I know this is just another negative post but I felt like trying to understand my own waning interest in the UFC currently. I think overall it just seems to like the talent pool just hasn’t been growing much and when new people come in they aren’t able to make their title fights feel earned (O’Malley and Pereira only having beat Strickland at the time) I’ll go by weight class right now.

Flyweight:
Surprisingly one of the more solid weight classes in my opinion. Pantoja had a decent 3 fight win streak, beat Perez, and beat Moreno. Feels like he earned it and there are enough competitors around.

Bantamweight:
Title fights have been fun and O’Malley won fair and square last night but it is so clear they are just trying to create another Connor and I’m tired of it at this point. Not looking to start an argument, I’ve just gotten sick of them clearly pushing inflammatory but imo unentertaining people. Otherwise, in this particular weight they just seem to be living in the past and aren’t able to elevate previous talent (besides O’Malley). It is pretty ridiculous the last two title challengers before O’Malley were two past champs with very minimal activity. The future is at least potentially interesting.

Featherweight:
Volk’s reign has been magical, but an entire weight class just seems devalued to me when the champion is trying to move up. Somehow at the same time, it doesn’t seem like they’ve been able to adequately prepare challengers. Volk, Adesanya, and Usman (previously) all make it seem like

Lightweight:
Fire like always but it feels a bit more like a multi-year round-robin than an actual weight class. Seems like their only hope of new talent is Volk moving up?

Welterweight:
The continuous entertaining of Covington and (previously) Masvidal is getting so old in what should be an entertaining weight class.

Middleweight:
As previously discussed, feels like Adesanya is earning fights with worse people due to being so dominant, even with losing to Pereira, rather than others earning fights with him. Strickland getting a shot is the most laughable thing to me since Al Iaquinta. I know this is only because of Du Plessis being out but it still speaks to a weak class.

Light Heavyweight:
This one’s been kinda ridiculous for a while and seems straight-up cursed at this point. This one isn’t anyone’s fault.

Heavyweight:
It’s the Jones show right now but I don’t have any faith in him not getting tested by got sometime before his next fight.

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Ultimately I think this has to do with them being completely asinine with their talent since covid. Yada-yada fighters union, but seriously. Their poor treatment of fighters has made it all but impossible to have any structure. They either slow-roll or accelerate their fighters seemingly at a whim and actively hate some of their best talent. Also with the VC-backed competition and their much higher cash incentives, it doesn’t seem like much talent is interested/capable of entering the UFC.

Maybe this is just from the perspective of someone that follows wrestling, but these feeder sports don’t seem to transfer their top talent as much anymore due to their growth. The 2008 Olympic wrestling team famously had Cejudo, Askren, and Cormier transfer to MMA but barely any do it nowadays. Askren constantly talks about how if he wrestled in the current state of wrestling he probably wouldn’t have left. The incentive difference just doesn’t seem there anymore.

Notably, there are a number of more recent wrestlers who I strongly believe can add new life like Bo Nickal, Anthony Cassar, Jordan Oliver (might be too old), and some others but it just hasn’t happened yet.

Would love to hear what storylines and new fighters people are interested in.