The UFC decided its fight cards don't have to be good anymore. It made that call the moment Paramount guaranteed the money would show up whether you liked the show or not.
Start with the deal. It explains everything that followed. The UFC signed a seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement to put its events on Paramount+ beginning in 2026, which killed pay-per-view in the United States. For $12.99 a month, every event is yours. That was sold as a revolution for fans, and on the surface it is one.
It also removed the only external check that ever existed on UFC matchmaking. Under the old model, somebody in the building had to convince a casual fan to put down real money for one specific night of fights. That meant the card needed a reason to exist: a name, a grudge. Take that away and replace it with a flat annual cheque, and the job just becomes filling the dates.
So they fill the dates. In 2005 there were ten UFC events for the entire year. In 2026, the first year of the Paramount era, the count runs to 43. Nobody on earth has 43 cards' worth of compelling fights lying around, and the UFC's booking hasn't pretended otherwise. UFC Winnipeg in April became the poster child: just 10 of the 24 athletes on the card held a winning record with the promotion, and the main event stuck a rising Canadian prospect opposite a 39-year-old former title challenger who walked in on a four-fight losing streak. That's a date being filled.
You don't have to take an angry fan's word for it either. In March, Jon Anik and Ray Longo talked openly about UFC London, a card ripped for having no marquee names and nothing worth staying up for. Longo admitted he's stopped watching several UFC events live. Anik, who's paid by the house, agreed the matchmaking has been lacking and that card after card has missed the mark. When the guys calling the fights admit the matchmaking is thin, there's nothing left to debate.
There's a real defense here. The pipeline matters. If you want future stars, you need Contender Series and the raw prospects getting reps, and gutting all of that to pack every card with established veterans would hollow out the roster in a few years. A healthy pipeline is supposed to add depth while still delivering the fights people actually want to see. The complaint is about why slots that used to go to drawing cards keep going to fighters nobody's had a chance to learn about, while injuries thin the top of the bill and the reshuffled main events get worse. Developing talent and respecting the paying customer can coexist. The UFC picked one anyway.
On a TKO investor call in May, with fans and media hammering the promotion over fewer ranked fighters, fewer title fights and more guys on long skids, president Mark Shapiro waved the whole thing off. His exact words: "Bottom line is, we don't buy it." The company hasn't released viewership numbers for these events. Shapiro's rebuttal rests entirely on revenue, the one number Paramount already guaranteed, and sidesteps the only number that measures whether anyone's still watching.
That's the posture of an operation that knows it gets paid regardless. The money's locked, the product's an afterthought. The man in charge told his investors he doesn't care what you think of it.
