UFC n mma offically overtakes boxing

[Inspired]

The UFC may be good at marketing, but once the eyes are on it the product itself delivers too. You could argue that boxing only reigned supreme for so long because it had no viable competitor. Its only been during the 2010s when mainstream media finally felt comfortable jumping on board with MMA and covering it like a normal sport. Now they're pretty much at a point of equal coverage/exposure/treatment and lets face it, you show the average neutral person who could become a potential fan of either a typical boxing or UFC card and they're generally going to be won over by the latter. Yes, you get a Chocolatito/Estrada, Cheeseman/Metcalf, Zepeda/Baranchyk etc every now and then in boxing but on average MMA is obviously more entertaining. Some boxing (only) fans try to rationalize it with pretentious arguments about how artful and "sophisticated" boxing is etc etc but at the end of the day its just hard for boxing to compete with this kind of unpredictable, dynamic, eye catching, flashy violence head to head on a week by week basis....

I mean thats from one promotion, in the opening quarter of this year for ****s sake.

When knockouts are as commonplace as a trip to the loo, whats so special about them?
I suppose it just means with more options and permutations in the end a knockout isn't a big deal at all in MMA.
Like wilder losing to fury, was a rare occurrence in boxing but in MMA the top guy would lose and youd be like "oh ok, cool"
that why MMA just isn't as good for me.

It's like basketball, American football, rugby ..a goal is not a big deal as it's just end to end stuff. Then you get soccer where I can watch a 0-0 draw and still come out of it entertained because of the quality of defending. The point is a sport has to be evenly balanced between offense, defence.

Besides, I'm being told it's competitive only to get shown a video of ppl getting knocked out. Yet if that was boxing people would say "it's too one sided".

[TMLT87]

When knockouts are as commonplace as a trip to the loo, whats so special about them?
I suppose it just means with more options and permutations in the end a knockout isn't a big deal at all in MMA.
Like wilder losing to fury, was a rare occurrence in boxing but in MMA the top guy would lose and youd be like "oh ok, cool"
that why MMA just isn't as good for me.

It's like basketball, American football, rugby ..a goal is not a big deal as it's just end to end stuff. Then you get soccer where I can watch a 0-0 draw and still come out of it entertained because of the quality of defending. The point is a sport has to be evenly balanced between offense, defence.

Besides, I'm being told it's competitive only to get shown a video of ppl getting knocked out. Yet if that was boxing people would say "it's too one sided".

I get what youre saying but I mean..."boxing is more exciting because you see less knockouts" isnt exactly an argument thats going to win over most potential fans.

The knockouts arent more frequent because its more one sided (it isnt) or that they have no defence or whatever (they do), its because with the added weapons, smaller gloves, lack of count after a knockdown etc etc its so much easier for split second situations to end the fight. That in turns makes upsets far more common, which in turn makes it a lot harder to go undefeated for a long time especially with the relative lack of record padding.

And Fury beating Wilder was a rarity because Wilder went 12 years and 40+ fights fighting almost entirely none elite competition, he was on his 7th title defence before he faced an actual legit top 5 level opponent for ****s sake.

[Albanianboxing]

If someone wants to say that mma is more popular than Boxing in America I wouldn't disagree. I think the two sports are very close in terms of popularity in America. But globally I think it is understood that the Boxing fan base is far greater.

Imagine if Boxing had the unity of having one promotion having all of these starts under the same promotion: Canelo Alvarez, Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, Artur Beterbiev, Usyk, Naoya Inoue, Roman Gonzalez, Terence Crawford, Errol Spence, Ryan Garcia, Teofimo Lopez, Gennady Golovkin, Lomachenko, Manny Pacquiao, Deontay Wilder, the Charlo brothers, Josh Taylor etc.

We are all in agreement that Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua is the biggest fight in the world in all of Combat Sports right now right???

I still don't understand why Top Boxers making so much more money than top mma fighters is not discussed during this topic.

[Ochoa780]

No.. every month **** every year someone states this and then people go nuts over the next big boxing match and completely forget about mmas champ of the week..

[TMLT87]

No.. every month **** every year someone states this and then people go nuts over the next big boxing match and completely forget about mmas champ of the week..

....and then they completely forget about boxing again for another year or two while the UFC produces a steady stream of big PPV fights.

[Inspired]

I get what youre saying but I mean..."boxing is more exciting because you see less knockouts" isnt exactly an argument thats going to win over most potential fans.

