Whenever I write about the UFC, I should add a standard apology to those who are reading my blog with an eye toward the area of my expertise: finance, and in particular financial risk management. But I have enjoyed mixed martial arts (MMA) since its inception in the mid-1990's, (I also love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which I have been active in over the same time period), and find the current missteps in UFC fascinating. Watching the UFC, by far the largest MMA organization, in its tail spin from the incredible height of its purchase by WME-IMGfor $4 billion is becoming more interesting than watching its fights.

The UFC was a failing enterprise in the 1990's, and was salvaged in 2000 by the Las Vegas Fertitta brothers for $2 million. They each cleared over half a billion from the sale. The president of the UFC, a former personal trainer, Dana White, pulled in a similar amount, plus or minus (actually, minus) a few hundred million.

Even at the time of the acquisition in 2016 the purchase price was met with skepticism. But they did have some marquise talent, most notably Ronda Rousey. Her run is over. Not a surprise, because MMA demands many fighting skills, and there are thus many ways an up-and-coming athlete can find to break through an opponent's style, which in the case of Rousey was superb grappling without a base in stand-up fighting.

So, anyway, how is it going? Ronda is gone with no other women in a position to take on anything approaching her role. Dana and crew have latched onto Connor McGregor, a brash fighter who is both flamboyant and good in the octagon as the next big draw. They went all-in with McGregor by setting up a fight with Floyd Mayweather, the undefeated boxing champion. The fight pulled in $600 million, netting a hundred million plus for each fighter. This is the point that the UFC went full-stop into entertainment business, and as I wrote in a recent post, it is the point where it jumped the shark.

Now it is not clear that McGregor will fight again in the UFC. But with the hope he will come back and defend his title, and because now entertainment trumps sports, he continues to hold the title even though he has not defended it for over a year.

The number of viewers is languishing. FOX's recent title match was the second most-watched UFC event this year, but also was the fourth-lowest on FOX to date, with two million views (though it peaked above three million during the title bout). A UFC Christmas event drew 350,000 viewers, a tenth of the draw of last year's.

Meanwhile, it looks like the entertainment complex is doubling down after the McGregor-Mayweather spectacle by suggesting Mayweather will meet McGregor in a MMA fight. If their boxing match was a joke -- Mayweather carried him for ten rounds to give the fans their money's worth before leveling him -- this would be a farce. It would be like arguing that a 41 year-old version of Lionel Messi should spend a few games as a linebacker in NFL football because in American football, among other things, they kick the ball. Mayweather is not stupid; we will never see him in the UFC, but that it would be put out there even for a second to tantalize the UFC fans is a measure of how entertainment value is dominating substance.

And, to top it all off, I hate to say that MMA is getting boring. Maybe the push toward entertainment at all costs is reducing the focus on athletic elegance. Or maybe the nature of MMA, which requires skills in a wide set of fighting styles, kickboxing while standing, jiu jitsu when on the ground, and wrestling and judo for the takedowns, leads to a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, and for those who are familiar with the best of each of these disciplines, a sport that is less than the best is inevitably going to come to seem crude.

In three years Tesla will be rolling out the fastest production car in the world. And not a "production car" as in, we made ten or so of these so it can be called one. No, a production car that rolls off of an assembly line — though I hope the rate of production is controlled with DeBeers-like style — and that still outperforms any car you can buy at any price.

The Tesla Roadster that was unveiled this weekend and is slated for delivery in 2020 is not only better, it is in a different league in terms of its performance specs when compared to any car at any price. Including, for example, the 1500 hp Bugatti Chiron, which starts at $2,998,000. The Roadster does zero to sixty in under two seconds (no other car is even built with the idea it can beat two seconds), a quarter mile in under nine seconds (no other car is even close to nine seconds). Top speed of over 250 mph. (It might be ten or twenty mph shy of the record here, we will have to see. Musk has said once it gets into production, the performance might exceed what we are seeing with the prototype. For now we just know it is "over 250 mph".) Plus, it seems to be user-friendly. Obviously it is quiet. And it seats four, at least if two of the four are small.

