Is MMA Like Pro Wrestling?

Of course I don't mean by the scheduled, continuous feuds, or the choreographed moves, or the travel. But think about Pro Wrestling in the 80's. There were different organizations, and different territories in which some guys never wrestled each other. In fact, is you didn't have cable (which I didn't), you could only get the brand which was offered in the northeast. At that time is was the WWE (WWF).

We would see the same bunch of guys win squash matches on Saturday's and then maybe once every 3 or 4 months we would see 2 major names go at each other. However, if we picked up a wrestling magazine, there were other guys wrestling. Lots of other guys, and I have never seen them on my television. I didn't understand it. Why couldn't this one wrestler who claimed to be the best ever (yeah, I know it was fake) face the other wrestler that I would see every Saturday?

This is exactly what's happening in MMA. There are so many different fight organizations, some with a ton of capital, some with none. This may go on for years before there's one organization that reigns supreme, or can whether the little onslaught from the ones who are struggling. So chances are if a fighter fights for one organization, he'll never fight a guy who's fighting for another organization. Eventually, there will be just one and it might be like the WWE. Where's there's no competetion, and no care for it's employees because the fighters will be indispensable, while the company stays.

Boxing had organizations but they were all part of boxing. They had 3 basic organizations back in the day. I'm not sure how many they have now but they're still just boxing. They had the WBC, WBA, and IBF. They had rankings for each division, and kept fighting until someone possibly held all three belts to become the undisputed champ.

I know boxing is struggling and there are a few more organizations now but they are still boxing. With the same rules, with the same ring, with the same officials.

The debate will continue until cross promotion does take place or they decide to call it MMA instead of UFC, M-1 Global, EliteXC.

The one good thing is with smaller organizations younger fighters can be groomed for stardom.

So while it's like pro wrestling of the 80's, the outlook doesn't look much better if it becomes like pro wrestling of today.