Veteran coach Ray Longo has spoken out about the declining quality of UFC fight cards during an appearance on Jon Anik and Kenny Florian’s podcast this week.
“Those fights on the White House card,” said Longo, who has coached champions like Matt Serra, Chris Weidman and Aljamain Sterling. “You can’t tell me anybody gives a sh*t. The way we come up with these matchups.”
Longo’s comments weren’t just directed only at the White House event in particular, but rather were part of a broader criticism that UFC line-ups have becoming increasingly watered down in recent years.
“I’ll tell you what, I’m going to say 10, 12 years I never left my house on Saturday night,” Longo said. “And if we had a wedding for somebody, everybody had their phones out watching the fights. I don’t know if I’m getting older, things are changing, who the hell knows? From my perspective, I don’t know, I go back now and go to look at the fights, I don’t even know which fight I want to look at. I don’t even know who’s fighting. I don’t know a lot of their names.
“Even this Netflix card with [Gina] Carano and [Ronda] Rousey, it’s got name value,” Longo added. “Nate Diaz, Mike Perry, Carano, Ngannou, whether the fights are going to be good or not, they’re going to draw people into those fights, there’s no question in my mind. Especially now that I think some of these cards have been a little weaker. It’s just not captivating. I think there used to be a couple of people, they did a show ‘Care/Don’t Care’ they’d go over the fights. I haven’t seen it in years, but it was good. Now I’m starting to think of that. I don’t really care about a lot of the fights. That was never the case, never was the case. I was glued from prelims to the last fight even if it ended at 2 in the morning, didn’t matter. Now it’s, ‘I’ll catch them when I catch them,’ unless it’s something really big.”
Anik, who serves as the UFC’s head commentator, went on to acknowledge that Longo had a point, though he did also have some positive things to say about last weekend’s UFC Fight Night 270 event and the upcoming UFC 327 event.
“We’re not talking about the co-main event,” Anik said of last Saturday’s show. “We’re not talking about CLD’s win over Roman Dolidze even though Christian Leroy Duncan maybe deserves a minute or two because it’s not largely compelling.”
“Sometimes there’s ebb and flow. I can’t wait to just scream through my f*cking neck at UFC 327 in a few weeks. That’s the thing. I can have an honest conversation like this and tell you that I’m going to put my promotional best foot forward in a couple of weeks and we have a tremendous card and we’re going to blow it out and I can’t wait for that, but yeah, it hasn’t been a great few weeks, to be sure.”