And, its best-in-the-world performance in terms of speed and acceleration will not even be the headline item when it gets its test-drive reviews. I predict that the Tesla Roadster will take corners unlike any car built today. First of all, it has a lower center of gravity because of its batteries. Second, it can have the distribution of that weight precisely tuned because the batteries can be placed most anywhere on the underbelly. And third, with a separate motor for each of the rear tires, the Tesla can have a computer assist that keeps the car from skidding out as you take a corner. Anyone who has tried to make a Tesla S skid on wet or icy roads already knows this. Imagine what happens when you are speeding around a turn and the computer can differentially send more torque to one tire versus the other.

And, this is only the beginning. As Musk has pointed out, by the time the car is in production there will doubtlessly be further improvements. And even then, it is only Version 1.0. The bigger point is that an electric car is a better technology than the gas-powered car. Over time the gas-powered car will have to yield.

Already, two days after the announcement, I have been reading the reaction from the aficionado of high-end sports cars, supercars, and, as the Bugatti and its kin are called, hypercars. The basic argument is: "There is more to a sports car than how fast it goes. It is the workmanship. The feel of the car shifting gears. The sound of the engine growling. The melding of man and machine." It is the laudable appreciation of these finer points that is behind the market for mechanical timepieces. They cannot be as accurate, but they embody the workmanship of great craftsmen; the feel of winding the spring; the sound of the mechanism ticking; the melding of man and machine (I guess).

So it will be for the exquisitely crafted cars of today, from the Ferrari to the Bugatti. If we take performance as the objective, the best car in the world will no longer be one that is one or two or three million dollars. It will, at least for a time, be the two hundred thousand dollar Tesla. And after that, it will be another electric car. Like fine timepieces, the supercars of today will be admired and owned not for superlative performance, but for an appreciation of their workmanship and their mechanical intricacy.

Now, in the middle of hurricanes, Trump, and a (possibly) overheated stock market, here's a blog about something different and somewhat inconsequential: The mixed martial arts world, which pretty much means the UFC.

I have been interested in martial arts for a long time -- I have been training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for over twenty years -- and have enjoyed the increasing interest in mixed martial arts. But about a year ago the dominant organization for mixed martial arts was purchased by a consortium of WME and IMG for a staggering $4 billion. These are organizations that are not focused on sports, but on entertainment, and the UFC has followed the lead to increasingly become an entertainment enterprise.

In its first incarnation, the UFC was a little better than a refereed bar fight. Such as it was, these fights are what got me interested in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, because Royce Gracie, a member of the famous Gracie clan that brought BJJ to the U.S., defeated opponent after opponent regardless of the size differential using these ground-based techniques. I train at his nephew Renzo Gracie's academy in New York (In the photo I'm at the bottom right, Renzo is two to the left of me).

Then in 2001 the UFC was bought by the Fertittas brothers, and it was rebuilt as a serious sports enterprise. Over time it attracted top athletes, first men, and then women, most famously Ronda Rousey, that fought in weight classes built on a professional structure.

But if you want to recoup that sort of investment, you have to reach for a broader audience. You have to create buzz and spectacle. The poster child for this, of course, is the fight between Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor. This fight pitted two men who were undefeated in the boxing ring. One with a 49-0 record, the other undefeated for the same reason that I remain undefeated as a professional boxer. He had never been in the ring.

This fight looked more interesting than it fundamentally was. Mayweather promised to give the spectators a show, and the match lasted for ten rounds of boxing action. In part because Mayweather didn't bother to throw punches for the first rounds, and then let the exhausted Connor gamely trudge on until he leveled him with a barrage. The slow start could be chalked up to caution on Mayweather's part, making sure he understood an opponent that he had never seen in the ring before. Or it could be that he didn't want fans who spent hundreds of million of dollars to watch the fight head home after a few minutes.

This fight will mark the turning point, when the sport, at least in its most popular venue, will have jumped the shark. Former UFC champion Benson Henderson put it succinctly, "It's a very slippery slope when you have a world champion boxer fighting an MMA guy for the sake of money, and he can't knock him out in the first round," Henderson said. "He has to make sure he carries him a little bit. For me, that's too close to skirting the edge [of a fixed fight].

Now Paulie Malignaggi, a sparring partner for McGregor and world champion in two weight divisions before retiring earlier this year, has been trying to get into the circus by fueling demand for a grudge match with McGregor based on a falling out after a video appe ared that showed Malignaggi hitting the canvas during a sparring session. He argued it was a push, McGregor's camp called it a knock down.

