2015 Year in Review: Sweeping Changes Drastically Change MMA Landscape

A little more than six months ago, the UFC's best fighter Jon Jones strolled to the cage and made easy work of his rival Daniel Cormier, putting an end to a blood feud that ultimately featured more smoke than fire.

In some ways that fight feels like yesterday, the rest of the year a blur of interchangeable events and ubiquitous UFC action. In other ways, UFC 182 was a lifetime ago.

The next time a fighter, any fighter, steps into the cage, he will be sporting Reebok and not whatever sponsor has supported him throughout his career. The drug testing procedures and policies governing his bout will be substantially changed, the punishments frighteningly severe. Misbehavior outside the cage will no longer be tolerated.

It's a brand-new world—and Bleacher Report's lead MMA writers have gathered together to discuss this startling transformation of our sport. Have some thoughts of your own to add? Come and join us in the comments.

April 26, 2015 was the sledgehammer that broke the camel's back.

Before that time, Jon Jones had shaken off enough straw to line the floor of a working barn. The consensus best MMA fighter in the world had earned a bit of a bad reputation for his single-car wreck and DUI charge, his single-handed cancellation of an entire UFC event, his public melee with Daniel Cormier, his endless social media gaffes (some of which contain strong language) and his positive test for cocaine metabolites.

But he skated through it all, dominating opponents inside the cage while absorbing only the loveliest of love taps outside it, the most notable example being the whopping one day he spent in rehab after the positive cocaine test. That is the very epitome of savvy in the public relations areas right there.

That was January. Three months later, Jones, perhaps emboldened by a cycle of enablement perpetuated by those who viewed him as a walking ATM and/or valuable partying buddy, allegedly crashed his rented vehicle into another vehicle. That other vehicle was occupied by a pregnant woman, who suffered a broken arm during the wreck. Jones allegedly fled the scene. Then he's said to have come back to the scene, you know, to grab some cash. Then he apparently fled the scene again.

The resulting backlash prevented Jones or the UFC from acting cosmetically. He was stripped of his light heavyweight title and suspended indefinitely. As the district attorney builds a case against Jones on felony hit-and-run charges, Jones keeps a very low profile.

No one should confuse Jones with Jeffrey Dahmer, but it's sad for MMA that its best competitor (and one of its public faces) now sits sidelined for months or more of his prime for an alleged act that might have been avoided if everyone had made the right evasive actions, instead of the right evasive gestures.

Last summer, Viacom announced they'd hired Scott Coker to run the Bellator mixed martial arts promotion. It was one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry at the time. 

As part of the deal when Coker sold his former Strikeforce promotion to Zuffa, he remained under contract with them for two years, followed by a short non-compete clause. Once that clause was up, Coker was heading to Bellator. Under Bjorn Rebney—the grating founder and leader of the promotion who was kicked to the curb as soon as Coker was available—Bellator had flailed and struggled to find an identity that connected with fans. 

But with Coker, Viacom had a man who knew how to connect. Coker has promoted fights for much of his adult life, and he has helped shape today's modern MMA landscape far more than many have given him credit for.

Coker knew he couldn't compete with the UFC by keeping Bellator's stale tournament format, so he threw it out the window. And then he went about creating a new business model for Bellator, one built around quarterly "tentpole" events, aimed at bringing back fans who stopped watching the sport while also attracting those who rarely, if ever, tune in for fights. 

Coker's first big show last November offered a glimpse at what Bellator was becoming. Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar, two aged UFC veterans, faced off in the main event. Underneath them were Michael Chandler and Will Brooks, the promotion's two best lightweights. There were other, younger stars. 

Oh, and there was a production level never before seen from a North American mixed martial arts promotion. It resembled a miniaturized PRIDE event, with its lights and smoke and giant video wall. There were customized walkouts for each fighter and matching light shows. It felt like a big deal on a smaller scale, and it showed when the ratings came in; the event was by far Bellator's biggest show ever. 

