If rankings don’t mean anything, what is the motivation to sacrifice everything you have to try to become the greatest fighter in the world? If title shots are supposedly the best against the best, how do washed-up veterans get title shots?
The answer is money.
The evolution of MMA as a mainstream sport — which it still is not — has come along a very bumpy road. It has taken decades of instituting everything from the Unified Rules to USADA to try to get a small inkling of a foothold in the mainstream-sports scene, and just when it got close to gaining true legitimacy, along came Conor McGregor.