Why did the UFC do away with tournaments?

And why don't they at least talk about bringing them back?

I wasn’t really a fan of the UFC back when they were doing this and only recently discovered that such a system was ever used during Pay-Per-View events. The idea seems really wild though and I wish it is something they would bring back even if it was just a one-off kind of idea.

There are a lot of ways that they could do this tournament and instead of there even being a belt at stake, there could be a big payout and a trophy of sorts. It is my understanding that Pride, Invictus, ONE, and I think Bellator have tournaments of this sort but UFC hasn’t done it in decades even though it used to be the norm for them.

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There is a reason why March Madness in basketball and the playoffs in NHL, NFL, tennis, the World Cup, and NBA are so popular and that is because of the fact that underdogs can rise to the top and get fluke wins. We also get to see who the best really is, instead of some sort of setup match designed to get more views.

We all love a bracket style tournament regardless of the sport and just like people who make their own brackets in college basketball every March, there are almost always upsets and this turns the entire sport on its head. It’s a lot of fun when a massive underdog defeats a higher seeded opponent even though this normally just means that the “Cinderella” team will be eliminated in their following match.

There are plenty of reasons why this wouldn’t work given the current method of fights in the UFC. For one thing, it would be completely unreasonable for fighters to be expected to fight something like a possible 4, 3-round fights in one night. That would be impossible for anyone even if they were really trying to conserve energy. The PPV would also be 20 hours long.

I think it would be a lot of fun to take the top 16 guys in some particular weight division and all of the fights, except for the very last one, would only be one round. I’m sure there would be some controversy surrounding leaving it up to the judges, and injuries would result in some competitors dropping out because they are unable to continue.

But let’s just imagine this for a second: It would be a really great way for lessor-known fighters to make a name for themselves because outside of the top 10 or maybe even top 5, most of the guys below that don’t get a great deal of attention or ability to climb up in the rankings. That is of course unless you are Jon Jones and get to be the number 1 contender in a division that you have never even had a single fight in.

A tournament of this sort would be absolutely wild and it could be done in a single PPV. I know that a lot of people would sign up to buy a Pay Per View like this so it kind of doesn’t make sense to me that the UFC doesn’t at least talk about the possibility of it happening. They did it years ago and according to friends of mine that were fans of the sport in its early days, it was the thing they looked forward to the most.

We could place opponents the same way that they do in basketball where the champion in the division would fight the number 15 seed, the number 1 contender would fight the number 14, and on and on it goes. We could have to bracket be a single sided thing or we could split them up on opposite ends of the bracket like they do with the World Cup. Either way it would super awesome and I really think that everyone would be very excited to see something like this.

Just like in tennis the prize money that a fighter is awarded would grow the further they make it into the brackets. It would be absolutely wild especially if there was a massive upset early on. It could also seriously shake up the rankings in a better way because everyone would have the same chance to perform. The champions would also not have to be concerned about losing their belts because they wouldn’t be on the line.

Why U NO do this UFC?