The subject of how to ensure exciting fights often varies by sport, because as is evident by how some fights have turned out, it takes a clash of two certain styles to make a fight.
In MMA, styles especially make fights, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing.
It’s hard to really say which styles make for the most exciting fights when they always change up.
One minute you have two wrestlers with knockout power creating fireworks, the next you have two boxers with awesome Jiu-Jitsu, but then after that, you have something like Jim Hettes vs. Nam Phan, and then the minute after that, you’re left with a “Mauricio “Shogun” Rua vs. Dan Henderson” caliber of fight.
So even if you don’t get Shogun vs. Henderson every time, you can still see exciting fights inside the Octagon, right?
Exactly.
So how do you ensure exciting fights when the sport of MMA is always changing to where the formula for an exciting fight is always anything but constant?
It probably depends on the fighters themselves.
Truthfully, fans can’t always expect a fight to be nonstop action in every round, if in any round there is any significant action, but for the most part, it helps to sometimes line up two guys who may not be well known, but who carry a consistently fast-paced, highly aggressive offense in their fighting style, regardless of what that style may be.
It’s starting to become questionable if two big names can create serious excitement every time in a main-event caliber fight, but then again, some of the top-of-the-heap guys are known for a smothering top game, while others like to find the medium between sticking to their game plan and putting a show on for the crowd.
Maybe the fighters who can find that medium are the ones that can ensure the exciting fights?
We’ve indirectly addressed two possibilities: one being that maybe it’s the fighters that we’re not talking about who could ensure that we get our “dogfight”, and other being that maybe it’s the fighters that fight somewhere in between “smart” and “exciting” that need to collide so that we get our exciting fight.
The third and final possibility is akin to the initial first reaction to the first main event of 2011, the now-famous UFC 125 Lightweight title bout between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard.
Of course, I can never let go of the fact that so many expected it to suck based on how they both won at UFC 118 in Boston, and the fact that it was such an epic bout which reached a conclusive ending at UFC 136 makes one wonder if maybe we should ask Joe Silva to stick two notoriously boring fighters in the cage and watch them try to make the fight look like it’s worth something.
Mind you, Edgar was never very boring to watch, whereas Maynard was often known as “Gray Lay-n-Praynard” by many in the MMA world, but again, that fight was supposed to suck and yet it surpassed its expectations.
So which criteria is best suited to ensure more exciting fights in Mixed Martial Arts?
You tell me, MMA world. You’re the one that’s evolving rapidly.
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