Hold on before you read into that too much because he, and I are not saying that the outcome of the fights are pre-determined. What he is saying, and what I agree with, is that the people who get big money fights and even title fights don't get them because of their performance in the octagon, they get them by the amount of drama that they generate and therefore how many Pay Per Views it is believed they can sell.
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I've long believed that a lot of people are propelled to the top because of what happens completely aside from the sport and this can be dated back to Chael Sonnen or perhaps even before him. I wasn't really a fan of UFC or MMA until around 2007 so I can't say what I thought of it before then. I do think it is fairly evident that there is an air of WWE in how the fights are laid out though, and the public forum of Twitter callouts and controversy acquired outside of the arenas has a lot to do with how it is decided who is going to be top-ranked, and who is going to get title fights.
When I say things like this some people might think I have a point but ultimately my opinion doesn't really matter. When a 2-time champion like Dominick Cruz echoes exactly what I have been thinking for a long time it carries a bit more weight.
How many title pushes are they going to give Conor McGregor even though it has been a while since the guy actually did anything impressive or even won and no, the victory over Cowboy Cerrone doesn't count. Why is it that Nate Diaz, who loses more than he wins, gets major fights and much bigger paydays than people who have much better records than he does?
Why did that stupid BMF belt ever come into being? For me that was the apex of how UFC has become less and less about the sport, and more about turning the UFC into a bunch of promo reels akin to professional wrestling. If you got a good mouth on ya, and are good at talking trash, you get good fights regardless of how you perform in actual fights.
Jon Jones being slated for a shot at the heavyweight title even though he has been suspended multiple times, hasn't fought at all in years, and has NEVER fought at heavyweight is a crime to the sport.
Dominick Cruz might be sitting on some sour grapes here, because after being plagued with knee injuries, he was kind of eliminated from the picture. Now his big problem with bouts being rigged is that Aljamain Sterling is looking like he will fight TJ Dillashaw next and the big problem that Cruz has with that is the fact that this guy has only 1 win after being suspended for 2 years due to cheating. Cruz has admitted that he too was missing from the sport for a while with his knee problems but he never cheated.
For me I think that the fact that ultimately this sport, and all other professional sports, are about making money and little else is an obvious thing. I've long said that whatever your favorite sport is, the sport isn't actually about that sport and if it stops making money for the owners, that sport is going to go away.
So I suppose I should just shut up and let them do their thing but the point is that Dominick isn't wrong. UFC's ranking system may as well not exist because the way that certain fights are planned don't make a lot of sense and I think everyone knows that in order to stay in the limelight, it might be what you do outside of the octagon that is just as important, or perhaps even more important, than what you do inside of it. I have accepted this and I appreciate the fact that they try to make the cards as exciting as possible, even if several of the fighters don't really belong there based on their track-record.
The only real tragedy of all of this is that anyone who is not a native-English speaker is at a distinct disadvantage as far as creating hype around them is concerned. Brazilians used to be a lot more involved in the sport than they are now and I think this inability to create a media circus around their private lives is a big part of the reason for this.