UFC 332 Proves We Should Stop Judging UFC Cards Before They Happen

Anyone who thought that UFC 332 was not going to be an entertaining card was sorely mistaken, given the way the event played out.

And honestly? Perhaps it’s time we stop doing this kind of early judgment thing. How many times have we looked at a card this year, said that it looked bad on paper, but it ended up delivering?

How did UFC 332 end up getting entertainment value? Take a look at the highlights.

Firstly, UFC 332 set a modern UFC record for most first-round KO/TKO victories with nine. This adds to what has already been a wild year for the UFC, with records like these. UFC 329 had eight first-round finishes, only to be surpassed by the 10 from UFC Belgrade just weeks later.

The 11 KO/TKO victories at UFC 332 surpassed the 10 set at last year’s UFC Paris event. Furthermore, UFC 332 set the modern records for most consecutive first-round knockouts and most consecutive knockouts overall.

Do you remember last year we were having conversations about how the UFC felt cooked with the pay-per-view prices set through ESPN+ and the lack of star power available to fill the cards – and how cards ended up playing out? Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like there’s been a bit of new energy, even if just slightly, since the Paramount+ deal came into effect at the start of this year.

Now, there should be an acknowledgement here: as fight fans, we should expect that numbered cards are going to be treated differently. We expect bigger names on these cards. We expect ranked fighters and matchups between ranked fighters on these cards. We expect things that make numbered cards bigger than the Fight Nights.

The UFC schedule, however, makes it very hard for things like this to always happen. Since the UFC has become more and more mainstream over time, stretching back to its signing with Fox in 2011, we’ve seen the number of events grow and grow to the point where there’s nearly one every weekend. That bloated schedule has resulted in a bloated roster, and products like Dana White’s Contender Series result in more talent being easily cut and replaced with other talent.

If you want to argue this about fighter treatment and pay, absolutely. If you want to argue this about making the rankings more meaningful, by all means.

But here’s the thing: the UFC has 7.7 billion reasons why one “miss” of a numbered card isn’t a big deal.

But there is another flip side – the various amounts of style combinations, circumstances, prospects, veterans, and pressure can create magic at any given moment. That’s what helps make the fight game what it is.

And prospects and rising names certainly helped to make UFC 332 as well. Payton Talbott, Imanol Rodriguez, Damian Pinas, Anthony Wint, Jacobe Smith. These guys made the most of a major opportunity and delivered strong performances.

Performances like these, combined with the previously mentioned records, were so strong that UFC CEO and President Dana White gave out 10 bonuses for UFC 322 – four Performance of the Night bonuses of $100,000 to four fighters (with no Fight of the Night selected) and six additional $25,000 finish bonuses.

I’ll give another acknowledgement: perhaps some of this kind of entertainment value is purposeful bad matchup booking by the matchmakers. It can feel like something out of DWCS if there’s a certain fighter the UFC REALLY wants to sign. And when that trickles its way into the main promotion, that’s not exactly great.

You can criticize the matchmaking if you want, but don’t confuse a weak-looking lineup with a guaranteed bad event. There are some cards that absolutely disappoint, but we can’t keep continuing to trash cards before they happen, only to be absolutely thrilled with the highlights that we see.

Sometimes in this sport, uncertainty is actually the product. Remember how people were going nuts when the heavily favored Gable Steveson was completely starched in 12 seconds? We had something like that when Roman Kopylov outlasted and finished Ateba Gautier. Heck, if Wang Cong had stepped on the gas some more late in the fight with Natalia Silva, and got the belt wrapped around her waist, imagine what that moment could have been like.

Some of MMA’s appeal is that we don’t truly know what could happen. A fight looks like a mismatch? Suddenly it turns into an upset. A rising prospect? He/She could be exposed. A veteran can turn back the clock – look at King Green’s run before his loss at UFC 332 to Esteban Ribovics. Speaking of him, remember the war he had with Daniel Zellhuber a couple of years ago? The least expected fights could become Fight of the Year contenders. Heck, we saw that with Josh Hokit and Curtis Blaydes earlier this year.

Say what you will about how we should view numbered cards in the modern day, or the UFC’s schedule, or the pay and treatment of the roster. But what UFC 332 showed is that two things can be true – we can have those criticisms and still be entertained by what we see on our screens in the Octagon.