But that was just the start. Coker's next big show, last month, featured Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock. The card underneath them was stacked with fighters Coker wanted to highlight. The lights and video packages and the stage returned, and the night was a huge success: 2.4 million people tuned in to see Shamrock and Slice fight. It was again Bellator's best rating, and one of the highest-rated MMA broadcasts of 2015 thus far. 

Next, he's taking things to a new level. On one night in September, there will be a combined Bellator/GLORY card. The cage and the ring will be set up next to each other. There will be MMA fights and there will be kickboxing. Oh, and there will be a one-night tournament featuring Bellator's four best light heavyweights. 

You can look at all of this and call it a circus, but what you can't call it is a failure. Under Coker's leadership, Bellator has become something new and exciting. He has taken pieces of his history, of Strikeforce and of the glory days of MMA in Japan, and he has modernized them and created something entirely different. He lacks the bombast and the foul mouth of his UFC counterpart Dana White, but Coker is repeatedly proving that he is every bit White's equal when it comes to promoting fights. 

Bellator has become a water-cooler subject. Hardcore MMA fans may wring their hands at the notion of Slice and Shamrock and Ortiz and others taking up valuable space that could be given to a talented young fighter. But the truth is that hardcore MMA fans matter very little when it comes to the fight business, because the fight business is about attracting eyeballs to your product, no matter how you do it. 

Nobody understands that better than Coker, and the future is bright for Bellator because of it.

After years of what could most accurately be described as a decidedly hands-off approach to drug testing, the UFC decided to get serious about ridding its ranks of performance-enhancing drugs during the first half of 2015. Or at least it announced plans to get serious.

How serious? We won’t know for sure until the fight company’s new “Athlete Marketing and Development Program” (a name that still doesn’t make a lick of sense) has been in operation for six months or so, but so far it sounds pretty darn deadly serious.

The UFC is partnering with the United States Anti-Doping Agency to handle the nuts and bolts of testing its 500-plus athletes. It also hired feared former government agent Jeff Novitzky to head things up internally. Planned punishments for drug cheats are downright draconian, and the demand that fighters provide the promotion with their whereabouts pretty much 24/7 stretches the notion of UFC employees as “independent contractors” about as far as it can go.

But you know what? It’s all a necessary evil at this point.

Our sport at large—and the UFC specifically—has endured too many scandals in recent years to go on ignoring the problem. Now, if increased testing and bolstered punishments don’t act as a deterrent, at least a few fighters are going to have to pay a very steep price before the message is heard loud and clear across all weight classes.

How this testing ultimately affects the UFC landscape, efforts to book major fights or the future of the sport very much remains to be seen. In a period where it seems like there has been very little positive news for the UFC, however, I suppose we have to give them credit for finally stepping up to the plate and at least trying to make a positive change.

By now you've probably seen the response to the UFC's new uniform, a collection designed by the sneaker also-rans at Reebok.

It wasn't pretty.

In fact, the only one who seemed truly thrilled with the outfits was UFC President Dana White himself.

"Everything has been awesome," White told MMAMania's Michael Stets. "I really like the presentation that these guys put together and I really like the clothes. And the most important thing about this, is all the fighters are really happy with it and at the end of the day, that is all that matters."

White's inspired cheerleading notwithstanding, it was a product reveal met mostly with sneers and disappointment.

UFC fighters, without any say in the matter, will be forced to wear ugly and ill-fitting Reebok gear into the cage. And they will be forced to do so for less money than they were making before the Reebok deal. According to a fighter survey conducted by Bloody Elbow, most fighters will be losing a significant chunk of change thanks to the Reebok deal.

But reading about how bad these uniforms (excuse me—"fight kits") look is one thing. Seeing them with your own eyes? That's something else entirely.

Somehow the jerseys, priced at a whopping $95 at Reebok.com, made even the fittest athletes in the world like Ronda Rousey look dumpy and bad. The promised customization was nowhere to be seen. The fighters themselves seemed to be afterthoughts, their names misspelled as if they didn't matter.

In a promotion obsessed with its own brand at the fighter's expense, perhaps they don't. For the foreseeable future at least, UFC fighters will look largely interchangeable, their unique identities and styles victim to the corporatization of cage fighting.