It’s become an all-too-familiar scene over the past few years, one that has helped lead to a slow-but-steady decline in television ratings: A “UFC Fight Night” on FS1 that seemingly exists for no better reason than to fill hours of programming slots.

A 12-fight card is stretched to the length of a baseball doubleheader, with long studio breaks in between bouts even if a fight finishes in less than a minute; a string of “Fighter A vs. Fighter B” matchups made for no discernible reason; and a main event that would be at best a pay-per-view opening match on another card.

Contrast those long, depressing nights to the frenetic energy of this summer’s second season of “Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series.” The show, which wrapped up last week, is set at the UFC Gym in Las Vegas, as young prospects compete for a chance to be signed by the UFC, with the company’s president offering contracts to those he deems the evening’s most impressive performers.

The premise of the show — which ran on UFC Fight Pass and will move to ESPN+ in 2019 — has made for a critical success. An eye-popping 33 of the 40 total bouts during the season ended in a KO or submission, as competitors do their best to catch White’s eye.

In addition to the furious action, the program simply looks different than the tired Fight Night presentation, and is usually done in two hours, a stark change from FS1’s mediocre marathons that have driven casual fans away.

White, himself, sounds giddy about the show’s future.

“I said this before and I’ll say this again, I could do this every Tuesday,” White told reporters following the season finale. “I love it. And obviously you guys do, too. We have more [media] here than for FS1 fights. The fights are incredible, they’re all good, everyone comes to win, the matchups are incredible. It’s a great show, I love it.”

Contender Series, is by necessity a one-season-per-year phenomenon, as there are only so many top-level prospects to go around. But a look around the sport of mixed martial arts finds this is something of a golden age of innovation, from “Contender Series” to Bellator’s Welterweight Grand Prix to the standings concept of the Professional Fighters League.

Not every idea will stick, but it appears that 25 years into the sport as we knew it, promoters are attempting to evolve MMA in a manner similar to basketball adding the shot clock and the 3-pointer.

And if anyone has developed a well-deserved reputation among promotional circles for being willing to try something new and let it succeed or fail on its own merits, it’s Bellator CEO Scott Coker.

The Northern California native cut his teeth promoting kickboxing before launching the highly regarded Strikeforce MMA promotion in 2006. Coker’s memorable moments include the first MMA event at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2007, which streamed live on Yahoo Sports and thus doubled as the first MMA card to live stream on a major mainstream sports website; the 2009 Cris Cyborg vs. Gina Carano fight, in which Coker headlined a major card with women at a time old-school conventional wisdom said you couldn’t put women in a main-event spot (the show drew nearly 14,000 in San Jose and a then-record audience on Showtime); and the legendary 2011 Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament, which launched Daniel Cormier to stardom. The current UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion entered the tournament as an alternate and defeated Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva and Josh Barnett to win.

View photos Scott Coker, the former Strikeforce CEO, shown here with Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix winner Daniel Cormier on May 19, 2012, will unveil Bellator’s Welterweight Grand Prix in September. (Getty Images) More

Not everything has struck gold: Coker wishes he could take back the live-event presentation of his Bellator: Dynamite card in San Jose in 2015. By placing a ring and a cage side by side on the arena floor, too many fans were unable to see what was going on at any given time, which led for a dead atmosphere on television.

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