How Many Fighters Can The UFC Support in each Weight Class?

UFC's lack of truly great cards is often discussed on MMA forums. Considering they do 12-16 shows a year with 5-7 fights televised I've often wondered just how many fighters they can truly feature. We often talk about how the UFC should pick up this fighter or that guy but I wonder if quite often if its simply an overall numbers game. Yes the HW div is lousy. That being said not all of that is Dana/UFC's fault. No one could have for seen Mirko's demise, Fedor's holdout much less the Randy situation. LW is a pretty good and competitive div. WW/MW have top to bottom good fighters but also have P4P dominate champs and LHW is just awesome. I'm not even sure that more shows is the right answer. At some point you get a little oversaturated.

Its the lack of loaded cards,Pride put UFC to shame!

the way he pays, he can add fighter infinitely.

i think dana needs to go to a friday night fights type format. let young guys come in and show thei5r stuff, but have one main event as well. then he can supplement those smaller card with the mega cards.

the way ho does it now, some guys never seem to get a shot to fight. it has to be an ongoing thing, not limited to 5-7 shows a year.

yes, his fight nights are kind of like that, but they don't yet cut it.

Pride used to have Pride Bushido,UFC seem to be using The Ultamate Fighter as there feeder event,most the UFC cards have at least 2 or 3 or more ex TUF fighters on them.The gap from when the fighters fight is to much,look at the LHWs theres around 5 fighters who all have a claim to a title shot,and about 5 more who all have a good chance of beating Forrest.Yet we didn't have any of these fights on the last card! UFC need to start loading there cards up,make the champions fight more often.Having said all that I think UFC 90 is going to be prety stacked,but 1 card a year is not enough!

I think Von is right. A bi monthly or monthly free "Fight Night" with lower level fighters and a decent main event on free TV combined with the Ultimate Fighter would be a great way to build name recognition and free up air time on the PPV for just top 10 fights. I still think in some of the classes you have to schedule carefully or you could blow all of your good matchups to early. I like Pride cards but to be honest they didn't always have much continuity. I want to see fighters work up through the ranks and I always thought Prides match making was kind of random and not always the fights that made sense or mattered.