Khamzat Chimaev dominated Du Plessis at UFC 319: Audience snores

Well if you watched the fights live you already know what I am talking about and for me at least, I am quite happy that I had something else going on that night because I would have, like most of the fans in attendance and watching around the world, been bored to tears.

The fight was as they say "a domination" on the part of Chimaev as he completely shut down the popular South African now ex-champion.

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If you didn't watch the fight I'll just go ahead and tell you that almost all of it was in a single position on the ground. I watched the fight after the fact and honestly, at times it looked like I was just staring at a still image because Chimaev brought DDP down to the ground and just kept him there for nearly the entirety of the 5, 5-minute rounds.

KC would pop at him with fists every now and then and ended up out-striking the now ex-champ by 500 to 50. Wow! That's quite a lot of punches but here is the thing. Only 37 of Chimaev's strikes were considered "significant" whereas 13 of DDP's were considered the same.

The entire 25 minutes of the match was indeed very very one-sided with there being zero doubt who was going to get their arm raised at the end by the judges' unanimous decision of 50-44

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The crowd erupted into boo's when during the entirety of the announcement as well as when Chimaev was talking in the post-fight interview. It wasn't that they disagreed with the decision, it was because they, the fans who paid big money to be there, were bored through the entire thing.

There's a lot of people out there that are defending Chimaev and I will be one of them. He didn't break any rules. He used the methods that UFC has in place to determine a winner, chose a path to victory, and stuck to a game plan. He wasn't at all concerned about being a crowd-pleaser and instead went for the win. Which he did in what seemed like an almost effortless manner.

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Time and time again Chimaev would shoot for takedowns and he ended up succeeding in all of his attempts but a few of them. Whenever DDP managed to get back to his feet to make this a stand-up game, Chimaev would put him back on the ground, where he is the better wrestler of the two.

This is not against the rules but here is something that people need to consider in UFC administration: People are tuning out in regards to fighters who use this strategy. For me it began with Aljamain Sterling who was known as the "human backpack" because he would wrap up his opponents, get them on the ground and win because of ground control time and because his opponents didn't have any opportunity to form any sort of meaningful offense to get points in their favor. The crowds hated Sterling and they don't particularly favor any of the new wave of fighters that use this strategy either.

This random comment on a MMA board sums up how a lot of people feel about the sport generally speaking and the thing is, he has some great points but that is not the current rules of the UFC and never has been. Over the years the decision to stand fighters up after "inactivity" has evolved a bit, but in the end it is left up to the official in the octagon and many of them are afraid to make this call because of repercussions that could come their way if they do this to the "wrong" person.

Think about how subjective the word "inactivity" is when it is said in regard to MMA ok?

Paula Costa, himself a fighter in the same division as Chimaev had this to say

"This kind of fight, and fighter, has a lot of potential to kill this business.
"This surprised me after, because at the press conference after the fight, Dana [White] was [saying], 'OK, he did amazing.' No, he didn't, man. He did horrible. This is horrible for the watchers. This is not good. People will watch something else. They will not watch these guys hugging each other for 25 minutes."

And I think he has a very valid point. For me personally, I already find UFC to be a diminished product because so much time is spent on advertisements and breaks between fights but now if the fights themselves are a slog there really isn't much reason for the fans to tune in at all. I intentionally skipped watching this PPV not just because I had something else to do, but because I knew that Chimaev was going to do exactly what he did. He is literally known for doing exactly this.

However, given the rules that the UFC currently has, this style of fighting will continue to be encouraged because it is effective and it isn't breaking any rules. However, the long-term consequences could have some very ill effects because just like Costa said in his interview, people "will not watch these guys hugging each other for 25 minutes."

It would also be really controversial if the UFC were to change the rules abruptly because something like half of the overall championship belts are held by guys that fight like this.

I don't know what can be done but I do know one thing: I will just catch the highlights the day after the fights for the foreseeable future and I would imagine that this would be a tough job for whoever is charged with putting a highlight reel together of 5 rounds of 2 dudes lying on the ground. I suppose this was a wonderful time for UFC to announce that they are stopping the Pay-Per-View format starting next year.