'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,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'%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Despite being different in a lot of ways, the worlds of the UFC and WWE are almost like two sides of a coin. Both promotions put on fights – the UFC’s real, WWE’s pre-determined – and attempt to sell them to the fans via various storylines and angles.
Sometimes there are major crossovers between the two – UFC fighters might borrow from WWE’s colourful entrances or promos, while WWE superstars have often borrowed submission holds from the UFC, and of course, the likes of Brock Lesnar, CM Punk and Ronda Rousey have competed for both promotions.
Despite the many similarities, though – similarities that hardcore fans of both promotions might deny – right now, it’d be hard to argue that WWE is better to watch than the UFC. Simply put, Dana White’s promotion is superior to Vince McMahon’s – and not just because it’s not pre-determined.
Here are 5 reasons why the UFC is currently better than WWE.
#1 The lack of scripting
When you hear the word “scripting” alongside pro-wrestling, the first thought that comes to mind is the pre-determining of the matches that take place. That honestly isn’t an issue, though – the fact that WWE pre-determine the results of their matches actually gives them an advantage over the UFC in a lot of ways.
The scripting I’m talking about, however, is the heavy scripting of the promos given to wrestlers to cut during WWE shows. It hasn’t always been this way – the likes of Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Mick Foley were fantastic when it came to selling their matches on the mic. Today’s superstars? Very much less so.
The issue isn’t really with how the current roster uses the mic. For all we know, they could be equally as good as the stars of the past. But their promo work is so heavily scripted – filled with corporate buzz-words, clunky dialogue, and lines that no human being, let alone someone trying to sell a feud would use – that it’s simply hard to listen to.
Sure, not every UFC fighter is brilliant on the mic. For every Conor McGregor or Colby Covington, there’s a Nik Lentz, or a Brazilian fighter who speaks no English, but the point is that regardless, these fighters all get to be themselves when they use a mic. And that fact alone makes them easier to hear than WWE’s over-scripted superstars.
It’d be an easy fix for WWE to simply cut down on all of the scripting, but realistically it’s been an issue for the best part of a decade now and it doesn’t look like changing any time soon.
#2 Less predictable outcomes
One of the most famous WWE slogans from a few years back was “anything can happen in the World Wrestling Federation”, but for the most part, that’s never really been the case. Sure, Vince McMahon and his crew can throw the odd curveball out – remember when Brock Lesnar beat the Undertaker at WrestleMania? – but most of the time, WWE tells stories with at least a loose beginning, middle and end.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing of course that the story tends to end with the good guy beating the bad guy – that’s usually what the fans want to see – but sometimes things get so predictable in WWE these days that it’s yawn-inducing. How many times have we seen Wrestler A lose to Wrestler B after being distracted by Wrestler C, who Wrestler A is feuding with?
In the UFC, on the other hand, anything really can happen. Everyone knows about major upsets like Matt Serra beating Georges St-Pierre, or Chris Weidman knocking out Anderson Silva, but even on the lower card, a stunning outcome can be enough to have major repercussions on Dana White’s best-laid plans.
We’ve seen heavily pushed TUF champions go down to unfavoured fighters, a guaranteed slugfest turn into a staring contest (Francis Ngannou vs. Derrick Lewis) and major superstars throwing everything away by testing positive for PEDs after winning huge fights.
Essentially, WWE can tell you that “anything can happen” but in reality, their stories have to follow some kind of logic. With the UFC, that logic often goes out of the window – making for a far more unpredictable, and in turn fun product to watch.
#3 There’s less content to follow
Oversaturation has become a major buzzword amongst MMA fans ever since the UFC began to really expand back in 2006, and ever since the explosion of the Fox deal, some UFC fans have complained that the promotion simply puts on too many shows to follow these days.
By this, though, UFC fans usually mean one show per week is a little hard to keep up with – as opposed to the bi-monthly (or thereabouts) shows we used to get prior to the TUF boom. In reality though, one show per week is a drop in the ocean when compared to the amount of content that WWE produces.
Following all of the WWE content on television per week would involve a massive 5 hours per week, and that’s only to be able to watch the flagship shows Raw and SmackDown. To digest all of the weekly content – using the WWE Network – you’d also have to give up another hour for NXT, another hour for 205 Live, another for NXT UK and another for WWE Main Event.
Essentially, that’s a massive 9 hours of content per week – and that isn’t even including the ‘special events’ that used to be broadcast on pay-per-view but are now more accessible to viewers via the WWE Network.
UFC fans not only have less content to digest, but due to each show having different fighters, it’s easy for a fan of the product to dip in and out and pick and choose which shows to watch without losing touch of exactly what’s going on in the promotion.
The same cannot be said for WWE, where missing an episode could easily see a viewer miss out on an integral part of a storyline. Forget oversaturation – to follow the UFC is a whole lot easier for a fan to do than to follow WWE.
#4 Dana White doesn’t troll the fans
UFC President Dana White might be a divisive figure in the world of MMA, but a lot of the fan ire aimed his way comes solely because UFC fans believe that the fighters aren’t being given a fair share of the pie in a financial sense. It’s rare that Dana is criticised for not putting on fights that the fans want to see – for the most part in that area, he’s highly successful.
The UFC might stray from this path on the odd occasion – booking too many instant rematches, or too many interim title fights, for example – but this year alone we’ve seen Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou, Miocic vs. Daniel Cormier, and plenty of other highly-anticipated fights.
WWE, on the other hand, is very different. The whole promotion isn’t built around putting together the matches that fans want to see – it’s built around the whims of WWE chairman and owner Vince McMahon, and a lot of the time what he wants to see doesn’t exactly line up with the views of the average WWE fan.
Did anyone really want to see WWE champion Jinder Mahal, for instance? Was anyone crying out for another WrestleMania main event featuring Roman Reigns against Brock Lesnar? And those two examples only scratch the surface – McMahon has trolled the fans time after time, always suggesting that it’s what he wants – rather than what the fans want – that matters.
Dana White simply cannot book like that – if he did, he’d probably lose most of his viewers – and so however abrasive he comes off, he still has the best interest of his fans at heart. Which is more than can be said for Vince McMahon.
#5 UFC is largely a meritocracy
Okay, so there are some UFC fans who might disagree with the above statement and point to the fact that the likes of Kamaru Usman and Marlon Moraes haven’t had much of a promotional push yet while more colourful fighters such as Paige VanZant and Cody Garbrandt are given multiple chances in main events as their evidence, the fact is that to get to the top in the UFC, you have to win, a lot.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re massively popular – if you keep losing fights, the UFC brass simply can’t push you that hard. In that sense, the UFC is definitely a merit-based organisation. Getting to the top of the promotion, for the most part at least, is objective, not subjective.
WWE, on the other hand, is anything but objective. Regardless of how much the fans take to a superstar, if you don’t fit the mould of what Vince McMahon sees as being a big star, the likelihood is that you won’t be pushed to the top.
The likes of Dolph Ziggler, Rusev and Daniel Bryan have all, at one point or another, gained massive popularity with the fans to the point where you’d think they’d be positioned highly on the card, and yet all of them have had their legs cut from under them for reasons only known to WWE higher-ups.
It becomes highly frustrating for the fans – why bother getting behind a superstar when you know it won’t really help them reach the top anyway? Again, WWE is all about what Vince McMahon, not the fans, wants to see.
At least if your favourite UFC fighter keeps on winning, even if they’ve got a personality like a block of wood, you know the promotion will have to showcase them at some stage. It’s another reason why the UFC is a superior product to WWE right now.
