MMA is just now coming out of its infancy in North America, and that is entirely thanks to the Fertitta-era UFC brand. Within the last four or five years, it has entered mainstream media in a positive way. All of a sudden Jon Jones is getting interviewed on Letterman, and GSP is a huge-name national sporting hero. Now comes the massive financial backing and visibility of the Fox deal, and MMA is going to enter a new level of popularity in North America. Already the number of gyms and fighters has exploded. And not only that, shortly the young fighters will start arriving who have grown up watching and loving the UFC from their early teens. Thousands of them will concentrate on MMA training in their teenage years instead of football or basketball, because they know the money and the profile is there in the sport. Most of them will be ordinary fighters, just like most jocks are very ordinary football or basketball players, compared to the truly elte. But the special talents will come up. And pretty much all the fighters will have a solid wrestling base, they'll have years of BJJ training and they'll have good fundamentals with their striking. Of course every fighter will be naturally better at certain aspects than others and will tailer their style to take advantage of it, but basically everybody will be able to work reasonably effectively in both attack and defence, no matter where the fight ends up going. And you know what, scurla? Most people are happy with that. :hat
With all civility, here is a question for you. Do you think that the NBA's monopoly on professional basketball in the United States has robbed American basketball fans of seeing the best available product? In other words, do you think that basketball in the 90s would have been improved by having the franchises and players split between three or four competing leagues which all had slightly different rules and court sizes? :hat
No. The UFC got rid of soccer kicks and foot stomps YEARS ago. Matter of fact they were gone by the end of the 90's. This was to appease the likes of John McCain campaigned publicly for the UFC to be outlawed. And of course its my opinion. Many if not all MMA fans shared that SAME opinion in the early Vale Tudo/UFC days. No one had a problem with it. But the sport was niche. In order to make it acceptable the UFC adjusted the rule set. Either way the sport has moved away from its roots. That much is a fact. If i wanted to watch Hybrid Wrestling id watch Pancrase circa mid to late 90's.
Invalid comparison. The UFC is not a league. The NBA is comprised of NUMEROUS FRANCHISES. The UFC is one sole Franchise that operates as a sole business entity and is accountable only to itself. The NBA is an entirely different economic model. Don't believe me? Then pay attention to the lock out saga that started since July until now.
Scurla, at the turn of the century MMA in America was one step away from being illegal on a federal level. That is within the career span of many active fighters. I would say that "a short handful of years" is a fair description. "The end of the '90s" is what, 15 years ago at most? And that's being generous. Current top-ten middleweight Vitor Belfort won two fights at UFC 12. That was the first UFC to feature weight classes, and the first where you couldn't fish-hook your opponent. It was also an event that was organized and then banned in two states, and eventually ended up being staged in a nothing town of 65,000 people in Alabama, because they were essentially running from the cops and that was the only place they could find to host the event without everybody getting arrested. They couldn't even get sanctioned as an athletic event before the 21st Century began. I'd say that qualified as "a short handful of years." Exactly. The sport has left you behind, scurla. The type of competition you want to see is not going to happen ever again, because PRIDE-style events are for a niche market and will never be able to be hosted in the States, while the UFC model is getting bigger and bigger. More people want to see UFC-style fighting as a respectable athletic competition than want to see someone tangled up in the ropes getting stomped out, or see someone dropped on his neck and then soccer kicked. Well, sorry to break it to you Scurla, but your opinion is completely irrelevant. And not only that, if you do nothing but talk **** and complain about the sport moving from a niche freakshow that is illegal in the biggest market, to a mainstream attraction with hundreds of MMA gyms springing up all over North America and the UK, then you are not really an MMA fan at all, because you don't want to see the sport itself grow and succeed as a legitimate sport. You are just a pathetic nuthugger of one organization, and an equally pathetic hater of another. :hat
So basketball fans in the 90s missed out on the best possible matchups and games, because all the teams and players were under one roof, all contracted to play against each other? It would have been better to have three or four different organizations, each of whose franchises were contractually unable to play against each other? :hat
