Look at what he said after the Stipe/Cormier fight. He's the perfect stereotype of the pro wrestling nerd who latched onto the sport because they found McGregor hilarious and then shit on everything else related to the sport.
Go back and read what I posted about Conor instead. And if you keep looking you'll see I've been watching since PRIDE, a few years before you saw Forrest/Bonnar and became a fan.
Surely the need him now, more than ever?
Is that you, Claus?
Got a question for you and BER (if he's still posting), any idea as to the decline of popularity of the UFC?
It's tempting to think that the growth was solely due to piggybacking off Ronda and McGregor (at least towards the last few years), but I wonder if the appetite for MMA amongst the general populace is always going to be slightly limited. Might be one of thise sports that are for a niche market and only attracts additional viewers on a case by case (or fighter by fighter basis).
I know I just contradicted myself in that paragraph, but I mean that there wasn't really a rise in popularity of MMA, just a rise popularity of Ronda and McGregor. And now that they're gone, the sport is back with it's niche supporters. Quality of fights are higher, more fighters are getting trained within higher quality training environments, but the general populace just isn't as interested in MMA.
*Edit, so in a way, both yourself and Spectrum are right in your points, as long as you separate popularity and growth amongst viewers vs popularity and growth in MMA training and fighter base. Popularity and viewers are decreasing for watching MMA, but increasing amongst a small subset of the population that are interested in training and possibly a career in MMA.
The big rise in the popularity of MMA began in 05 when guys like BER found The Ultimate Fighter. That first season was the absolute perfect storm for the first time viewer, and guys like Chuck and Tito were awesome guys to keep those viewers interested. That was when the sport stepped into the mainstream for the first time and that was when gyms started popping up all over the country.
That boom can't ever be replicated (the floor for PPVs went from ~50k to about 300k) but what UFC have been able to do is more or less stay on top of that wave. They kept finding/building new draws to keep the sport in the public eye. When BS (ha!) talks about buyrates meaning nothing to the average fan, he's being myopic at best. Those people buying.the events are into it enough to talk about it and pay money for it. That creates a buzz that sustains the sport's interest in the public eye. Some people will buy it, some people will go to a friend's house to watch it, and quite a few more will go to a bar for the event. Guys fighting on the undercard of a high drawing event could put on a show and end up creating their own fans, which creates other stars who can headline PPVs and draw their own buys.
The lineage I mentioned in a previous post (from Chuck to Conor) essentially kept the sport thriving at a time when PPV as a market was regressing. Now that there's only one real star, and he's semi-retired, you're starting to see the effects - PPV is falling, there's no buzz at all and nobody is really paying attention to the sport.
My throwaway comment that BS decided to jump on was that the product (UFC) is ice cold without Conor - and it is. There's no buzz around Khabib or Max or any of the other top names. UFC haven't replaced their last draws (Rousey and Lesnar) and it shows.
You're right in that it's a niche sport and it's popularity is limited. And you're also right that the sport could potentially grow within it's niche - WWE have made more and more money off a smaller audience than ever before - but UFC has been on such a run for such a long time that it's wild to me that they're in such an irrelevant state right now. I'm not even sure it's Dana's fault even though he's a bald idiot - people just aren't connecting with elite fighters and loud personalities like they used to.
