MMA Headed Down a Familiar Road?

It’s hard to find similarities in the WWE and the UFC, unless you move past the chair shots and kimura’s and take a moment to examine the growth of both these companies.

Sure the UFC doesn’t have ladder matches or three-way dances, but the way they have done business in recent years makes one wonder if Dana White has been taking some advice from Vince McMahon.

Let’s go back a few years and take a look at both these giants of their industry when both faced legitimate competition in their markets.

Before I go any further, I must admit that I was a “wrastlin” fan as a youngster, but my passion for combat sports took over and I’ve been an avid “international” MMA fan since the beginning of the decade.

Now, if anyone remembers, WWE and WCW were engaged in the storied ratings wars every Monday night, which WCW eventually held position for some time.

As WCW wasted it’s Pay-Per-View main events and attractions on Monday Nitro, it eventually suffered the fate of multiple mergers, seeing parent company Turner Broadcasting merge with Time Warner and later AOL.

This marked the beginning of the end.

Slowly, corporate was losing interest in their sports entertainment machine and lost enough in the once mighty WCW to sell it.

Apparently, their valuation of the wrestling product wasn’t what many though and it was sold to its competitor, McMahon and the WWE.

This sounds a little like a promotion from the Land of the Rising Sun that gave Zuffa’s pride and joy, the UFC a good run during the 2000’s.

Much like McMahon, along came White to buy up his competition, keeping some talent from PRIDEFC and releasing the rest.

But the common theme doesn’t end there.

Later, we would see WWE create a new show with then Thursday Night Smackdown! and even a reality show, which spawned the likes of Maven (oh boy).

In much the same fashion, the UFC bore its own separate show with the Ultimate Fight Night, and we also witnessed the creation of The Ultimate Fighter.

It’s striking how these two entities are so different, yet so alike.

Not convinced? Well, there’s more.

A small band of talented hardcore showmen were minnows nibbling at the toes of McMahon and managed to gain themselves a slot on TNN, and even a videogame, but that wasn’t enough to escape financial troubles that would later be rectified by Vincent K. himself. Again, a brand was assimilated and the fat was cut. They were integrated into the main shows and then ECW was reborn as a retooled brand of its own, where the smaller — not weight, but in terms of star power — and younger wrestlers performed, eventually making appearances in the big show.

In a move that resembles WWE’s purchase, integration and creation of a smaller brand, the UFC took advantage of an opportunity and purchased the WEC. Then the WEC was retooled, abolished were the light heavyweight, middleweight and welterweight division. This made the WEC remain a brand on its own, for smaller fighters.

Now, one fact you may want to remember. Wrestling was quite the attraction when all of this WWE gobbling up the competition went on. What happened was the industry began a steady downward decline. The ratings aren’t what they used to be, trust me, Nielsen says so on a weekly bases, PPV buys are down and the market is flooded with WWE.

Luckily there’s still competition around to keep any of this from happening with MMA. Strikeforce just had quite a successful network debut, Dream, according to Guy Mezger during an HDNet broadcast, claims the Japanese fans weren’t what they used to be when the promotion first broke ground, but they seem to be coming around. He went as far as saying they’re starting to cheer more, for the UFC only fans, that’s because the Japanese fans are quiet, Bas Rutten has even claimed the silence in the arena is eerie quiet. They aren’t bored, they just appreciate the complete fight game, on the feet and on the ground.

I can only hope that the UFC doesn’t continue to follow the WWE down this path. If there’s any time to break the similar trend, it’s now, before White starts hurting the sport rather than his competitors.