Never mind the UFC’s awful judgment in celebrating Mark Coleman and Shogun Rua’s epic slog through molasses; the real disappointment is that by also giving the nod to the Marcus Davis and Chris Lytle’s kickboxing match, the UFC continues its troubling trend of rewarding “Fight of the Night” honors to one-dimensional slugfests.  Granted, the Coleman/Rua debacle often resembled two sleep-deprived men flailing in quicksand, but at least there were enough different styles on display (kickboxing, muay thai, ground and pound, wrestling, submission attempts) to make it a true MMA fight—which is more than can be said for the Davis/Lytle brawl.

The blame doesn’t lie with Lytle or Davis who are understandably motivated by the allure of big bonus money.  If you don’t think that the need for money factors into a fighter’s decisions, go watch Marcus Davis fight back tears discussing his history of financial hardship in his post fight video interview on www.ufc.com. These men knew full well that the UFC has a history of throwing money at fights like this (most recently with Aaron Riley vs. Jorge Gurgel at UFC 91) and responded accordingly.  Instead, the problem lies with the UFC, which as a Mixed Martial Arts organization has the responsibility to award bonus money to fighters that at least try to put on a true MMA bout, something which Davis and Lytle clearly did not.

The UFC has enough problems with uneducated fans cheering standup brawls and booing ground battles without actively encouraging fighters to turn in performances in which they have no intention of going to the ground even if they are getting the worst of the standup exchanges.  The UFC must control the way their brand is perceived, and consistently rewarding one-dimensional striking battles with bonus purses is tantamount to telling uneducated fans that they are right in thinking that anything short of a sloppy Griffin/Bonnar-style kickboxing match is boring.