The UFC already shapes events around marketability over merit as much as they can get away with. Look how long it took for Charles and Islam to get their title shots. The difficulty Islam had getting fights with people ranked above him on the way. Beneil and Belal still aren't getting title shots. Meanwhile, Colby gets away with just sitting out a year between title shot losses with fights against washed opponents sandwiched in between.

I don't think WWE as a product stands to gain much from becoming real. The UFC has brand value around being real, but you can see that management wants to sell drama, not sports.

> wants to sell drama, not sports

poor people around the world have little fight clubs all the time, and the result is "knuckle heads" with broken teeth and unable to work. This show business has big production value, good lighting with excellent cameras, and yes, stories that people can latch on to.. hint- fight fans are often not very smart.

you have no idea what you're talking about and your comment is just patronising. MMA is a highly technical sport that demands elite levels of athleticism and sporting intelligence. fight fans are also already a highly diverse group from all around the world and that group is continually growing in size and diversity

Big muscles don't mean much with a small brain attached to them. If I wanted to see that I can just go to the zoo and find much better samples.

I've never met a bloodsport fan that I would want as a friend or direct report. I'm sure there are decent people as there always are in any large population, but they're the exception to the rule.

I never was attracted to the sport and maybe had some unconscious biases towards fighters, but about a year ago my meditation practice brought me to try and confront that fear and aversion I had towards aggression. Long story short, I've been training Muay Thai for about a year and it totally changed my view on things. Everyone I've met at these gyms has been kind, welcoming, and exceptionally thoughtful. Training anything this difficult has a way of cutting down your ego. I only wish I had started 10 years ago.

Maybe the fans are different, who knows, but the people that actually show up and train I'd absolutely take as a friend or direct report. It's deep internal mind/body training.

Mark Zuckerberg practices Jiu Jitsu.

Anthony Bourdain practiced Jiu Jutsu.

Lots of actors and comedians have started practicing Jiu Jitsu.

I’m a CTO and I’ve practiced jiu jitsu and Muay Thai. I lift weights regularly too :O

Zuckerberg should be thrown into a vat of acid, so I'm unclear why you decided to bring him up first of all people.

This is incredibly revealing in a way I don't think you intend or are maybe even aware of.

This isn't 2011 Facebook, your emo angsty vaguebooking isn't impressing.

> Big muscles don't mean much with a small brain attached to them.

It says a lot you think ‘big muscles’ are a thing: the most popular divisions of UFC don’t have big muscular fighters.

I was curious so I did some Googling just to get a sense if what you're claiming is true and it turns out you very likely wrong on this matter. According to TIDES/University of Central Florida, more than 80% of UFC fighters have a college degree, which is much higher than many other sports including the NFL (31%), NBA (20%), and MLB (less than 45%).

But you mentioned fans specifically, and here you're also way off. Much like the other sports I mentioned, the demographics of UFC viewers are also much more educated than the other sports I mentioned. Based on the Sports Business Journal's survey, 42% of NBA viewers have a college degree, 34% for MLB, 32% for the NFL, and 55% for UFC.

Now you can object to college being a good indicator of intelligence and that's fine, but it's probably a much better indicator than just randomly making stuff up and stereotyping people based on their hobby.

> 80% of UFC fighters have a college degree

This might be due to some MMA fighters having a collegiate wrestling background.

I'm an MMA fan and I'm not concerned about this affecting UFC's integrity. Their matchmaking is already often based off of what will be marketable. It's an accepted part of the business, and they know they need to balance it with high level competition.

I think this move really makes sense for the career paths of UFC fighters. Right now, you can have a very marketable fighter fall in the rankings, and suddenly lose a ton of value. MMA fighters also tend to decline really quickly with age. So a transition to something else like Pro Wrestling can be a good path to maintaining a really lucrative career, as we've seen with a bunch of fighters like Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, and Ken Shamrock.

Marketability-centered matchmaking isn’t even exclusive to UFC. College football bowls are virtually never selected based on skill outside of the New Year’s Six.

Ken Shamrock and Brock Lesnar both started as pro wrestlers who transitioned between Pro wrestling and MMA. Only Rousey has really managed to make a successful pure MMA->WWE transition. It will be interesting to see how many MMA stars can actually find success in the WWE before WWE fans become tired of the UFC treating the WWE has the UFC retirement home.

All of Japanese MMA descends from 80s/90s Japanese 'hard-style' pro wrestling.

Jessamyn Duke, Shayna Baszler, and Tom Lawlor have found success as well, but not all inside WWE. I think they'd be embraced if they approach it as becoming a wrestler instead of being an MMA fighter who pulls their strikes and loosely locks in submissions

>Their matchmaking is already often based off of what will be marketable.

Sure, but the concern is that they will start following the WWE practice of basing the winners on what is more marketable. Given that the practice of fight-fixing has a long history in boxing, this merger seems like a really tone deaf money-grab to me.

We just missed out on the possibility of Josh Barnett vs Brock Lesnar in a feud with two wrestling matches and an MMA fight to serve as the rubber match.

> Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?

That would be a tragic mistake for everyone involved. People like being in on the joke when John Cena, a grown man costumed in neon green, runs around the square stage whilst pretending to be invisible. It would ruin the fun if his opponent unceremoniously dropkicked him in the solar plexus.

Professional wrestling makes way more sense when you realize it's not sport, it's modern day Shakespeare: Plays for the layperson, with plenty of dirty humor and crassness.

A couple of videos on the topic:

The Undertaker: Long Term Story Telling in Wrestling : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHVCTOmQNZM

Professional Wrestling is Stupid and Beautiful and I Love it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQCPj-bGYro

> It would ruin the fun if his opponent unceremoniously dropkicked him in the solar plexus.

Not to take away from the point, but I could also see this being part of the joke. "No, obviously you're not invisible! Why did you think I would fall for that?"

The point is that WWE broadcasts are specifically about fun and entertainment. It's not supposed to be "real". (Although, obviously it is "real" even if it's staged; imagine doing what they do and not killing or injuring yourself or anyone else.)

I honestly thought this was an April fools joke. Kind of speaks to what the UFC prefers in their fighters though. They love heels and are always encouraging fighters to talk shit.

Despite the similarities, the WWE and UFC are very distinct brands in the eyes of their fans.

In talking to fans that I know, WWE fans don't want the wresting to become more real. Nobody watching WWE is under the impression that being thrown onto a table is something that would happen in the normal course of a sporting competition. Making it more like "real" wrestling would largely defeat the parts that make the WWE fu

UFC fans, on the other hand, are coming to the sport because it's real. Fans that only watch the UFC are often very sensitive about a comparison to the WWE, because they value the fact that it is "real" competition and not scripted.

> Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?

They actually tried that in the 90s. Turns out, having performers compete who are used to making a fight with a scripted outcome look real - rather than win an open-ended fight - is a terrible idea.

While there certainly are pro-wrestlers who could legitimately win a real fight (the name Haku coming to mind; according to reports that a guy was a certified bad-ass you wouldn't have wanted to mess with), most of them likely don't really know how to block non-scripted jabs or strikes, which led to serious injuries during that event.

I feel that as a society we have this delusion that sport is not entertainment when it absolutely is and arguably nothing more.