The Bloody Elbow staff discusses “UFC fatigue” and more in a special two-part roundtable.
Mookie Alexander
The UFC’s deal with FOX kicked in back in 2012, and since then they’ve held at least 30+ events every year. It started with 31 in 2012, then 33 in 2013, shot up to a preposterous 46 in 2014, dropped to 41 apiece for 2015 and 2016, and after UFC 219 wraps up, it will have decreased to 39. There was an absolutely painful stint in 2014 where two events were held on the same day on multiple occasions.
With sagging ratings, a new TV deal, and complaints about oversaturation all prevalent when discussing the state of the UFC, I want to know how much your viewing habits have changed over the past five years. What is your enthusiasm level for UFC cards now that they’re on a near-weekly basis, and are you feeling the “UFC fatigue” that many fans seem to be experiencing?
(Editor’s note: The Bloody Elbow roundtable was so filled with expansive responses that we’ve been forced to split this into two parts. Here’s part one.)
Eddie Mercado
For me, I’ve been a fan of this sport for a pretty long time, well over half of my life now that I think about it. I’m actually coming up on my second consecutive decade as a fan, which is pretty bonkers if you ask me. It was tough being a fan back then, just because of a simple lack of content. It’s nothing like it is today. After The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 Finale, MMA hit the mainstream vein and began booming with all sorts of promotions putting on exciting events along with the UFC, and we were even seeing MMA news shows on various TV channels. This was great, because before any of the TV content, the only way to get a behind the scenes peek was to buy the VHS/DVD and hope they had bonus footage.
Then, the UFC started to think globally, opening offices across the world in an attempt to cultivate MMA on a grand scale. This is when they had the double event days, which as a fan was cool, because there was ALWAYS a UFC fight on, and always a fight to bet on if that was your thing. I enjoyed that, being able to turn on the TV on any given weekend, knowing that some sort of bout was taking place. The problem with that though, is that those cards were stretched pretty thin with only the main event and maybe the co-main holding any relevance. They weren’t great cards, but they were cards nonetheless. They were there if I needed my fix, but not relevant enough to matter if I skipped them.
After that, the UFC scaled back the number of events just a bit, and began stacking their main cards a little bit better than they were before, but this was the point in which my fandom transitioned into the super-fandom status that it is now, or whatever journalism related label you want to throw at me.
As someone who now covers the sport, I feel like we have about 2-3 events too many going on within a single calendar year. With wave after wave of MMA events taking place week after week, from the UFC to Bellator and even whatever rebranded WSOF promotion is going on at the time, a whole lot of prep work and a whole lot of typing is involved. From researching the athletes, to analyzing the fights, to transcribing the interviews, podcasts, plus the routine results, play by play, and highlight posts necessary for event coverage, it can be a bit much at times. It’s a true labor of love for me, so I embrace the grind, but there was one weekend of MMA in 2017 that I completely had to bypass for my own sanity. At the end of the day, MMA is one of the truest forms of competition known to man, which is why we see fights in other sports, and yes the “UFC Fatigue” is real, but my viewing habits will remain as unhealthy as ever, complete with unusually high levels of enthusiasm because, well, I think I like the abuse.
Nick Baldwin
I can’t really comment on the past five years, because, well, I haven’t been alive for that long. But for as long as I can remember, my enthusiasm level hasn’t changed much, if I’m being honest. Are there better things I could be doing on a Friday or Saturday — or sometimes even Wednesday — night? Probably. But the thrill of a live mixed martial arts card can’t be compared to anything else. I love watching fighting, and I’m willing to sacrifice doing other social things on the weekends for it. Like everyone, I hate FOX Sports 1 pacing and the fact that UFC cards last about six hours and usually end around midnight ET or later. But that’s another sacrifice I’m willing to make to enjoy the pure violence that is MMA. (Also, the fact that I get paid to cover MMA doesn’t change anything. Even if I was still just a fan, the amount of UFC I watch would not go down.)
Ultimately, I’d rather less — and subsequently more stacked — fight cards. For the UFC, quality over quantity … and I’m not in the minority here. But my viewing habits have yet to change. They may in the future, but as of now, I’m still aboard the UFC train full blast.
Phil Mackenzie
The commitment to watching every UFC event comes with a special price when you watch it in the UK, namely that the vast majority of events will be on at 3 o’clock in the morning. Those of you lucky enough to be in your 20s or younger can probably shrug this kind of commitment off without a second thought, but in your 30s it becomes a choice between DVRing, or between trying to fall asleep as the sun is coming up and the birds are starting to sing, and then going through Sunday in a grainy, baffled haze. I DVR a lot more nowadays.
Do I feel UFC fatigue? Maybe, yeah. The latest TUF finale was the first card in many years which I have simply not watched. At all. I’ve seen the Johns calf slicer, and the Meerschaert body kick, and I think that’s it. In all, I still like watching fights, I still try to figure out who every fighter is and what they’re good at. I probably watch less regional MMA than I did back then, but even in 2012 I was starting to watch stuff like Bellator less, as they started to bring in heavier fighters and move further away from their original “WEC, but with tournaments” vibe (the inability to watch it in the UK didn’t help either).
