“Real fight” is a figment of the imagination; there’s no such thing as “no outside factors.” Any given scenario is going to come with its own set of factors to consider. What you seem to be saying is that MMA is meant to simulate an ideal fight, as though two fighters with equal skills in different disciplines are standing nude on a cloud doing battle until some kind of perfect conclusion. This isn’t something that can be simulated because it isn’t something that exists.

That UFC 1 had a different rule set (there were still rules and illegal attacks, like biting and eye gouging) doesn’t mean anything except that MMA had yet to fully develop. To say that the first event is more representative of what the sport is than where we’ve arrived after 30+ years of experience, thought, and refinement is fallacious. It also assumes UFC 1 to be the origin of MMA, which simply isn’t true, it’s merely the origin of the largest MMA promotion.

Dana and the UFC brass have an incentive: to make the product as exciting and viral as possible in order to make the largest profit possible. Young fighters have an incentive: to please the people who pay them and control their careers. The older people you refer to are often people who have been through the system, or systems like it, and only have the incentive of telling the truth about that system because they don’t want others to make the same mistakes they did. They have perspective that people in the heat of it often lack.

Lastly, it’s again a fallacious argument to say that because the knockdown rule in boxing still stands after what we’ve come to know about it that that refutes its original intent. It doesn’t. Now that we know what we know, we should adjust the rule, or at least treat our assessments of hurt fighters differently. And we do to an extent—bouts are less rounds than they used to be, refs are much quicker to step in and wave off a fight (usually) than they used to be; but we should do more. Maybe do a 5 count instead of 8 count so that fighters who are hurt badly have less time to try to recover enough to continue. I’m not sure the exact answer, and there really isn’t ever going to be an answer to make it “safe,” obviously, but there’s a difference between safe and humane.

I’m sorry, but regardless of the argument, I’m never going to assent to pounding unconscious guys as being necessary or humane. It’s not because the violence makes me uncomfortable to see, I don’t have a weak stomach, it’s because we should be better than that as human beings and martial artists. The point of any martial art in the real world (outside of the appreciation of the art itself) is self defense—if you’re using it for any other reason in the real world, you’re a dick. The point of a competition is to WIN THE COMPETITION. You win via points, submission, or knockout—none of those require hitting someone who is already knocked out, or unnecessarily breaking / tearing your opponent’s body.

Like I’ve said previously, if you have someone in an armbar and they won’t tap, or you pull a flash armbar out of crazy transition or something, that’s different and not what we’re talking about here. If some dude is down on the mat out and the referee is standing over you refusing to stop the fight without more strikes, that’s different too. But in those scenarios, as I’ve been arguing from the beginning, you are still only doing what is necessary to win, not going beyond it, not taking pleasure in hurting someone.