I'm taking Tae Kwon Do. Is it like a unpopular sport?

Tae Kwon Do takes a lot of flack from people because it's fancy. It's not a bad art but mixed martial arts made it look bad. In the early UFC pay per views, tae kwon do fighters had a bad record. Basically, tae kwon do doesn't seem to be good as a style against other trained fighters. A lot of tae kwon do techniques are easy to see coming if you're trained to see punches and kicks coming so hard core fight fans dismiss it all together.