My biggest issue with the UFC isn’t the frequency of events, or even the lackluster promotion, though. It’s the pacing. I could happily watch a UFC fight card every week if it was 8 or even 6 fights long, and would be still happier if they could hit the marks which Fight Pass (or, for example, ACB) sets. But when Dana said “My content is quick, exciting and fun to watch on any platform.” it was funny in a not-funny-at-all kind of way. We all know the deal: the UFC is obliged to provide massive wodges of content for cable channels and its own streaming service. It keeps a big dirt-cheap roster to service these needs, and being able to wave these slabs of consumer time in front of content-starved and squeezed network providers is still a selling point. But man. At some point, you have to look at a world of shortening attention spans and ask yourself whether seven hour events are really a sustainable entertainment product; whether stuffing your viewers with content like they’re foie gras geese is really something you want to do?
If someone got into the UFC nowadays, my first advice to them would be to find a foreign language to learn, or some ancillary skill like knitting that they can teach themselves in the endless, crushing stretches of nothing which lace the product.
Milan Ordoñez
Watching the UFC post-FOX deal is a vastly different experience, to say the least. When I started tuning into fights again around 2007, I did not see that many changes in how things were since I began watching around 2001. Events back then were not as often as they are now, and it is that very reason why it was easier to be excited and look forward to each and every card that took place every couple of weeks or so.
I agree with the oversaturation of events that has been happening since 2012. As fans, it is more difficult to keep up, especially for the old school ones. The upside, however, is that the UFC has finally broken into other global markets, particularly here in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia.
But with the number of guys and gals in the current UFC roster, I understand that it would be impossible and unrealistic to hold the same number of events in 2007/2008 today. Generally, I am still a big fan of the sport and the brand (an even bigger fan since I myself started regularly training MMA and jiu-jitsu around four years ago). I just wish they’d finally let go of the “Face the Pain” intro.
Lucas Rezende
Oh boy, where do I even begin? I was 22 in 2012 and I had just become a hardcore UFC fan, as in I started watching every event religiously ever since UFC 131, in June 2011. So I was very into it when 2012 came along. I would just leave parties early in order not to miss a Fuel TV undercard. Birthday parties, weddings, all kinds of social gatherings, you name it.
I could name pretty much the entire UFC roster and I knew who, where and when they fought in their last five fights or so. Girlfriend hated me. I wasn’t even making money covering the sport, back then, it was just a crazy hobby of mine. I would spend so much time on websites such as Bloody Elbow, MMA Junkie, MMA Mania, MMA Fighting, Sherdog and even Cage Potato. Oh, man.
My UFC frenzy would stay the same until 2015, I would say. I started working as a writer at Sexto Round (a Brazilian MMA website) in 2014 and I still am to this day, so that was my first contact with professional MMA coverage. It’s funny, really, because I’m not sure what really happened after 2015.
I don’t know if it was the UFC’s roster infinite bloating, money fights, pointless interim belts, Reebok, Conor McGregor crossing over to boxing, the excruciating pace of some cards that go well into 3 and sometimes 4 in the morning where I live, TUF Asia, people leapfrogging legitimate title contenders more than ever, even more watered down cards that got to a point that it became impossible to just brush off or a sum of all that and other situations. Or maybe after some intense UFC watching, I finally got kind of tired of it.
Nowadays, I can’t bring myself to just keep up with every single card, even though I work for two major MMA websites. Sometimes I’ll just watch a main card and go after some of the undercard bouts later on, in my spare time. Sometimes I’ll just miss an entire event altogether and just read results online or watch highlight videos. As a professional, I try and keep up with all major fights in every division, but it’s become nearly impossible to know what’s going on in all 12 weight classes. Maybe my memory just isn’t the same anymore, I’m sure some people I know can attest to that.
Honestly, it probably has a lot to do with it becoming my job, which made me value my spare time a lot more, meaning I won’t invest my spare time in MMA as I already do invest most weekends covering it live and also week hours, when I’m writing news and recording Sexto Round’s podcast.
I still enjoy the sport very much, I just can’t bring myself to enjoy it as blindly as I did back in the day. I’m sure many others already felt like that in 2012, if they started following MMA in 2007. It sure does feel like a cycle everyone goes through. What still keeps me here though, is the element of surprise, the poetic violence men such as Robbie Lawler, Matt Brown and Francis Ngannou can dish out, or the amazing stories of people like Michael Bisping and Matt Serra becoming such unusual champions.
It seems like every time there’s a fight going on, we are on the verge of something completely unexpected happening, even after all these years. I sure couldn’t see Josh Emmett knocking Ricardo Lamas out cold like that, for instance. It’s still a lot of fun and there’s no other sport in the world I enjoy watching, but MMA, and I have tried them all. But man, the fatigue is real.
