UFC 306: The good, the bad and the delightfully bizarre of Noche ...

Merab Dvalishvili's decisive victory over Sean O'Malley for the UFC bantamweight title did not win Fight of the Night. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)

UFC 306 promised us an MMA event in which the venue itself was the star. The technological marvel of the Las Vegas Sphere helped make that possible. But then so did the headlining fighters themselves, who did enough to win without ever doing so much that they threatened to steal the spotlight.

In the main event, Merab Dvalishvili out-grappled and outpointed Sean O’Malley to become the new UFC men’s bantamweight champion. And in the co-main, Valentina Shevchenko regained the women’s flyweight title she held for nearly five consecutive years, finally getting her revenge against Alexa Grasso via unanimous decision.

Neither fight will go down in history as an all-time great. They weren’t even among the best UFC fights of the last six months. Normally that might be an unfair or at least ungenerous metric to apply, but when you’re promised the single greatest fight sports event that anybody has ever seen, well, you get the bar you set for yourself.

First, the good stuff about the UFC’s debut (and farewell, or so we’re told) at Sphere:

– Once someone finally flipped the switch on the thing shortly before the pay-per-view portion of the card, the visuals were pretty stunning. From Aztec ruins flickering in torchlight to marigolds falling from the sky during a Day of the Dead vignette, the Sphere’s immersive quality was put to good use between bouts.

– The UFC production team also managed to walk the fine line between mesmerizing presentation and annoying distraction. The “chapters” between fights set the stage, then a static visual took over as the backdrop to each fight without ever becoming an overbearing nuisance.

– The undercard fighters showed up big time, delivering some wild swings in competitive fights. Esteban Ribovics’ win over Daniel Zellhuber, along with Ronaldo Rodriguez’s comeback victory over Ode Osbourne, were both highlights of the evening.

Now for the bad:

– For the first couple hours of the event, the Sphere was essentially a giant screensaver. Even in that state it managed to be something different and somewhat interesting. But after spending much of the last year hearing UFC president Dana White obsess over this venue, you’d have thought they’d want to use it at full power for the entire night rather than just a portion.

– The UFC seemed to think there was a narrative through line connecting these video vignettes between fights, but that got pretty murky by the end. This was supposed to be about the history of Mexican combat sports, but then we were watching a CGI scene of an indistinct figure flying to the top of a futuristic cityscape and it was hard to tell what that had to do with … anything, really. Visually, the presentation was mostly great. As a cohesive story, it felt like someone using ChatGPT to summarize the history of Mexico.

– No matter how amazing the scenery is, people still buy tickets to a UFC fight to see the stuff inside the cage. And when the culmination of a seven-hour (!!) show is 10 pretty dull rounds spread out across the final two fights? Well, it doesn’t exactly send people reeling starry-eyed into the Vegas night.

That last one is just part of this business. Even if you book the best matchups possible between all the biggest stars available, you can never guarantee great fights. All you can do is put the pieces in place, lock the cage door, and hope for the best. Sometimes you get fireworks. Sometimes you get duds.

UFC 306 ended with two fights that were far more the latter than the former. So it goes. If we hadn’t been promised the single greatest live combat sports show ever seen (White’s actual words), we might be more forgiving. But once you set those expectations you have to live with them.

Which is not to say that any of this was a mistake for the UFC. Trying something new and pushing the creative limits of its own live production was a good choice. Hopefully the UFC does more of that elsewhere, even when it doesn’t have the magic of the Sphere to do it with.

If this event showed us anything, it’s that there are different ways to present this sport. The UFC has been doing it one particular way so successfully for so long that it might be at the risk of forgetting this. An occasional reminder is a good thing, even if the results may not totally live up to the hype.