There is no such thing as a boring fight, only people who can’t appreciate ALL aspects of mixed martial arts—even the less exciting ones.
It’s a shame that fans and pundits didn’t keep this in mind when watching the UFC on FX 3 preliminaries both on FUEL and on Facebook. People did nothing but harshly criticize the fights.
Although, to be fair, the fights weren’t exactly legendary—hell, they weren’t even memorable—but the way people were reacting, you’d think they were being dragged over a hot bed of coals rather than watching some of the world’s bravest athletes compete in the purest sport known to man.
The prelims started on Facebook with Sean Pierson vs. Jake Hecht and Henry Martinez vs. Bernardo Magalhaes. These fights left viewers restless.
Then the broadcast switched over to FUEL TV where the first two fights on the network wowed fans and were over in a combined four minutes and change.
Unfortunately, the rest of the FUEL card disappointed the more bloodthirsty MMA fans.
For some reason, fans hate decisions above all else and, unfortunately for them, they were treated to three in a row for the final portion of the FUEL prelims. Matt Grice used grappling to smother Leonard Garcia en route to a decision, Seth Baczynski bested Lance Benoist in a forgettable scrap, and Mike Pierce used his wrestling to grind out a decision against Carlos Eduardo Rocha.
These matches, as well as the Facebook ones, were wrongfully maligned on Twitter.
Some people are just spoiled and want every fight to feature guys constantly moving forward, throwing windmill punches. Either that, or they think each prelim fight should be a repeat of Griffin-Bonnar I—a pier six brawl where each guy throws strikes with reckless abandon.
Others might just be ignorant or unable to appreciate the entirety of the fight game. Yes, two guys engaging in low-level kickboxing where barely any strikes are landed or a fight where one fighter “lay and prays” another might not be the most intriguing fight. But it’s a fight, nonetheless.
Fights aren’t pretty. Only the highest level of fighters can make fights look that way. For example, take Anderson Silva with his flashy techniques and matrix-style dodging that are the stuff of legend. He makes fighting a masterpiece, something incredible to behold.
However, Anderson Silva is in the minority. Most fighters are mere mortals and can’t make something so visceral look beautiful; their style, therefore, favors the martial rather than the art. This leads to fights being either a bit rough around the edges (not technical), or just forgettable and lacking action. But this doesn’t make them boring.
As long as both fighters are doing their best, there’s no such thing as a boring fight. It’s not the fault of the preliminary level fighters that viewers expect them to either abandon their gameplan and swing for the fences or be able to perform past their abilities.
Fans just need to learn to be quiet and enjoy MMA, both the “good” fights and the “bad” ones.
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