In any case, there is more showmanship where this is coming from. With Mayweather versus McGregor we had boxer versus MMA fighter. But before that, we had the WWE star CM Punk come into the UFC octagon to get destroyed (surprise) by a UFC professional of no particular note. We are having a fight of 38 year-old Michael Bisping, who last fought a year ago, versus 36 year-old George St-Pierre, who retired five years ago. And we have another MMA versus pro wrestling bout being bandied about between Jon Jones and Brock Lesner. There is a huge weight discrepancy between them, so maybe it will be billed as David versus Goliath. It also could be billed along some lines related to the fact that both fighters have been banned from legitimate fights for failing drug tests.

The International Olympic Committee has announced that wrestling will be removed from the summer games starting in 2020. I find this decision incomprehensible. I can only rationalize it if I rethink the Olympics as, well, some grand-scale ratings event. But if it has to do with athletics, and if it seeks to maintain a thread of history extending back to the Athenian Olympics, this decision is nonsensical.

In the meantime, we have golf enter the Olympics. Not too many years ago that would have been thought to be a joke. For others, like tennis and soccer, the Olympics is overshadowed by other tournaments. Who would rather win the Olympics than Wimbledon or the World Cup? And yet others, like swimming, have become a numbing presence. We are treated to just about every possible permutation of ways to traverse water: pool lengths = {1, 2, 4,...} x swimming styles = {breast stroke, freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, medley} x participants in the event = {one person, four people}. And add to that a panoply of events for diving into the water and dancing around in the water. Why? Because it sells advertising.

In terms of combat sports, wrestling is the last bastion. The Olympics have structured the rules for boxing in way that has degenerated it into a game of tag with gloves. Tae Kwon Do is a game of tag with the feet. I have already discussed the bastardization of these sports by the Olympics. And I have proposed that the Olympics reach back to the ancient games to add the one event that is not in the modern Olympics: Pankration. In our modern day this is best represented by mixed martial arts. Given the role Brazil has had in the development of MMA, it would have been fitting to have it introduced in 2016. Well, that isn't going to happen. The Olympics is moving one step further away from athletics, and rather than adding to the ancient roots of the games, they are severing one of the remaining links.

If you read to the last chapter of my book, A Demon of Our Own Design, then you know that I like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). I have just passed the fifteen year mark of studying at the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York. During that time I have seen the academy grow from twenty or so students, most all beginners, to a thriving center with hundreds of students and a dozen world-class instructors, most of whom started their careers with Renzo and began studying jiu jitsu well after I did. I have had the opportunity to study with several of them (linked here to their respective academies) – Shawn Williams, Brian Glick, and the inimitable John Danaher – though through the combined limits of age, talent and time, my development has followed what might charitably be called a slow trajectory.

Here I am with Brian Glick (to my right) and John Danaher. (In case your wondering, I photoshopped out some stuff on the shirts).

There has been some comment on my recent post related to ways to make soccer less boring, and it appears some readers do not fully understand the direction I am trying to go.

For example, with regard to the idea of a Goal Tunnel: The point is that most of the time, as it is currently structured, soccer is stadium pinball. The proposal I made for a Goal Tunnel is intended to play off of that feature of the game. But the Goal Tunnel, the use of two balls, and these other approaches are only suggestions. It might be enough simply to allow free substitution, or increase the goal size.

Among the changes I proposed, free substitution should be non-controversial. When there is no substitution, the players cannot be as aggressive, because they know that they will still have to be out there even if they become fatigued. So you have a game that is slowed down and conservative. Most every team sport other than soccer allows substitution. Hockey, football, basketball, and lacrosse all have free substitution. Baseball is an exception, but fatigue is hardly an issue for anyone but the pitcher. And there, substitution is allowed.

But in this post, let me focus on another of these changes, an increase in the size of the goal, and show how this can not only increase the amount of scoring, but also make soccer a more interesting game. This illustration will also help with another important point: one change might require other, supporting changes.

