Parity can be a wonderful thing in sports—just not the fight game. Indeed, in MMA, it is the dominance of a select few over the vast majority that makes the sport great.
Mixed martial arts is an individual sport defined by individuals. Specifically, mixed martial arts is defined by its great personalities, great fighters and, above all else, its great champions. Take these away, and you take greatness itself out of the sport.
Parity may work for team sports like football and baseball, but not individual ones. For one reason, team sports consist of units constructed by modes of addition and subtraction—trades, releasing and signing free agents and drafting new players. The nature of these transactions makes performance malleable and virtually unrepeatable, which is why back-to-back championships are so rare in most leagues.
Mixed martial arts, on the other hand, is made up of relatively static competitors. True, fighters can evolve, regress, change style, change weight class, switch training camps or alter their diet, but they are always the same person. Unlike with team sports, the personnel of each competing entity does not change.
The divergent natures of individual and team sports causes a shift in what fans expect and want from each one.
For team sports, every fan wants their team to win. They want the team’s general manager to make the moves that will allow the team a chance to win a championship. And if that goal is not achieved, they want it done next season.
MMA has no seasons, no playoffs and no standings. There is just a champion and everyone else. And the only thing that justifies the great discrepancy caused by a “one and then the rest” system is a similarly great discrepancy of talent—domination by a few over the rest.
Championships won in team-based sports leagues are fleeting. Win a championship, and the next time you play, you have the same record as every other team in the league.
Not so in MMA. You win a championship and it’s yours until somebody takes it away.
But why is this system better suited to mixed martial arts?
It’s better for the same reason that final bosses in video games are not the same enemy you’ve walked through five million times. It’s better for the same reason that 007 movies are about James Bond, not a bunch of pretty good secret agents. And it’s better for the same reason stories of Greek heroes remain more popular than tactical descriptions of historical battles.
It’s better because all of these things build legends. And we like legends.
And dominant MMA champions are legends.
Guys like Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones are the final boss in a video game; they are 007 and they are Achilles. Different from the pack. Better.
Would Alexander the Great still be romanticized if he wasn’t a dominant general? Would Anderson Silva if he wasn’t a dominant champion? Would King Arthur be remembered if he was just one of 100 men who pulled a sword out of a stone? Probably not.
People love to see legends build, grow and ultimately fall. The greater the legend, the greater the following.
And for MMA, the more dominant the fighter, the greater the legend, the greater the sport.
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