More fun from the fanposts. Kid Nate

The MMA industry is going through some very similar growing pains to what the professional wrestling industry went through in the 80's. Yes, I know most people on this website don't like pro wrestling, but as much as you may dislike it there are many parallels between MMA now and pro wrestling in the 80's.

Right now, the UFC led by Dana White is the top promotion in the country, and probably the world when it comes to MMA. Much like Vince McMahon in the 80's and 90's Zuffa is snatching up talent (Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, etc) and using its money to buy out rivals (WEC, Pride, and the WFA).

The WWE (then known as the WWF) in the eighties was the first promotion to try to take pro wrestling national. At the time, most promotions ran certain territories or regions and did not take their promotions all over the country for cards like what is so common today. The WWF ran the northeast, the NWA and Crockett Promotions (eventually WCW) the south, World Class Wrestling in Texas, and the AWA in the Mid-West. McMahon was able to use his business savey and television contracts to go national (much like the UFC did with the TUF show on Spike). He spent money wisely and raided talent from the other promotions (Hulk Hogan came from the AWA, Road Warriors from the NWA, etc) and eventually these small regional promotions fell apart as they could not afford to hang and bang with the WWF. Apart from a battle of 3 wrestling promotions in the mid to late 90's (WWF Vs. WCW Vs. ECW) and the famous Monday Night Wars of  the last wrestling boom period the now WWE really has the wrestling world all to itself. (TNA does exist, but does it really compete yet with the WWE?).

The same thing will eventually happen with MMA. For now, we have small regional promotions like Elite XC and Strikeforce (California), King of the Cage (the desert southwest), etc that exist, but are really not drawing the money needed to compete with the UFC. Like Dana White or not, he has taken the same strategy that Vince McMahon took and applied it to the MMA world. Take big, out of this world stars with great charisma and use them to make huge amounts of money at the live gate and sell hundreds of thousands of pay per views.

Sure, Elite XC will be running a show this Saturday that will make them the first promotion to do a big league MMA show on a network. But get real, that deal won't last 3 shows tops. It's a rating disaster waiting to happen. The first show will probably do well, but I doubt they maintain the audience for a second show. This show does have some name value with Scott Smith, Phil Baroni, Robbie Lawler, and Kimbo Slice. The first 3 are guys who could not cut it in the UFC today (or the UFC of 5 years ago) and Kimbo Slice is at best a novelty act (and time will tell if he will draw or whether the novelty will wear off once he faces a real opponent and gets beat).

These shows will cost a lot of money to promote and eventually they are not going to be able to keep up with the well oiled machine that the UFC is. If they develop stars, the UFC can outspend them and steal them. Or the UFC can let promotions like Affliction overspend on talent for one show that won't crack 50,000 buys on pay per  view and will be a total disaster.

Like him or not Dana White is the modern day Vince McMahon. He knows what works in this business and what doesn't work and he knows how to bury his opponents. Within 3 years the MMA landscape will be his much like the pro wrestling landscape belongs to the WWE. If you are a fighter who wants to make good money (no matter what chronic cry baby Tito Ortiz says), fight the best competition in the world, and get well known you will fight in the UFC. Otherwise, have fun in the bush leagues.