Dayne Fox
I remember when the UFC first started amping up the amount of events in 2012. At the time, it felt like they couldn’t do enough. My hardcore fandom was in its prime and like Zane said, there is a period of time where you can’t get enough. Sure, there was Bellator, fights on AXS, and other promotions to be found on the internet, but the UFC had the biggest collection of the best fighters. Plus, Strikeforce would soon consolidate into the UFC.
I’ve been writing about MMA for about 4 years now and my story has changed. Yes, there is such a thing as too much MMA. Perhaps I’m saying that because I regularly watch fights in order to scout for my previews, covering roughly 20 fighters on an almost weekly basis. That isn’t taking into account the live events, which I rarely miss. I get burned out sometimes. Balancing a full-time job, full-time schooling, and a wife on top of it can beat me into the ground.
However, it isn’t just the frequency in which the events take place, nor is it the obligation I have to keep up on the sport with this job. It’s loss of the sporting aspect that is killing much of my enthusiasm. Why did it take nine fights before Max Holloway received a title shot? Even then, it was a bogus interim title. It took nine for Tony Ferguson to get one as well… and once again it’s for an interim belt. The UFC used to be where title shots were earned, not given. Now it matters more if you can talk the talk. If I wanted to watch competitors earn their title shots on the microphone, I’d tune into WWE. I never wanted to see Conor McGregor fight Floyd Mayweather. I wanted to see him defend against Ferguson. I wanted to see him defend against Aldo as their first contest felt flukish. Maybe even against Frankie Edgar. Michael Bisping earned the middleweight title fair and square, but I wanted to see him face Yoel Romero, not a 46-year old Dan Henderson. I didn’t care about furthering a seven-year old storyline. I wanted to know who the best damn middleweight in the world was! Being a champion is a responsibility to defend the title regularly. The reason they get the big bucks is due to the responsibility that falls on their shoulders. The belts on the champions waist mean less and less all the time as the UFC allows their *champions* to skirt their responsibilities.
I’m still watching the sport as MMA continues to be the most exciting sport in the world. Sure, my enthusiasm has tempered more than a bit. But not all of that has to do with the amount of programming. How could it be? The month kicked off with UFC 218, featuring two FOTY candidates and one of the most brutal KO’s in the history of the sport. The next week from Fresno featured another devastating KO and a slick submission to announce a new contender at featherweight. This past weekend had yet another vicious KO and some badass action. Why would I say no to that? If I fall away, it has less to do with the frequency of the fights — though I would appreciate more of the quality over the quantity — and more to do with the sport turning into WWE and boxing. Then again, what would I expect when the UFC’s biggest stars spend more time in those sports than they do in the Octagon….
Fraser Coffeen: It’s fascinating to see the timetable of the Fox deal and upping of shows laid out like this. Because for me, I know there was a definite drop-off in my watching, and for whatever reason, I know the exact show I always link that drop to: UFC 142 featuring Aldo vs. Mendes 1. Why do I associate that show with my decreased viewing? No idea, but I do. So as I read Mookie’s header here, I thought to myself “well, I stopped watching as regularly but it had nothing to do with Fox” only to discover that, lo and behold, 142 is literally the very first show in 2012. Crazy.
I actually can point to what forced my habits to change, and it wasn’t exactly the increase of shows so much – it was the introduction of UFC on Fuel TV (remember that?). Prior to 2012, I watched every UFC show. Every PPV, every Fight Night, every TUF. And I pretty consistently watched them all twice – once live, then once again a bit later. Then in early 2012 something weird happened – they made their debut on Fuel. And I didn’t get Fuel (nor was I savvy enough to find a stream). So all of a sudden it was literally impossible for me to watch everything and to follow the sport the way I knew how. Then the number of shows starting ramping up, AND they started airing prelims, and suddenly my “I watch all UFC shows” plan was not going to work. I didn’t know how to manage that. (As an aside, it must be said that my son was born in 2010, and as any parent can tell you, that’s not a great help in TV viewing habits.)
So starting really in mid-2012, I just threw in the towel at watching all things UFC. Instead, I got into Bellator (which you could watch all of), and Glory (ditto) and boxing (of course not, but no one expects you to). And as I watched those other things and the backlog of unwatched UFC grew, I just allowed myself to watch less and less. Honestly, it wasn’t until this very year that I figured out how to watch the current version of the UFC in a way that worked for me.
Today, I consider myself a pretty avid UFC watcher, but also someone who is OK with not seeing everything. During this most recent insane run of shows, I watched pretty much all of them, every Saturday. But I got bored during Werdum vs. Tybura, so I went to bed. And I wanted to watch Lomachenko vs. Rigondeaux, so I skipped much of the Swanson vs. Ortega card. And I often don’t get the kids to sleep until the prelims are done, so then go back the next day and watch what I can, but usually not all. And I am just fine with all of that. It does however mean that fight cards don’t stick with me in the way they once did. I can’t really remember much of what was on the Cowboy vs. Till card from a few weeks ago, but I can rattle off all the highlights from every one of the UFC on VS shows. Again, that’s OK. But it’s only the past few months that I have realized I am OK with that.
Part 2 of this Bloody Elbow roundtable will be posted on Monday.