UFC 246: McGregor vs. Cerrone

The problem with UFC isn't fighters being characters, it's the promotion itself shoehorning Golden Geese into title bouts, making up belts, and stacking the deck through slanted referees and judges to keep theearners in belts and in Hype. Herb Dean is the worst. Go back and watch the Mcgregor vs Khabib fight. Count the fouls, and count how many Herb Dean didn't call. Then  consider Mcgregor was given a round for spending the whole of it on his back. That's not accidental. I don't know if Dean is on the take, or is simply made to understand that if he doesn't adjudicate in the interests of the promotion, he'll stop getting the big jobs. But adjudication isn't free of bias. There's definitely a relationship there. There's definitely a one-hand-washes-the-other deal with USADA too, because NO company pays over the market value of a service unless they're getting something out of i. No Kids, that is not how things go.

I'm not saying the UFC fixes fights, they don't. They definitely arrange things so that the guys bringing in the bacon have the best shot at winning though. And not popping for PEDS. Unless of course you believe they leave this entirely to chance with millions of dollars on the line.

NO company wants to lose money, and every company will do things to ensure what is profitable keeps producing profit through all possible means ( and sometimes by any means necessary--I'm looking at you Enron). That's the way the world works, that's the way business works. That's why Mcgregor will be given a title shot for beating Cerrone, regardless of how many women he ****s, how many buses he smashes, and how many old men he punches at the pub.

Why am I against this? Because philosophically, I do not think that narcissistic destructive sociopathic behavior should be encouraged, let alone rewarded. It is the idea that it does not matter intrinsically how good you are, but rather how much hype and money you can generate, that earns you a shot at the belt. And if that's the case, the belt means nothing. And neither does anything else. That is antithetical to everything competition is predicated upon. Think for a moment what the world would be like if popularity, not talent, was ultimately rewarded. 

I believe in meretricious earning, especially in prize fighting that purports to be rankings-based. The reason UFC isn't a sport is because largely rankings do not matter, and they certainly do not ultimately matter. For example, in Olympic Swimming, nobody is given a shot at the gold if they don't place first. There is no Olympic equivalent of Mcgregor vs Cerrone, or Bisping vs Hendo.  UFC isn't a sport; it's sports entertainment. And as long as UFC dominates the market, it never will be a sport.

Listen to me, people: You know how Dana talked for years about how he hoped MMA would one day be an Olympic sport? That was ********. Not only did he never want that, he doesn't want it now. And he never will want it. That would mean the Democratization of MMA; a true free market with standardizing bodies such as USADA outside of the scope of the Company's influence, and risk-mitigation strategies. It would mean a plethora of new externalities. MMA becoming an Olympic sport is as bad as the Ali Act being extended to MMA for the UFC and for essentially the same reasons; it  would remove market control and regulatory powers from UFC, give greater leverage to free-agents, which would raise their price index, and open UFC up to competition. UFC wants the landscape to remain as it is; a slum-village of low-value promotions which cannot compete with the UFC in any real terms, whilst concomitantly serving as 'proof' that the UFC isn't a monopoly by the sheer fact they exist, and serve  as free vetting agencies, nurseries and talent pools that UFC can draw from as they wish.

What the UFC is is a giant Ludus. It controls, essentially, the entirely of the industry. It is the aristocracy that looks down from a terraced castle on a sea of tentpole organizations, observes which fighters emerge with the most talent and the most marketability, and sends out envoys to those markets who says 'I'll have this one, that one, and that one too'. 

UFC doesn't want a sport, it never did, and never will. It wants exactly what you've got now.

That's how things are. Anyone who cannot understand this is an ignoramus.

Addendum: If you're entertained by Mcgregor as an adult, you're a ******* Troglodyte. It's really that simple. Because really anyone over the age of twelve shouldn't be entertained by such a boring, puerile, uninspired, quasi-literate prima donna. If that's you, it's probably time to put down the bag of Funyuns and shelf the Box set of Dukes of Hazard.

Because you're a ******* imbecile.

Rant over.

* Edited at 12.31.2019, 3:18 AM ET *