Other sports have real partners that help them market and other sports aren't reliant on hype for violent showdowns. There's either city pride, state pride, country etc. You are one of a huge list of American fighters and the smallest of them. You can't live in "The best country in the world" and then wonder why your people don't find instant cultural inspiration from backing you.
Other countries draw inspiration from beating "The best" when you are the so-called "best" only way left is down, it's the tradeoff when it's not Soccer or something the States isn't near the top at.
See why the Miracle on ice matter so much in the US, even though the US really has never embraced hockey all that much.
You are a smart car hitting a wall in a world of trucks hitting curbs looking more violent, stop copping out about your status and do something to change it and direct this issue you seem to have and want to voice AT YOUR BOSS instead of indirectly beating around the bush and getting mad at people refusing to buy into your fights.
They all want to pontificate about the issues, but never want to piss off the people responsible by calling them out.
This is a superb post. Spot on about American culture. Yep, our X-treme approach to everything makes for a different ballgame altogether.
To go along with your hockey example, I would make a similar analogy with chess. Nobody really cared about it in the U.S. until Bobby Fischer started kicking ass in the early to mid 60's, culminating in the match with Spassky in 72. Fischer himself was the American Story in many ways---fiercely independent and strong-willed, had humble beginnings, fought against terrific odds more or less by himself (the Russians conspired in various ways to make things difficult for him), and still won. An uncompromising fighter. But this by itself wouldn't have made Americans care. It was only after the State Dept. realized that Fischer beating the Soviets would be fantastic PR for the cold war effort that his successes were given a hard push in the media. Of course it went both ways; the Russians knew that Spassky beating Fischer would work in their favor in the same way. Both sides were all in.
But Fischer, for all his merits and awesome story, wouldn't have become famous if it weren't politically advantageous for the American government to promote him in the media. The flip side to this is that he was very promotable. He was tall, broad-shouldered, masculine, spoke his mind and beat his own drum. Some frumpy bespectacled librarian Grandmaster, even with the same skill, wouldn't have had the same impact. As luck would have it, Spassky himself was kind of a playboy. Handsome, always relaxed. Not easily rattled. At the bottom of it all was the USA vs. the Soviet Union, a clash of ideologies on the grandest stage imaginable.
That's kind of the recipe for how other global sports operate---national pride + politics = interest. The personalities come after that. With an individual-based sporting spectacle like the UFC, you've got this very different rationale, and not everybody can succeed by it. You can always help yourself to some degree, but how much is open to debate. One of the delusions that reality shows have fostered is that EVERY goddamn body can be a star just because they think they should be. And that's pretty much what the UFC is. It's a reality show. The reality show within that show---TUF---is just a sly joke.
