solid_kunglao Wrote:
MMA is shrinking! You sir know absolutely nothing! The MMA industry is the fastest growing sport with tickets for 55000 people selling out in less than 30 monutes. And refereeing is a joke? Oh please! This is one of the hardest sports to referee for therefore they need to have a good understanding of the fighters condition and whether they're good to carry on. You cannot compare the WWE to MMA as the WWE is sports entertainment and therefore staged. with many celebrities attending UFC events how is it shrinking? With the likes of David Spade in the crowd really shows how the fan base has grown. The last time we saw someone famous in the WWE was Mike Tyson who is now regularly praising the MMA industry.
While MMA under the hokey "unifed rules" appears to be gaining steam across Europe, and UFC as a promotion is doing pretty well in the US, a large part of the MMA world is the Japanese scene, and it has severely decreased in popularity over the past ten years. Sengoku have papered up to half of their arenas with complimentary tickets, and still not been able to get full houses. When you look at gate sales and television ratings, you can see a trend of the Japanese public having turned back to boxing massively, and even pro wrestling for their fix of violence. So while some sectors of the sport are growing, others aren't. Overall MMA isn't doing too badly, but it's not the unstoppable juggernaut that Zuffa wants you to believe it is.
"Oh please!" doesn't do much to change my mind about MMA refereeing being shitty on the whole either. As much as I've always loved MMA, it just is. Partially because it is actually a hard sport to ref, but also because the referees can't get on the same page and decide if they're there to referee an entertainment extravaganza or a professional sport. It's just incredibly inconsistent.
And if you don't see the parallels between WWE and UFC then I don't know what to tell you. WWE books matches they know will draw. UFC opts to book matches they know will draw over matches which are theoretically important to "rankings" but which won't be exciting. That's not how you run a professional sport like Tennis or Golf, that's how you run a pro wrestling promotion. WWE also hypes fights by forcing feuds. UFC does this too by feeding their fighters lines to garner heat for their fights. Every aspect of the biz is exactly the same. Legitimacy is just UFC's gimmick, but they're no more legit than promotions like Pride were, and those promotions had their fair share of shady business happenings. If UFC was really not just sports entertainment, then they'd adopt a proper full blown ranking system in the manner of Shooto. But seeing as watching two collegiate wrestlers try to out wrestle each other in every other fight doesn't really draw, UFC is going to stick with their pro wrestling model of Dana and Silva booking whichever fights will make them coin.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's all entertainment at the end of the day man. Ask someone who fights at that level and they'll probably tell you themselves.
