Opinion: It Feels Good to Miss the UFC

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.

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When UFC Fight Night 98 “Ferguson vs. Dos-Anjos” takes place on Nov. 5, we will have gone nearly a month between Ultimate Fighting Championship events. For some, this is too long, but for many of us, it was just what the doctor ordered.

There’s an age-old saying: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, that applies to a sport with no offseason. UFC President Dana White has always stood firm on making his sport just as popular as the NBA, NFL and soccer. However, the one thing he tends to forget is that those sports have offseasons, and without them, we all suffer from a little something called burnout. The UFC has struggled with this idea since ramping up its number of events.

Since 2012, the UFC has had no fewer than 30 events in a calendar year, with 2014 putting together a ridiculous 46 events in 52 weeks. While this may sound like a great idea to grow your base, it causes exhaustion with fans and media.

From a media perspective, putting on so many events may seem like additional busy work for reporters and columnists to get paid. However, it doesn’t allow us to tell proper stories leading up to a fight. Just as one event ends, we’re rolling into another event with a new set of stories to tell. Things get lost in the shuffle, and some cards won’t get the proper attention they deserve. For hardcore MMA fans, this is no big deal because they’re mostly aware of every fight that’s going on. However, the casual fans need a little more to get them to cough up the cash for a pay-per-view. If the fight is on free TV, they need a reason to forgo their normal Saturday routine to watch guys and gals beat up each other.

Reasons to care are strange realities when it comes to consumers.

A fight always draws attention, but when fans have reasons to care, they have something to grab onto. Part of our job as media members is to give you a reason to watch, and that becomes increasingly hard when you don’t have much time between fights. MMA writers who write for sports outlets that cover a number of different sports struggle to get their stories cleared for the publication.

When fights fall on back-to-back-to-back weekends, nothing feels special to fans anymore. It’s not must-see TV. With so many cards, you can afford to miss one and not feel like you’re going to miss out on something special.

The reason why the NBA is at such a fever pitch when the season tips off is that we spent almost four months stewing over what’s to come. The offseason gives us a reason to care. The feeling of a world champion settles in nicely as everyone scrambles to figure out how to usurp the king from his throne. When the season starts, we’re ready to explode. That’s not the case in MMA.

With UFC 205 right around the corner, it feels good to have some time off to anticipate what has been labeled the most loaded card in Ultimate Fighting Championship history. There’s nothing to distract us from that point. Stories will be built up properly and fans will have just enough time away to actually miss it. We haven’t had that feeling in a while because we’ve been inundated with what felt like an endless waterfall of fights, where one drop of water looks exactly like the rest of the flood.

This heavy swarm of events won’t be something to which MMA fans ever grow accustomed. Fortunately, the past couple of years have seen a downtick in events and the WME-IMG purchase means we aren’t likely to see an increase in the coming years. With 31 events having already taken place in 2016, the number will be close to 40 by the end of the year. The UFC found its sweet spot for events between 2007 and 2010, when we had no more than 25 fight cards a year. Obviously, the Fox deal played a major role in the UFC expanding its number of events. However, if the promotion plays its cards right, we won’t be flooded with 40-plus events ever again.

The time away from the UFC has felt great. We all miss it more than we have in previous months; the fights feel like they mean something again; and we can actually look forward to the events to come -- until we get slammed again. Enjoy the break. We don’t get a chance to do that often enough.

Andreas Hale is the editorial content director of 2DopeBoyz.com, co-host of the boxing, MMA and pro wrestling podcast “The Corner” and a regular columnist for Sherdog.com. You can follow on Twitter for his random yet educated thoughts on combat sports, music, film and popular culture.