The knockouts arent more frequent because its more one sided (it isnt) or that they have no defence or whatever (they do), its because with the added weapons, smaller gloves, lack of count after a knockdown etc etc its so much easier for split second situations to end the fight. That in turns makes upsets far more common, which in turn makes it a lot harder to go undefeated for a long time especially with the relative lack of record padding.

And Fury beating Wilder was a rarity because Wilder went 12 years and 40+ fights fighting almost entirely none elite competition, he was on his 7th title defence before he faced an actual legit top 5 level opponent for ****s sake.

see, what you should say is this

it doesnt matter about 'relative quality' and the format, what maters is the platform, the art of storytelling, the notoriety of the fighter and the drama that ensues from it all.
from that perspective watching rhonda roussey get 2 beat downs, watching mcgregor get it from khabib, those were quality moments.
it's drama and entertainment that matters at the end of the day.

wilder is a joke, i used to support the guy 5 yrs back, then he became a little cringey.

[TMLT87]

it doesnt matter about 'relative quality' and the format, what maters is the platform, the art of storytelling, the notoriety of the fighter and the drama that ensues from it all.
from that perspective watching rhonda roussey get 2 beat downs, watching mcgregor get it from khabib, those were quality moments.
it's drama and entertainment that matters at the end of the day.

Yes I agree with this. Boxing fails to deliver that to the same extent now. There isnt that water cooler vibe as often. Fury/Wilder managed to do it because it was two huge HWs with colourful personalities, plus you had the big individual moments in the fight that people will remember like Fury getting up from that knockdown in the first fight. Ruiz/AJ 1 also did it to some degree because again its HWs and it had the casual appeal of seeing a fat dude beat up a big jacked dude. Something like Chocolatito/Estrada just now, if that had been on network tv and better still the two of them could speak English, it would have potentially been pretty big. The biggest boxing PPV draw post Floyd being hidden away on DAZN and not speaking English doesnt help either.

[Inspired]

Yes I agree with this. Boxing fails to deliver that to the same extent now. There isnt that water cooler vibe as often. Fury/Wilder managed to do it because it was two huge HWs with colourful personalities, plus you had the big individual moments in the fight that people will remember like Fury getting up from that knockdown in the first fight. Ruiz/AJ 1 also did it to some degree because again its HWs and it had the casual appeal of seeing a fat dude beat up a big jacked dude. Something like Chocolatito/Estrada just now, if that had been on network tv and better still the two of them could speak English, it would have potentially been pretty big. The biggest boxing PPV draw post Floyd being hidden away on DAZN and not speaking English doesnt help either.

that's where i disagree..boxing has been and will keep on delivering.
aj vs ruiz, whyte vs povetkin, fury vs wilder, joyce vs dubois..
even whyte's beef with the other guys. miller's beef with aj.
there's always something going down, if it isn't with the HWs it's elsewhere.
It doesn't need to be about upsets. there's a lot of banter in british boxing. it's why it's becoming more popular here. Go right back to the days of Haye glassing Chisora, Froch vs Groves. Even when it doesnt deliver directly eg amir khan vs brook, their rivalry built up a lot of debate and a lot of banter and fun too.

We even have tyan booth man. there are so many characters and stories..but like i said it's about marketing them.


i guess you don't follow twitter and youtube when all the drama goes down in uk boxing. just look at ifl tv, seconds out. follow their content..learn about the people in the game inc frank warren and his beef with eddie.
it's all pretty funny stuff.


Another example, look at Alen Babic, he's easily every bit as charismatic and hilarious as any character from ufc history, he's nuts.
Doesn't matter about his 'level' because at the end of the day we're following his journey and will see where it goes. His story begins with whyte introducing him, saying he's signed this guy and he's a nutcase who beats people up in sparring. Babic then starts talking and he's fking nuts LOL.
just look at the fights he's had and how he built them up.
eg he fought some guy called Shawndell Winters, who got stopped by joseph parker, but he lasted a few rounds, think 7 rounds. babic stopped him in 2, just beat the living fk out of him. absolutely wrecked him. Complete offense, all out war.
will he gas out on a higher level? will he get countered and stopped?
that's the journey we're now following.
Florian marku is another one.


btw, real boxing rivalries last for years, they simmer..and they expand onto other connections and stories eg wilder vs aj/eddie hearn/white = wilder's love affair with fury/frank warren. it's also nice when they end well with haye and chisora or froch and groves.

