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PaperclipPerfector
2d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Ufc 317 this weekend and highly encourage you all watch it. @Tanista comment on lat weeks thread about Jon Jones, one of the better mma fighters, behind only the likes of GSP, Fedor etc retired after holding up the worst division, heavyweight, for two years has made people who watch the sport happy.
Ilia Topuria, Payton Talbott and Joshua Van are three entertaining young fighters who are blockbuster entertainment whilst also being extremely talented.
Topuria was the featherweight champ and knocked the last two greats out in succession, something that is unprecedented and this was likely the greatest title run in the UFC impact wise for the division. Topuria is a pressure fighter, defensively sound, sleeps people with one punch and wants to be in the pocket. He fights a now past his prime Charles Oliveira who himself was the pressure fighting guy at lightweight, the division Topuria is fighting in now.
Talbott is a very online young guy and the first fighter to tweet about Sam Hyde incessantly making him someone I root for now. He fights at 135, a division above Van who's at 125. Mma is very stale, boring and not worth watching now. The UFC wants no big superstars to emerge as they want a total monopoly on the business so that they pay fighters as little as possible. The thinking of this kind has made the peak we saw in 2016-17 look like a different world.
The other fight in this card features 125ers who can sleep people. Lower weight classes are a treat to watch. As a long time fan, I hope you folks tune in, buy, pirate, watch it at a bar, whatever. Ufc 317 is on this Saturday, you can watch the embedded vlogs ufc produces to get some more context about the fights if you wish to.
then
Getting some mixed messages man.
Anyhow, I will be watching it at a bar with a bunch of guy friends, as much an excuse to be social as anything.
Have to agree with the general assessment of UFC logic. At best, I'm ambivalent on Dana White, he's clearly done a lot to get the sport mainstreamed but so many of his basic tactical decisions with regard to the business are hare-brained from my perspective. The commentary on the fights tends to be ass, the officiating has been questionable (a bit better of late?), they won't adopt new gloves to prevent eye pokes, and it is really unclear if they want to market as a brand of semi-family-friendly entertainment (they're on ESPN now, after all) or keep things 'gritty' and amp the bro-ish, violent and unapologetically masculine nature of it. They still have Octagon girls in skimpy outfits, the fighters curse regularly in ring interviews, most of their sponsors are likewise still aimed at the Titties 'n' Beer crowd.
Like, you ask me, the entire point of UFC is to set up the most interesting fights/matchups possible and encourage the top contenders to fight as hard as possible for a win, and generally avoid safe, riskless approaches. Big purses and other monetary incentives are a good method. Bring in the best talent from across the globe and get them to give their best performance.
Yet they sideline or outright oust their most effective, driven fighters half the time. Thinking specifically of Mighty Mouse and Ngannou.
Maybe there is some logic to mitigating the chances of a fighter reaching superstar status, once they're popular and wealthy enough they tend to dictate their own terms on when/if they fight. Like McGregor. If the UFC can keep them on a tighter leash then in theory that means they can arrange and actually deliver good matchups consistently, if the talent is there.
But also the actual fighting is getting to a point where the 'optimal' style is somewhat predetermined. Unless you're a talented kickbox-wrestle-jitsu practitioner, you're going to get stomped by someone who is more well rounded than you, no matter how good you are at your particular niche. Maybe that's how it should be, but its just a fact now that "MMA" is not literally "mixed martial arts" but really it is a style unto itself, it isn't really about pitting different styles against each other anymore.
I wonder if they should start introducing different obstacles to the octagon, or adding in strange conditions. "In round 1 they're covered in cooking grease. In round 2 they'll have an eyepatch over one eye. In round 3, their legs will be tied together with a two foot rope to limit movement and kicks. Round 4, they fight while each gripping a Bandana as hard as they can.
Or just go full Super Smash Bros. and let them opt to have Tasers, baseball bats, and small incendiary devices dropped into the octagon if a fight goes past 3 rounds. Or is that WWE's shtick?
I kid, but if you want to break out of the current local maxima for the current dominant fighting styles, you will have to adjust the parameters somewhere to force new optimizations.
This was the line when the UFC was growing and needed to compare itself positively to boxing. It's quite clear that, after the sale and the ESPN deal, the UFC simply doesn't care as much about this. It's nothing new: the strict USADA testing was implemented to clean up its image for a sale (GSP begged for it and was ignored until it was to the UFC's benefit) and then they eventually did away with it because why risk stars popping constantly? It's actually perversely rational: the UFC looks worse than sports that don't test so why bother?
And you can understand why. This isn't the WWE where you can script and the public often doesn't reward you at all for good fights. Mighty Mouse did incredible things in the ring but nobody ever cared. People would rather watch Sean O'Malley or whoever fight.
Making competitive fights is how a champ like GSP who brought along Montreal/Canada (one of the few countries that'll pay for PPVs) get knocked out by Matt Serra. Or 1m+ PPV seller Ronda Rousey ended up getting beaten to within an inch of her life by a Brazilian lesbian with a thick accent. She's probably not going to charm the audience on Colbert or get put in many films. The division - which was attracting normies who wanted a role model for young girls - never got as big again.
Now that they have no credible competition they've settled for squeezing money from their existing base and resting on their laurels.
I don't think this is the case. People have been saying for years that MMA is destined to be dominated by "true" mixed martial artists like Rory MacDonald who've trained in blended styles from the start. But Rory never became champion and there's still a ton of people with a specific specialty they build on when they get to MMA
It may be that this should have happened but the very problem we're discussing prevents it: if you're a very athletic youth and you have options why would you want to focus specifically on MMA to make 10/10? There's a reason a lot of the top people are former wrestlers who've hit their ceiling and HW is so bad a division athletically (an athletic HW is probably going to gain more in other sports)
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