Why Does the UFC Keep Such a Big Roster?

[HuskySamoan]

It's always puzzled me why the UFC keeps such a big roster. (~600?)

Why doesn't the UFC just cut it down to say ~300 and only keep the elite / high potential fighters.

Then the UFC can just make more stacked cards and that profit can get redistributed.

Fans get more exciting cards and fighters can get paid more as there are less mouths to feed.

Let me blow your mind....THE UFC DOESNT EVEN SIGN ELITE AND HIGH POTENTIAL FIGHTERS A LOT OF THE TIME. You think if they valued the elite, they'd try to go after talent like AJ McKee, Vadim Nemkov, Azamat Kerefov, Eduard Vartanyan, Kyoji Horiguchi, Salahdine Parnesse etc? Of course, but they don't because they feel it isn't cost effective. What about high potential? Dude they let Baki sign to PFL, they let Makoto Shinryu sign to Bellator, the list is very long of the best prospects in the world ending up in other promotions. It's not a priority, they don't want to spend extra for top talent either....maybe for 36 year olds like Chandler and MVP who tracked well in Western markets but actual talent with real upside? Not really that important.


They want to fill national demographic quotas, some are weighted much higher like Latin America, some are weighted much lower like...Russia. They also weigh saturation vs profit and probably have found an optimal amount of cards per year, per locations etc for profit and having a 700ish fighter roster best facilitates it. But trust me when I say, having all elite talent and high potential fighters has never been high on their list of concerns and you're foolish to think otherwise.

Fans don't care about talent either, most fans don't even know when they see it. If I post a thread about a bunch of elite prospects with bios and videos highlighting a specific region, it gets 2 replies and 8 likes. If someone posts a thread about Conor farming it goes on for 30 pages. OMalley dyed his hair a new color? 25 pages. Colby called Ian Garry a cuck? 40 pages. Fans are idiots, they care more about washed up fighters they're familiar with than talent and the sport itself. The UFC knows this, it's not like the NFL or Tennis where there's systems in place that measure the importance of an athlete by how good they are...they don't fix fights but they orchestrate the promotion as much as possible to favor the marketable and to stymy the less marketable.

 

[Chael_Sonnen]

Anybody else that misses the Zuffa era?

I love your new pfp gif. That cat literally unhinges its jaw like a snake to bit that dudes leg. Hilarious!

 

[BangBang]

If you “own”them the other organisations can’t own them. Well, until you discard them that is.

 

[Fight Professor]

Fighters pull out all the time especially if they start to get paid more. There is going to be a lot of weird match ups because there are many events that ESPN has to schedule every year.