A Complaint About Complaining About Complainers

Contributor: Tim Bernier

I read something the other day that at first I simply disagreed with, but it’s stuck with me, festering in the back of my brain and nagging at me to respond to. Steph Daniels, writer at Bloody Elbow and host of mmasentinel.com, tweeted (through TwitLonger) http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s1vkr1 about “miserable” MMA fans:

“So many miserable people in the MMA community. I don’t understand those that constantly bitch/complain about everything. ‘This fight holds no interest to me.’ ‘This is an awful card.’ ‘MMA is awful.’ ‘MMA is dying.’ Those same miserable people are here for every event they hate, just so they can whine incessantly. Why are you even a fan or involved with this sport if you loathe it so much? Shut up already.”

This line of thinking greatly annoys me. Not only is it completely unreasonable, it’s as off-base as possible. It insinuates that people enjoy sitting around complaining about the terrible MMA that gets put on 35 times a year from the so-called major league of the sport. It implies that the people complaining about MMA don’t even like MMA. Neither could be further from the truth. I’d wager the exact opposite: the people dissatisfied with the current climate of mixed martial arts care more about MMA than those that aren’t.

The first UFC PPV I physically ordered from my own home was UFC 100. I was spoiled from the beginning. 2009 was an incredible year for the UFC. The Lesnar bump was in full swing. UFC looked to be on the brink of something resembling a mainstream sport, with Lesnar and Georges St-Pierre getting real coverage from real sports media. It seemed like every event they put on between 2009 and 2011 was a huge success. Dana White even commented on the incredible string of great events they had. That is the MMA I started with. High level, little bullshit MMA. I come from a traditional team sport background and I fell in love with MMA as a sport, not a spectacle.

In 2012, the string of great events came to a halt as freakish injuries began to destroy cards. There was nothing anybody could do there. A weaker UFC of years past may not have been able to roll with the punches as well as they did. But then in 2013 and 2014, the rate at which the UFC increased events rose dramatically. Cards began to get watered down. The days of making sure I was on my laptop for the first online prelim were over. It affected every type of card. I found myself ordering less pay per views, staying in on less Saturdays for free events and overall watching a much smaller percentage of UFC events. Don’t be mistaken: I love MMA. But high-level MMA will always be more enjoyable than low-level MMA. When you have a bland product and try and market every single card as the best thing in the world, it puts a person off the sport. I recognize that three years ago, half of these prelim fighters wouldn’t even come close to sniffing the prestige that came with being a UFC fighter. Three years ago a prelim darling like Dustin Hazelett would smoke a good portion of the fighters on a UFC preliminary card. Three years ago, Demian Maia vs Jorge Santiago and Anthony Pettis vs Jeremy Stephens were on prelims. Nowadays, Demian Maia vs Jorge Santiago would headline a card in Brazil filled with country specific TUF fighters with inflated regional records.

The UFC signed so many terrible fighters to fit their increasing packed schedule that they even are watering down main cards. When was the last time there was a stacked main card with significance or a fun fight in each slot? UFC 168? It’s been almost half a year since the last “stacked” main card.

The MMA I grew to love and adore is gone. It’s been blown to smithereens by the UFC’s immense schedule and significantly lower standards. I’m sorry, but sitting here and accepting that is not going to help things. Vocally expressing your distaste for bad MMA and voting with your wallet is the only way things will change. I’d argue accepting a shitty MMA product and just dealing with it because that’s the way it is makes you a bad fan. It’s the equivalent of a shitty relationship. “Maybe (s)he will change” you say to yourself as you cry into a pitcher of sangria. Nothing will change unless you force a change. Sitting in silence as a bunch of should-be regional fighters swallow up UFC prelims and the first two slots on a main card will never change anything.

Arguing that people complaining about MMA don’t like MMA and telling them to “fuck off” is more annoying than any amount of complaining will ever be. Complaining comes from a place of good: I want MMA to be better. I have higher standards than this. Simply not watching is not a solution.

A combination of two additional points makes the UFC’s decrease in quality and increase in quantity a major problem

1. To talk about MMA, or have your opinion heard or respected in any capacity, you have to watch all of it, or at least every UFC event. You can’t just not show up and expect to be informed on everything that goes on in the sport. To be a part of the MMA community, you are forced to sit through a whole lot of regional-MMA-marketed-as-world-class-MMA. It’s tiring. People have lives to attend to, and they can’t simply decide to not want to watch a large portion of MMA and expect to be an active member of the community.
2. MMA is an expensive sport to watch. Whereas team sports are included in basic cable packages that everybody I know already has, the UFC asks you to fork out $45 or $55 15 or more times a year for pay per views in addition to $120 a year for Fight Pass events. The quality of MMA has drastically decreased and the money we’re expected to pay has vastly increased. I’m not okay with this, and you’re crazy if you are.

The UFC put on 22 fights on Saturday. I cared about 0 of them. One of them was mildly important, because Stipe Miocic is in the title picture, but the fight was hurt when Junior dos Santos got injured and Fabio Maldonado was the best option to replace him. I’m not whining because I love to whine. I’m whining because MMA can be better, and I want to hold them to a higher standard. If you don’t care, good for you. But enjoy the terrible product. I won’t be participating in complacency.

-Tim can be reached @TimBernier31 or [email protected].