UFC 209 main event shows how far MMA has come and how far it still needs to go

Many fans left Woodley-Thompson disappointed, and it's important to realize why they felt that way

The rematch was supposed to give us so much more. Tyron Woodley promised to finish Stephen Thompson in a a second go-around of a 2016 fight of the year candidate. Thompson thought he learned his lessons from the first fight and could get through Woodley’s defense. 

The problem? Neither wanted to make the first move. If it’s styles that make fights, then we need to realize the first fight was an anomaly. Woodley and Thompson both said after Sunday night’s bout that they are counter-punchers and were waiting for the other to make the first move, calculating with every step as they circled the octagon for what felt like the thousandth time.

But the styles of Woodley (wrestling) and Thompson (karate) just don’t make for a great fight. Thompson was too disciplined to fall for Woodley’s feint punches, and Woodley was too smart to get close enough for Thompson to land those devastating kicks.

So the fight went to the judges’ scorecards, and it could have gone in either direction after five rounds.

The fans hate decision fights in just about every instance because, especially in a main event like this one, nobody can truly tell who won the fight. The scoring becomes so technical that nobody knows what one judge is going to value over another.

While Woodley walked away with a majority decision (48-47, 47-47, 48-47), another set of judges could have gone in the opposite direction with Thompson winning by unanimous decision based on octagon control and presence. 

The two fighters landed a total of 173 strikes in their first go-round back in November 2016 compared to 133 on Saturday with the majority for Woodley coming in the fifth round.

Fans wanted to see this rematch over a Woodley-Demain Maia fight so that there could be a “clear” winner. Instead, they’re left feeling more confused than before. 

While UFC’s new management is still figuring out this matchmaking thing, the hope is that they will pay more attention to the variation in fighter styles when picking championship fights. Because when UFC was first established, that was the whole point -- matching a boxer against a jiu-jitsu specialist, a karate master against grappler, etc. 

Even with more and more fighters training and learning in more disciplines, each fighter still has weaknesses that can be exposed.

Saturday’s event exposed UFC’s weakness. 

Two pay-per-view events into 2017 and UFC’s two main event draws have been complete flops. Neither championship fight (Woodley-Thompson and de Randamie-Holm) gave fans a clear winner, leaving them wanting more. That’s not exactly the best way to expand a fanbase.

There’s still plenty of time to fix it this year, but when a 35-year-old Georges St-Pierre can walk in off the street after a three-year layoff and get an immediate title shot a weightclass above what he fought at for years, it feels like the press conferences are becoming more important than the actual fights.

We all want to see tremendous athletic feats in the cage, but with so much money now on the line in these title fights, there might need to be a change of some sort to press the action. If not, UFC could go the way of boxing and fall back into being a niche sport.