The UFC and WWE are constantly compared, but for once, it will be valid because the post-pay-per-view UFC will resemble the WWE and professional wrestling.
Fans malign the fact that the UFC has too many pay-per-views at too high a cost given the “watered-down” fight cards. Fortunately for them, Dana White foresees a day without pay-per-views.
What will this be like? It may bare resemblance to the older days of professional wrestling.
The WWE wasn’t always the PPV machine it is in more recent times. There used to be only a few major events per year on PPV (Wrestlemania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, the Royal Rumble and King of the Ring) while the majority of WWE programming was on television.
You’d see matches and storylines develop throughout the weeks and months on television and would only have to shell out your hard-earned cash on pay-per-views for the mega-events spaced throughout the year where you’d see feuds culminate and epic matches.
The post-PPV MMA world could be very similar.
You can see “undercard” or lower-level fighters on FUEL, the mid-level fighters on FX and the upper-level fighters on FOX.
PPV, if it’s used at all, will be used sparingly. Cards that are reserved for PPV might have more than one title fight or just one title fight that is epic in scale (think Silva-Sonnen II or a fight of that nature).
An additional benefit of not having many PPVs is that the sport will be more accessible; people won’t have to pay to see it anymore, so it will be followed by more people. With more viewers comes more advertisers, merchandise sales and people training in MMA.
With more money, the fighters’ salaries raise. With more people training, the baseline level of talent increases, and the fighters that make it to the UFC are that much better for it.
Thus, the post-PPV MMA world will be one in which the UFC and MMA as a whole undergo a new renaissance, one that captivates the whole of American society.
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