Spamming will beat you online. You try to genuinely play the game right but someone will beat you with repetitive leg kicks. Also a loss online will take you down in the ranks much more than a victory will bring you up. Players are sluggish while others in the same weight class are not. The ground game mechanics are garbage. Knock outs are undeserved and come out of nowhere. You can be totally wrecking someone and one strike to the head can knock you out.
Basically, this game rewards spamming and poor gameplay.