Suppose we increase the size of the goal to span the entire goal line. Then it will be impossible for the goalie to cover the goal area, so he may as well move into the field, which means there will be eleven people in the field rather than ten. With so large a goal, it will be trivial to kick the ball past the goal line. So to overcome this problem, require players to carry the ball across the goal rather than simply kick it across. Which, of course, means the players finally get to use their hands, a long overdue improvement. Because the ball can be carried, it should be made smaller and shaped so that it can be tucked under the arm.

The Goal Tunnel can go, but the basic concept behind it, that of tackling, should still be allowed, at least tackling the person carrying the ball. And allow a pause in play whenever the ball carrier is down so that both teams can do any substitution, regroup and reassess their strategy.

A last problem that comes up with the enlarged goal is how to allow the other team to gain possession. If the ball is small and easily held, it will be hard for the other team to jar it loose. So perhaps if the team with the ball cannot advance it sufficiently after a number of “downs”, the other team should be awarded possession.

This is only one example of an improvement in soccer, derived from the simple first step of increasing the size of the goal. But I believe these changes could turn soccer into a much more engaging sport.

Now that the U.S. team has been eliminated, and with it the thrill of having an emotional attachment to the World Cup, I can go back to reflecting on why soccer is so boring. The basic reason is not so hard to come by: there is not enough scoring. Because there is not enough scoring, the bulk of the playing time passes with no concrete result, and the outcome is unnecessarily random. Even when a great team is matched up against a mediocre team, if you were to replay just a few critical seconds out of the hour and a half of action, the outcome might be different. Yawn at the wrong moment and miss the meat of the game.

There is an analytical basis for determining the amount of scoring a sport should have, and soccer is well below the ideal.

First, the greater the number of scores, the lower the chance for a lucky win by a team that is inferior. The number of scores required to move this random component to an acceptable level depends on the nature of the game. For example, if I were up against a professional basketball player in a game that involved each of us taking shots from the foul line, there is a reasonable chance I would win if the game consisted of only one shot each. If we each took ten shots, I would almost never win. On the other hand, if I were up against a world-class sprinter, one race – one score – would be enough. Absent a hamstring pull, he would win a hundred times out of a hundred.

Countervailing the benefit of having the outcome determined by more scores is the negative effect of having too much scoring. Up to a point, the more scores, the more interest and engagement for the spectators. But there is a turning point. Create a game with too many scores and the individual scores become inconsequential.

So in designing the ideal scoring for a sport, you want enough scores to reduce the chance of one team wining by dumb luck. The more randomness in any one score, the more scores you will want, so that a clearly superior team will win most all the time. But you don’t want to overdo it with the scoring. I think that soccer and hockey have too few scores, basketball and tennis have too many, while baseball and American football are somewhere near the sweet spot. This sweet spot can be determined empirically. A sport has enough scoring if a team that, in a large sample of games, tends to lose to most everyone rarely beats a team that tends to beat everyone.

This is all preamble to a way to improve soccer: have more scoring. It will reduce the random component, and lead to more minute-by-minute excitement. Change the game so that a dominating team wins by 10 to 5 rather than 2 to 1.

Here are a few changes I might propose in soccer to increase its entertainment value and reduce the randomness of the outcomes.

1. Free substitution. Allow fresh players into the game. This will make for more aggressive and faster play, which should lead to more scoring. Free substitution will also allow better strategic use of players with special skills.
2. Shorten the field. The ball will then spend more time within striking distance of the goal.
3. Increase the size of the goal. The most direct way to increase scoring.
4. Slope the field. Have the field slope toward the nets, both from the sides of the field and the center of the field. This will keep the ball closer to the goal area. Furthermore, this change will lead to a host of new scoring strategies. If a team can be distracted from the game -- by, say, a staged fight or a naked fan running across the field -- the ball will just roll into the goal.
5. Use two balls. Having two balls in play will increase the number of shots, and spread out the defense. The balls can be color coded, with one ball being worth two points and the other ball one point.
6. Add a goal tunnel. Have a corrugated metal tube that runs into the goal from beyond the goalie area. If someone can kick the ball into the tube, it is an automatic goal, since the goalie cannot defend it. New and entertaining strategies can be added with this feature. For example, players can be "tunneled" by being slammed against the sharp metal edges of the tube, thereby increasing the physical component, and with it, the entertainment value of the sport.