UFC: Fight fans are often way too bloodthirsty

Joseph Benavidez (right ) battles Demetrious Johnson during the flyweight championship title bout at UFC 152 in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press

E. SPENCER KYTE
FOR THE PROVINCE

I really do wonder if some of these MMA fans and critics truly want to see this sport continue to grow sometimes, and I’ve been thinking about it even more since UFC 152 on Saturday night in Toronto.

During the co-main event – where Demetrious Johnson out-pointed Joseph Benavidez to become the inaugural UFC flyweight champion – the Air Canada Centre filled with boos. I don’t have a problem with fans voicing their displeasure with a bad performance, but that isn’t what happened here.

For 25 minutes, Johnson and Benavidez played a technical and tactic game of physical chess, with “Mighty Mouse” fittingly getting the better of the cat and mouse game to win the title. It was a display of athleticism, speed, and skill, but increasingly, those types of bouts are becoming less and less acceptable to the vocal portion of the audience who would rather see competitors stand in the pocket and trade than actual use the assortment of skills and styles they diligently train every day

That’s only the start of it.

At the post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White laid into those in attendance who offered Benavidez and Johnson a “Bronx Cheer” and the Twitter inhabitants who flooded his timeline with complaints about the contest. He called them “morons” and told them to never buy another UFC pay-per-view if they didn’t like the product being put forward.

As you’d expect, White’s critics questioned how the unfiltered fight promoter could lambaste the people who buy their pay-per-views and support their company, especially given that ratings and buy rates have been in decline for the last couple years?

With big names and big fights on the horizon, I doubt we’ll see a decline in the viewership numbers. In fact, I’ll bet you they go up across the board between now and New Year’s Day.

I’m all for distancing ourselves from the “Make Him Bleed!” set that shouts instructions to the professionals from the cheap seats.

Additionally – and I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately – it seems like some fans and critics are just never satisfied with the product the UFC is putting out.

Saturday’s card was much better than some of the disastrous efforts we saw this summer, and yet it was still knocked before, during, and after by those who remain dissatisfied.

I get that everyone has styles of fights that they prefer but you have to at least recognize the skill and athleticism that was on display Saturday.

I mean, you may not like Sidney Crosby, but you can’t tell me he’s not a heck of a hockey player. If you try to, someone should call you a “moron” because, well, you’re a moron.

The flyweight title bout was an athletic and strategic counterbalance to a stand-in-the-pocket slugfest like TJ Grant and Evan Dunham, and both were very good fights in their own ways. We need that kind of balance and variety on fight cards or else things are going to grow very stagnant very quickly.

There are plenty of times White says things that are genuinely questionable and controversial that deserve to be heavily scrutinized but this wasn’t one of them to me.

This wasn’t a bad performance – it was a bout that didn’t hit the specific marks some fans need from every single fight in order to be satisfied. They’re the same people who boo the second a fight stalls along the cage and who cry for a stand-up when two athletes go more than 12 seconds without finishing the fight once they hit the canvas.

That shouldn’t be the portion of the audience we want the UFC to try and satisfy, because there is no pleasing them.

E. Spencer Kyte is the author of Keyboard Kimura, the MMA blog of The Province. Follow him on Twitter at @spencerkyte