Debate over UFC isn’t real, boxing’s plight is

Debate over UFC isn’t real, boxing’s plight is By:Matt Culbertson Published On:Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Since its inception in the 1990s, mixed martial arts has consistently come under fire by critics who call it an illegitimate sport. Sen. John McCain joined the crusade against so-called “human cockfighting” — himself a lifelong boxing fan. As UFC — the biggest brand in mixed martial arts — has exploded in popularity and gotten steadily more acceptable in the mainstream, there’s been a lot of garbage from the establishment and from boxing promoters in particular. A particularly stupid question: Is it a sport? Does it take skill? Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather seems to consider MMA a joke. “Put one of our guys in UFC and he’d be the champion. Any good fighter, he’d straight knock them out,” Mayweather said in 2007, making an extremely bogus argument that few took him to task for. It would have made as much sense for Shaq to say a top NBA player could dominate in football. There have been the homophobic and racially charged comments, such as big-name boxing promoter Bob Arum explaining that UFC fighters are “homosexuals” and that the sport is “a bunch of skinhead white guys watching people in the ring who also look like skinhead white guys.” Similar assumptions of MMA as a racially divided sport, ignoring many of its origins and high popularity across South America and Asia, have been echoed in the mainstream — including by Mayweather himself. All of this rivalry was brought to a head-to-head ratings battle on Sept. 19, when the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Juan Manuel Marquez bout was broadcast on Pay-Per-View at the same time as the UFC 103 event. It’s unclear who came out on top, though in 2007, UFC’s most-watched fight had a staggering 73 percent viewer advantage over boxing’s most-viewed bout. Ratings-wise, UFC appears to be beating out boxing, especially with the coveted younger demographic. In the end, this is what the debate is really about: market share. There’s a growing realization that boxing is losing its relevancy to a generation raised on MMA. And that means boxers and boxing promoters especially are going to be losing a lot of money. There’s not really any other issue to discuss, except for the subjective question of what’s more entertaining. MMA looks brutal, yet its fatality rate of one death ever in the U.S. is hardly comparable with the extensive history of deaths in boxing. It seems MMA is safer simply by reducing punches to the head, making full-body combat medically safer than repeated blows to the head in a standing position. Skill-wise, there’s no argument either: MMA involves wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, Jujutsu and dozens of disciplines for extended periods of time MMA contenders are easily classified in the same category of athleticism as boxers. In the past, boxing had a virtual monopoly on televised combat. Even as boxing loses popularity to MMA, it will never lose its place in American sports and culture. But make no mistake, the intense battle over MMA as a legitimate sport has little basis in reality. It’s driven by rich guys saying whatever they think will keep their sport’s ratings from slipping.