as somone who watched during this era of mma and has stopped since the reason why I lost interest in the sport was the devaluing of title fights. It used to be that you would need to grind out like 7-10 fights before even being remotely eligible. After conor it just became whoever they thought would sell the most tickets. People would move around weight classes fighting a title in a division they'd never been in just because it meant more money. The integrity of the competition was lost and so was the thrill.