I think something we should keep in mind is that we aren' the target audience of the UFC. If they had to depend on people who actually train in any sort of fighting art, they would have been out of business a looooong time ago. Their target audience is the young action crowd, the t-shirt wearing seat fillers, the stay at home audience that likes to see fighting, the people who follow whatever trend is popular right now, and, in recent years, people who follow sports (BIG audience)
All of us here know what smack talk is, know what publicity is, know what all the related nonsense is. And some of us, kinda like it from time to time. Even if we don't, if it's necessary to keep MMA, the UFC in particular, alive, so be it.
Sure is fun to watch, though. And tactically interesting as how various matches apply to our own skill set. Or at least what we imagine our skill set to be.
I think when we're all watching the matches, we seperate the soap opera from the actual fight.