rhonda roussey was an overnight hypejob, so was conor mcgregor with his blatantly fake persona, the copy pasted wwe character archytpe. it took the coach window incident which was staged to build up khabib vs conor mcgregor. Now, the fight delivered, it was completely one sided..and khabib lost his head after. That all delivered, but it certainly wasnt a legit rivalry.

boxing also has the beef with promoters. the whole story of pbc trying to fk up eddie hearn. Eddie also having his beef with schaeffer, schaeffer signing a deal with Haye for ringstar/hayemaker promotions..it's what opened the path for eddie to make the american move and then get with dazn.
you had winkle, loudibellend vs eddie hearn too.

[deowal]

WWE pro wrestling also has tons of fans and sometimes sells 1 million plus pay per views. UFC is more comparable to WWE than to boxing. Who cares how many fans WWE has?

[TMLT87]

that's where i disagree..boxing has been and will keep on delivering.
aj vs ruiz, whyte vs povetkin, fury vs wilder, joyce vs dubois..
even whyte's beef with the other guys. miller's beef with aj.
there's always something going down, if it isn't with the HWs it's elsewhere.
It doesn't need to be about upsets. there's a lot of banter in british boxing. it's why it's becoming more popular here. Go right back to the days of Haye glassing Chisora, Froch vs Groves. Even when it doesnt deliver directly eg amir khan vs brook, their rivalry built up a lot of debate and a lot of banter and fun too.

We even have tyan booth man. there are so many characters and stories..but like i said it's about marketing them.


i guess you don't follow twitter and youtube when all the drama goes down in uk boxing. just look at ifl tv, seconds out. follow their content..learn about the people in the game inc frank warren and his beef with eddie.
it's all pretty funny stuff.

I do follow it all to some degree, i'm actually from the UK myself. I'll give you a few bits of proof - "Michelle whore Phelps" "be safe", Kugan threatening to cave Prince Patels head in, Del Boys laxative comment etc. Its all funny. But notice all this stuff you're talking about is tucked away in the UK, a place where boxing may be pound for pound more mainstream than anywhere else these days (something we should be proud of because we are really helping to prop the sport up), it gets a pretty big UK audience but is barely noticed outside of it. I dont think a bit of Eddie, Fish Eyes, Kugan, Booth et al UK-centric Youtube banter is really enough to compete with the UFC consistently putting on big PPV fights in America and also being an internationally recognisable touring brand.

rhonda roussey was an overnight hypejob, so was conor mcgregor with his blatantly fake persona, the copy pasted wwe character archytpe. it took the coach window incident which was staged to build up khabib vs conor mcgregor. Now, the fight delivered, it was completely one sided..and khabib lost his head after. That all delivered, but it certainly wasnt a legit rivalry.

Ronda was already a decent sized star before she even got to the UFC, they literally implemented womens MMA into the UFC for her. She was an olympic medallist and had been main eventing in Strikeforce. So she definitely wasnt overnight and it'd be unfair to call her a hypejob considering she absolutely wrecked all but 2 of her opponents, and all but one of those in the first round. She was very dominant for years against a good level of opposition at a time when WMMA was a fresh novelty to people.

Conor, again, not overnight and not a hypejob. He had his first pro fight in 2008, got to the UFC in 2013 and main evented his first PPV two years later. And during that run he handed Aldo his first defeat in a decade (in like 15 seconds), beat the **** out of Eddie to become two division champion, destroyed Dustin in the first round and beat Holloway. Thats more legit a resume than Loma, Joshua, GGG, Fury, Wilder, Spence, Crawford et al for ****s sake.

LOL @ Conor/Khabib not being a legit rivalry too. Conor would be ****ing lynched within minutes if he ever set foot in Dagestan. Two fighters were hospitalized and taken off the card because of the bus incident, one filed a lawsuit against him. He faced ****ing criminal charges and you're saying it was staged lmao.

boxing also has the beef with promoters. the whole story of pbc trying to fk up eddie hearn. Eddie also having his beef with schaeffer, schaeffer signing a deal with Haye for ringstar/hayemaker promotions..it's what opened the path for eddie to make the american move and then get with dazn.
you had winkle, loudibellend vs eddie hearn too

All this endless political bull**** puts people off boxing, its not a good thing.