I used to be a big fan of both MLB and NFL. Huge fan. I became disillusioned with both a long time ago; Football first, and eventually baseball too.
They were always businesses, but they were just as much games. Now giant contracts, huge corporate sponsorships, huge endorsement contracts, exorbitant seat licensing fees just to have the "right" to buy tickets, little boys in men's bodies, and corporate welfare in the form of taxpayer-funded stadiums for multi-millionaires and billionaires, have all conspired to ruin both leagues for me.
Right now, almost my entire sports consumption is Mixed Martial Arts, the UFC being the premier organization. There is nothing more honest; no competition more pure; than two people directly testing their skill in the Octagon (the occasional PED cheater notwithstanding.)
The sport has evolved rapidly under the Zuffa/UFC banner, from an organization trying to shake the reputation of a seedy, sanctioned street-brawl in a cage, to the best high-level martial artists in the world, from across the spectrum of martial arts styles, competing in an attempt to finish the fight before the final buzzer so that the decision of the judges is not necessary.
Even since I started watching almost a decade ago, the old-style UFC brawlers have dwindled to nil. With a few exceptions (mostly in the higher weight classes), badass fist-fighters who just bring toughness, heart, and brutality, cannot survive in today's UFC. If you're not a high-level specialist in a martial art - or increasingly, if you're not a young guy who has been studying a variety of martial arts since childhood - you cannot break ground in the UFC. The competition is too extreme for someone to be successful with a street-fighter mentality. With few exceptions, if the great UFC fighters of just a few years ago at their prime could be transported forward in time just a few years, they could not compete with today's best fighters. The sport has evolved that much, that quickly.
If you ever wondered what it would look like if two "Bruce Lees" fought for real, it doesn't look like a Bruce Lee movie in any way, shape, manner, or form. It looks like the UFC.