The more I go back and watch UFC 191’s “Fight of the Night,” the more it feels like it was made for the viral-video age, like something out of the Russian dashboard cam genre of entertaining horrors.

There they are, John Lineker and Francisco Rivera, both of them with their feet planted firmly on the mat, ducking their heads into the storm of leather and bone that has to be hurting them both, but which they’ve each somehow convinced themselves is a good idea.

For Lineker, at least, it was a good idea. He went on to win this fight via submission, of all things, after just two minutes and eight seconds of wild, reckless brawling:

For Rivera, who left with a loss and a left eye that resembled a purple water balloon, it initially seemed like not such a good idea. Then he learned that UFC executives had declared his scrap with Lineker “Fight of the Night,” which meant he was now $50,000 richer.

That’s the kind of figure with the power to soothe a pounding head and aching heart, but it’s also a payout that tells us something, even if it’s something we’ve known for at least as long as the phrase “stand and bang” has been a part of our collective consciousness.

If you know this sport, you knew Lineker and Rivera would probably win a bonus award the moment you saw them wade into each other like two berserk ceiling fans. History told you that much, as did the roar of the crowd. When the suits in the Zuffa offices close their eyes and picture a “Fight of the Night,” this is exactly the kind of thing they see. Two fighters going for it. Two fighters “who war.”

This helps to explain why UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson has won just two “Fight of the Night” bonuses in 13 fights with the UFC, while John Lineker has won that many just in his past three fights. When we say “Fight of the Night” in this sport, we mean something pretty specific, and that something is not always a display of technical brilliance.

That’s not lost on Johnson, by the way. Speaking to reporters after his unanimous-decision victory over John Dodson in the main event, “Mighty Mouse” made it clear that he’d watched the Lineker-Rivera fight backstage, and knew what the reaction would be even if he didn’t share the sentiment.

“People were probably loving that Rivera and John Lineker fight,” Johnson said. “I was looking at it going, ‘These guys are f-cking getting hit.’ I was like, ‘Why doesn’t that guy change elevation? Why?’ I just don’t understand that. That’s not martial arts; that’s just two guys fighting. They’re great fighters, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not like, ‘Ohhh!’ I’m like, ‘Damn, they’re just f-cking swinging.’”

You have to admit Johnson has a point. If you went to a seminar taught by Lineker or Rivera, chances are they wouldn’t tell you to do any of the things that won them that extra $50,000. They both know better, in terms of technique, yet chose not to do better, for reasons all their own.

And it paid off. It also resulted in some not insignificant physical damage, and if you try to make a career out of fights like that, you all but guarantee yourself a short run.

But because our sport rewards and encourages fights like that – and to be fair, the fists-flailing, head-down slugfest is one of about two or three MMA archetypes likely to win the “Fight of the Night” bonus in the UFC – we probably see more of those fights than we would if promoters handed out checks solely for technical mastery.

That’s because fighters know what the score is. They can look at who gets paid and for what sorts of performances, and they can tailor their efforts to mirror that. Even Johnson was tempted to try at one point in his career, he admitted.

“I remember the first time I was in the locker room at WEC when I was fighting Brad Pickett,” Johnson said. “(UFC President) Dana White was like, ‘I’m going to give someone ($65,000) who has the ‘Fight of the Night.’’ And I went out and went guns blazing at Brad Pickett, broke my hand in the first round.”

It was a good fight, as Johnson recalled, even if he ended up losing via unanimous decision. He thought he had a shot at that bonus money, but this was at WEC 48, where, later on the card, Leonard Garcia and Chan Sung Jung engaged in an epic slugfest that people still talk about as one of the most memorable fights of all time.

Those two got the $65,000 check. Johnson got a loss and trip to the hospital. In fact, he and Pickett were still there, at the same hospital, when they learned just enough about the brawl between Garcia and “The Korean Zombie” to know they probably shouldn’t expect that bonus money after all. Naturally, this had an impact on Johnson.

“I was like, ‘That gig’s f-cking over,’” Johnson said. “‘No more of that sh-t.’”

Instead, Johnson went the other way. He made one more attempt at slugging it out, he said, in his first fight with Ian McCall. That resulted in a draw and his very first “Fight of the Night” bonus (the second would come a year later, in his first fight with Dodson), but it also left him with vertigo, he said. In his hotel room later that night, he found himself unable to focus on anything, which didn’t seem to him like a great sign in terms of overall brain health.

That, he said, is when he told himself that brawling is “not your gift.” His gift was speed, technique, the ability to hit and not get hit. So he went with that. It’s worked out, in that it made him a champion with seven consecutive title defenses (so far) and a face that still looked “prettier than a motherf-cker” after his most recent five-rounder. But he’s also paid a different kind of price.

No UFC champion gets less love from fans as Johnson, or hears as many boos even when he’s doing exactly what he set out to do. No one is as good while inspiring so much indifference. It’s difficult to know for sure, what with the intentionally murky financial waters in this sport, but Johnson’s success-to-payout ratio is likely at or near the bottom for UFC titleholders. That thing that we have decided, either intentionally or otherwise, constitutes a “great” fight? He doesn’t really do that.

It’s weird, though, how both fan approval and the bonus-based reward system in the UFC can shape the sport in certain ways, while making those who choose a different path almost glaringly unpopular. It’s weird how it makes us regard a certain type of bad as good, and a certain type of good as boring.

At the same time, one of the great things about MMA is its variety. All these different ways to win, all these different gifts to employ. Every fighter gets a chance to choose and then choose again. It’s no use complaining about what other people like and what they don’t.

Maybe it’s the least we can do to acknowledge the extent to which our responses and the promoter’s payouts affect those choices. Especially since, by the time the fighters are sitting around in hospitals or trying to pull their thoughts together in a hotel rooms, we’ve usually turned off the TV.

For more on UFC 191, check out the UFC Events section of the site.