GFL has a very interesting "team system" for competing with UFC

You know, I have long since said that it is an exercise in extreme futility for anyone to attempt to mess with already established sports leagues around the world. Vince McMahon tried to do it with the XFL and despite some great innovations it fizzled out in the first year. XFL still exists on some level but the idea that it would ever compete with NFL is just pure nonsense. Nobody will ever be able to do that and it is pointless to even try. Even though WWE is a fake sport the various competing organizations that exist in that realm produce a mere drop in the bucket as far as revenue and exposure is concerned and WWE likely isn't all that concerned about them. In fact, there is only one organization that was successful at some sort of takeover like this and it is LIV golf and lets be honest here, LIV is popular not because it is better than the PGA but because they have a never-ending cash supply being provided to them by Saudi royals. If it wasn't for that, it would have gone to the wayside a while ago.

Now MMA is a unique sport because it was a fringe sport that almost nobody cared about at the turn of the millennium. Sure, you probably heard of "Ultimate Fighting" but very few people were actual fans and almost nobody watched it. It was truly amazing what Dana White pulled off because now it is one of the most widespread sports on the planet surpassing all other types of combat sports. Various other leagues such as Bellator, ONE, and PFL have tried but all of them have kind of steered away from considering themselves direct competitors to UFC since they know that they can't be. I don't think that any of them ever actually even tried to take UFC on head on because I think everyone realizes that it simply cannot be done.

So when GFL started talking about forming I originally thought it was a terrible idea because this market is already so jam-packed that there aren't many crumbs left on the table and when they started talking about what fighters they had signed it just looked like the who's who of has been's. It still kind of is. However, recently they announced what their league is going to be all about and I have to say, this sounds like it could be very interesting.

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Forget about their funding and what not for a while. No doubt it will be a mere pittance compared to UFC just like everyone else. They knew that they needed to do something unique in order to even have a chance of surviving as a business. Bare Knuckle fighting (BKFC) is able to hang on to some level of fandom because well, fighting without gloves is brutal, not to mention dangerous as shit. Those fights though, they aren't really as exciting as you would hope and no one can really have a long career in something so brutal.

GFL went to the drawing board and thought to themselves, "how can we set ourselves apart from other leagues?" They couldn't just copy what Bellator does and be some sort of either training league for their best to eventually get snatched up by UFC or to sign all the washed up seniors from UFC because this honestly doesn't stay interesting for very long and why would anyone try to copy the Bellator business model when it barely works anyway? ONE championship is nice but caters to a very specific audience that is actually interested in seeing several types of martial arts showcased on one night's card.

GFL is going to have an MMA format and yes, a lot of their stars are throwaways from other divisions. It isn't the star power so much as what the format is going to be that is going to make this potentially very exciting.

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While individual fighters will be sought after and rewarded according to their ability to draw in a crowd, the GFL is going to have a team system as well. There are 6 cities from around the world that have been determined to have their own club of sorts and each of these teams are going to be competing on a point system against all the other teams, much like a football team would be doing in England or anywhere in Europe or elsewhere.

A win in an individual fight will be exciting, but the main prize isn't actually on the backs of the one player but rather, how well the team can perform as a whole. Having the "best fighter" and a bunch of shlubs is actually going to be less of a good idea than taking a bunch of middle of the road guys who are going to solidly get points in each fight. The point system will work like this.

• 4 points for a victory by finish (KO or sub)
• 3 points for decision victory
• 2 points for a draw (boring!)
• 1 point for a decision loss
• 0 points for loss by finish (KO'd or subbed)

Therefore, it is really important to keep ALL fighters on your team in top form instead of just focusing on the 1 or 2 superstars. The fights will take place across 10 different weight categories; 3 for women, 7 for men, with each team having 2 representatives in each weight class. In case you are not good at math that adds up to 20 people per team.

Each team will also have a coach and a manager and you can be willing to bet that the teams will train together and each try to help to make everyone else on the team as good as they possibly can be. Decisions will have to be made about which person to put in a bout based on their current health, who they will be up against, whether they are injured or not, and well simply how they are performing at the time.

Teams will compete on points through an annual season and just like the playoffs in a lot of other sports, they will get lined up in a tournament style later on

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There has already been a draft that took place with team manager and coach trying really hard to make sure they get the best people for their overall team. While Tyron Woodley was the first overall draft pick, the managers need to be looking at how they can balance out their entire roster. There is no point in dominating one particular weight class, you need to be good at all of them lest you suffer 0 point losses every single time that weight class comes up in the rotation.

This could make for a complete overhaul of how we look at MMA and if it is successful and not a complete clusterfuck with one team simply running away with it and never looking back the way it was with XFL, this could be something that every single event is very important and worth watching even if you don't know who the fighter is that is on your team.

The 6 cities involved in the inaugural year are Dubai, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Sao Paulo.

The fighters, just like in NFL or other professional sports, don't have much say in which team they end up on. If you are drafted by Sao Paulo, you are just going to have to suck it up and move to Brazil. That's all there is to it. My hat goes off to the fighters that are participating in this first year and I sincerely hope that they can make this decent. We may actually start to see some fighters playing defensively in a fight that they realize they cannot win and well, this could actually be really interesting.

We will find out in April I guess and at least on paper, it seems like a really good idea.

Nobody can take UFC on head on, so GFL's decision to do a rethinking of the game was a very smart one.