a decision" much rather than "this is how we should finnish this guy".
The latest example of this is Diaz vs Condit.
I don't like where this is going. And I don't think that there is a solution for it today since there only is one "big" promotion and the fighters do only as much to stay put in that promotion.
Couldnt agree with you more about the gameplans. But i think last season in the premier league and this season have been some of the best to watch in a long while.