The old UFCs do have their charm. I remember one big fat guy being down and getting kicked in the mouth. His teeth flew through the cage like a handful of Tic-Tacs.
But back then the overall skill level of the fighters was much lower, and no one cross-trained in different styles, no one even hardly knew what an arm bar was. Guys who were strikers were usually useless on the ground. But over the years, fighters became more well-rounded, and pretty much everyone now trains at least a little Brazilian jiu-jitsu, enough to learn to defend against it.
The fights are still bloody, though. The Ultimate Fighter premiere last week was one of the bloodiest fights I have ever seen; the guy's head was split to the skull. I work in promoting amateur mma matches. We had an event this weekend. In our heavyweight match, one fighter was pressing the other against the cage, bending the chain link out over a foot or more, and one of them was bleeding all over the table of the cageside ticket holders. I try to talk people out of buying cageside tickets for that very reason; I tell them there's a good chance of getting sweat and blood on them. In eleven fights, we had two very bloody ones, a broken hand, a separated shoulder, and a knockout from a liver shot that made the crowd hold their own stomachs and groan in sympathized pain. MMA may have become more tame than the original UFC, but this is still violent stuff.
