5 reasons why the UFC is better than Bellator

#2 The UFC has all of the history

The UFC's rich history allows it to remain on top

Even when PRIDE was arguably a bigger promotion than the UFC, there was always the feeling amongst MMA fans that the Octagon was the #1 place to be for the best fighters in the world. Part of that comes down to simple history – the UFC is and will always be recognised as the place where the sport we know and love today began.

Throughout the sport’s early years, young fighters would suggest they grew up watching legends like Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock and Mark Coleman inside the UFC, and those fighters were the ones that they wished to emulate by forging their own path to success. And thanks to the rise of the UFC over the past decade or so, today’s young fighters probably feel the same way about the likes of Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones.

Ask an MMA fan to name you some iconic UFC fights and they might point at Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar, Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell or Diego Sanchez vs. Clay Guida. Ask the same about an iconic Bellator fight, and they’ll probably struggle.

Try as it might, Bellator simply can’t ever match the history that comes along with the UFC name. It’s essentially the MMA equivalent of products like Kleenex, Viagra and Speedo; it’s an old joke now but many wannabe fighters might still claim that they “train UFC”.

And as the UFC continues to succeed, that history will only become more embedded in the minds of fans and younger fighters alike. For Bellator, it’s a vicious circle that they will never be able to compete with.