When did MMA fans and fighters become so obsessed with one-off superfights, and what does it tell us about what people want from the sport right now? Retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss in this week’s Trading Shots.

* * * *

Downes: I’ve been thinking about the money fight this week, Ben. Not because I’ve finally launched a Kickstarter campaign to get you and I in the YAMMA Pit, but because of all the weird fantasy booking this week.

First there’s the whole Floyd Mayweather vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov nonsense. Even if it’s simply Mayweather looking for attention and Nurmagomedov looking to flex some promotional muscle, it didn’t stop media and fans from talking about it.

Next we have Anderson Silva asking Dana White to book him in a 180-pound catchweight fight with Conor McGregor. When you add that to “champ-champ” being the MMA world’s new favorite term and Georges St-Pierre becoming a traveling Ronin looking for something interesting, a pattern starts to develop.

Have fighters and fans become bored with “regular” MMA? Like a drug addict who’s acclimated to a certain dosage, it seems like we need something bigger and crazier to hit that same high. Do you see us getting “sober” any time soon, or will we keep escalating the gimmicks until the Hunger Games become the new Olympic Games?

Fowlkes: I agree that we have a problem. But I’m not sure if the answer is as simple as “we got bored.”

Ask yourself this, what’s the alternative to the one-off weirdo superfight approach to MMA matchmaking? If we don’t like seeing promoters and fighters all looking around for the next payday, even if the fight and the match-up mean essentially nothing, what would be the opposite of that?

I say it’s the slow build – the old-fashioned divisional pecking order approach. It’s where No. 9 fights No. 8 because he’s hoping to eventually scratch his way to No. 1. But that doesn’t work as well anymore, in part because promoters have taught us that it doesn’t really matter.

Wins don’t necessarily add up to title fights. Losses don’t necessarily stand in the way. And even if you do get the belt, the promotion reserves the right to take it away or clone it for “interim” purposes in order to suit its own needs.

So if being the champ and having the belt isn’t so special anymore, why should we feel invested in any one fighter’s climb to the top?

I think the renewed interest in tournaments is actually a response to this. You lay out the bracket ahead of time. You tell us who’s in it, what they’re fighting for, and when it will all be decided. There’s a self-contained satisfaction to that. It’s also a lot closer to a pure meritocracy. Every fighter gets the same chance to prove he’s the best. What’s so bad about that, Danny?

Downes: There are a number of things wrong with tournaments. First and foremost, how long they take.

Let’s look at the Bellator heavyweight grand prix. Fedor Emelianenko had his first-round fight against Frank Mir on April 28. Now he’s fighting Ryan Bader in the finals on Jan. 26. I know you’re not a math guy, so I’ll just tell you, that’s eight months. That’s a long time to lock down a whole weight class.

When it comes to the Bellator heavyweight division, that’s a risk worth taking. What about the UFC’s lightweight division? The rigid format of a tournament would be a detriment to overall entertainment. I’ll concede that the heavyweight tournament has been fun, but universalizing that approach to all MMA matchmaking is lazy and flawed.

Why do you think there’s been an interest in bare-knuckle boxing? There are a number of reasons (e.g. it’s easier for an average or washout MMA fighter to be at the top of bare-knuckle game rather than vice versa), but I would say the salaciousness of it all is the motivating factor. It may be a passing fad, but it still shows that fight fans are looking for something different.

We chalk it up to fatigue from the number of events every week. Instead of event fatigue, though, I would call it sport fatigue. It’s not just that fans are tired of the amount of MMA; they’re tired of MMA, itself.

Is it possible that the sport already hit its peak? I’m not saying that it’s going to collapse, just that we’ve already seen how close MMA can get to being mainstream.

Superfights are a fun shot in the arm, but they aren’t sustainable. Your “make everything a tournament” idea isn’t sustainable either. Doesn’t MMA need a “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” moment? What would that entail?

Fowlkes: I thought I was supposed to be the pessimist here. What happened, did you get into a bad batch of IPA or something?

Look, we’re coming off an event reportedly purchased by more than 2 million viewers. You can say that’s solely because of McGregor’s fame and you’d be right, but it’s hard for me to look at that and see it as a sign that nobody cares about MMA anymore.

Historically, the fight game has always been a star-driven sport. It’s all peaks and valleys, and it’s usually the charisma and celebrity of those involved that drives us up or down. That was as true in Jack Dempsey’s day as it is in McGregor’s, so we might as well make our peace with it.

If there’s a sense of fatigue setting in, it’s not in relation to the big stars that only come out a few times a year. Instead, it’s the constant low-level noise of the UFC’s content machine cranking along. It probably also doesn’t help that, every time some fighter tries to speak up for more money or better treatment, the boss can’t wait to tell us how boring and unpopular that person is.

But this sport, when it’s good? When there’s a big fight filled with big personalities and legit stakes? There’s still nothing like it. It just seems like, instead of building to those moments, the powers that be in MMA are all more concerned with stuffing money in their pockets today and leaving someone else to worry about a plan for tomorrow.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who has also written for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.