As a degenerate fan it's really hard these days. The cards are mostly garbage, no real stars, Trump is constantly paraded around along with a bunch of other shit bags. If I can't stream, I go to bed at a decent hour instead of 2am . Then find it somewhere the next morning.
Word on the street is the UFC is putting up atrocious sales numbers right now which is insanely easy to believe. Going to be interesting to see how this ESPN negotiation goes. I can see ESPN walking if the numbers are as bad as rumored.
ESPN would have all the leverage if their app wasn't such a disaster to the people that are actually wanting to pay for your product.
I’ve bought more cards in my life than I’m proud to admit, but outside of 299 and 300, I haven’t paid for one in years bc the cards are watered down dog shit now
Maybe Dana can get Trump to sign an executive order to make streaming UFC PPVs a matter of domestic terrorism.
espn is done with ufc. from what i have seen they have next to no interest in signing a new deal with them. believe ufc will be going to netflix i hate that i watch this sport. it is disgusting seeing the people they flaunt such as trump and the tates and all those fucking loser influencers
UFC needs to completely get rid of PPVs or alter the model significantly so there's like just one PPV every quarter or something. Paying $80 for any of these is absurd, but people might be more willing if they had like four super cards a year or something. Which would trickle down to the "free" cards being stronger too. Their biggest issue though is the lack of star power with really none on the horizon. They also probably need to start pressuring like the Nevada or California athletic commissions to combat the amount of boringness that has penetrated the actual fights these past few years. Also if UFC complains more about ESPN (which we know Dana will), they'll just essentially stop covering UFC once their deal is expired.
170 turning into a boring division from star power to style of fighting is something I never imagined.
catching up on the fights and after 3 rounds of Brady dominating Edwards on the ground his corners advice is “let’s go back to kick boxing, hands, hands, go for that high kick yeeee?” clueless team
that kick was far from lucky the pre fight videos showing him scouting and working it means he definitely knew it could land was it a hail mary because it came at the absolute latest possible moment, sure that’s like saying masvidal’s knee or pettis’ super kick was pure luck leon had a run and now it looks like it’s over, doesn’t make him trash
I mean he was literally world champ and defended it a few times. "Never that good" is laughable. He's not a HOF fighter but most would love to have his career. 13 straight fights without a loss but "not that good."
also saying that he had a run is far from stanning for someone i wasn’t a fan at all and thought it was funny as shit when masvidal punked him
in regards to champions in the UFC yeah i would say he is in the below average category for ufc champions. other than usman who did he beat that was worth a damn? RDA was expired by the time they fought and if prime usman fought leon then he would have worked him just like belal and brady did. leon is 33 but is fighting like he is a washed old fighter who is past his prime.
Usman was on a 19 fight win streak. He was a year older than Edwards is now. And even if he's in the below average category for UFC champs, that's pretty dang good. I can't think of any UFC champ that "wasn't that good." They have to be pretty damn good just to earn the shot.
The Leon arch was fun. Belal trains at an elite gym so I wasn’t surprised he got better after their first fight. Getting dominated by Brady was sad. It seemed like him and his team had no answers. Usmans run was the best at 170 but his knees gave out allegedly.
Not good when one of your top names is saying this. Boring fights and absurd ticket prices are killing the best atmospheres UFC goes to.
To be fair, it's Endeavor who paid $4,000,000,000 for it and now are looking to squeeze every penny out of it to make their money back. Their path to do that is to keep the payroll down and keep fighters from becoming stars who demand more money. The ESPN deal was huge for them because of the exposure but it turned the UFC into a glorified content company who need to put out so many cards to satisfy the contract. The combination of these things create a terrible fan experience where you have 10-25 fighters who the casual fans know and hundreds of unknown guys making $10,000 to show up to have their heads bashed in. They have been banking on the fact that people will buy the PPVs just because it's the UFC but that is now falling apart.
The previous TV deal with Fox still had good amount of scarcity, but now we’re getting like two ESPN fight night cards from the shitty as Apex and then a PPV all in a month. There’s 6 cards in the next 7 Saturdays. Only the most extreme MMA fan (like pretty much only sport they watch) would cancel ESPN+ when UFC leaves next year, and ESPN would barely notice that loss.
I mean I can empathize with someone going after someone that molested a family member but shooting into a car with 3 people is a little much.
as someone who is a rather new big MMA fan, have the fighter breaks always been this long? I understand the damage that their bodies take, but having top 15 fighters fighting once a year seems like a crazy long break to me.
sort of, lots of factors. It depends on the fighter and where they are in the promotion. Some of the younger fighters that they think will have star power end up fighting less as they wait for the UFC to make the right matchups to get them through to the top. Then you have guys like Kevin Holland who fight every 3 months regardless of how the last fight went.
Obviously need someone with a lot of money and willing to lose money at first, but this feels like a time for a kickboxing promotion to make a move in the North American combat sports landscape here. Someone paying $80 for UFC 315 will be the funniest joke I hear all year.
Ya Sanko counting those shots out on the live broadcast was nice. Has to be a weird time when you get KO'd so bad the 12-13 extra shots wake you back up like nothing happened. Fighter: "What happened?" Ref: "Right about the time the fight started you got fucked up."