Matlock

In the movie "Burnt", Bradley Cooper's character, a professional chef, asks a sous chef he's hoping to recruit (and romance) to meet him at Burger King. When the girl criticizes his choice of a meeting spot, refusing to eat there because everything's made with "too much fat, too much salt, and too many cuts of cheap meat", Cooper's character refutes by saying that those are the three staples of classic French peasant dishes. He then proceeds by saying that the right argument against eating at BK should be that it's "too consistent", and "consistency is death" — not when it comes to experience, but in matters of taste. The fastfoodisation of MMA at the highest level, which is easily spotted by anyone who's been following the sport from the pre-covid era, has been bothering me for that exact reason. The consistency in experience has been great: the quality of broadcast production is off the charts, there's a fight card every weekend, the visual style and brand positioning is holistic, at least when it comes to premium promotions. The taste, however, is where the problems begin. And I'm not even talking about formulaic artwork (if one can use this term while referring to an AI image where 2/4 faces are identical) or glitchy generated promos. The problems with taste — or, rather, flavor — have culminated in last night's #UFCVegas123 main event, when referee Dan Miragliotta made a controversial call to stand Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan up, seemingly because the grappling exchange has caused the crowd to start booing. Miragliotta's call, while bad in a vacuum, is an indication of an even bigger problem. In our attempts to make high-level MMA more palatable and easy to consume by broad public on a regular basis, we've waged a war on the fundamental aspect of the game that most of the casual audience deems "boring" — grappling. And in this pursuit, we're quickly losing the unique flavor that made the whole dish worth trying to begin with. Imagine this: you have a lovely restaurant in your neighbourhood. The owners make everything from scratch, relying solely on the ingredients that are available to them locally and seasonally. Will the menu and the combination of ingredients used for each dish be the same all the time? No. Will you be bummed about your favorite butternut squash soup no longer being on the menu come December? Naturally. Will it be worth the wait once it's back next season, when the main thing that makes it good is once again available? Abso-fucking-lutely. Similarly, will the your meal be the same every time you eat there? Of course not. One batch of tomatoes will be better than others, on some days the fish from the local market will be especially buttery, but every once in a while the catch won't be as good, just as the tomatoes will turn out to be watery as hell. MMA is like that restaurant. "Styles make fights" and, as cliché as this sounds, it's absolutely true. Not every fight is the same; there's no one-recipe-fits-all. Some fighters, when put against each other, create magic inside the octagon. Some fighting styles don't mesh quite as well together. There are plenty of grapplers that have a beautiful, dynamic, lethal game that will put some strikers to an absolute shame. Just like there are plenty of electric strikers that are simply a joy to watch. By sending a message to athletes that their style will be punished — whether by diminishing the impact of grappling on the judges' scorecards, cutting undefeated prospects, or standing athletes up in the middle of an offensive sequence — we're stripping away the unique flavors that make this sport what it is and what it always was. Will every fight be a banger? No. Are there athletes whose manner of fighting is downright boring? Of course. Would I rather watch the unique, natural clash of styles instead of uniform squash matches that sway in a particular way due to outside interference? Abso-fucking-lutely. Why try to make another Burger King, when you already have all the makings of an amazing, authentic, high-quality restaurant? Keep consistency in the experience. Flavor? Give me the full fucking spectrum.