There’s all kinds of gamesmanship going on in plain sight. The size of the octagon can be altered to benefit a title fighter’s style, legitimate contenders are passed over all the time for more profitable matchups, the UFC brass can put a lot of pressure on a fighter to compete on a certain card or else they’ll be punished in various ways, and fighters who are continuously committing violations and and/or are just legitimately terrible people can be treated with kid gloves, like Jon Jones. To say nothing of fighters routinely gaming drug tests and so forth.

As a long-time MMA watcher, I do think it’s very rare to see someone taking a clear dive, so I’ll give credit to the UFC for not indulging in that, but otherwise they’re a deeply-disturbing org that routinely rips off their fighters, not compensating them fairly for the accumulated brain damage.

I became a fan almost 20yrs ago, and now I can barely stand the UFC. And Dana White truly is a despicable human being who routinely lies and bullies people around him, such as members of the press.