Comments Thread For: UFC 197 Supplants Thurman-Porter for 3/5 Date at MGM Grand

[Mr. Punch-Out!!]

To be honest, I'm not really surprise. As I pointed out in another thread, the interest in MMA is starting to rise mainly because of both Holly Holm and Connor McGregor's big wins. Now both of them are going to be fighting on the same night (with Holm fighting Miesha Tate at that)? Look, I'm still looking forward to the Thurman-Porter fight but even I know that they can't compete with that. Their names just don't bring as much interest at this point.

I can only hope this is some kind of wake up call for the boxing world to finally give us the bigger fights that we want (like Canelo vs. Golovkin) because if anything, that's what MMA has been doing much better at lately.

[Bigg Rigg]

Why they keep trying to put my boy Una Ves on the same night as McGregor??? They did it last July and the ratings on ESPN wasn't that great. Same **** will happen here. UFC 197 is not the card to go up against.

[TLC8]

Nice Job Haymon; This Fight Could Have Been Done In Dec, Jan or Feb!

Al is all about what puts the money in HIS pocket. They've been talking this fight since Fall '15, and it's not about marinating some huge event. This is typical, painfully slow, Haymon promotion.

[Cloud]

This just proves that Floyd is right and America is racist.

Hehehehehe..

[The Big Dunn]

What is the big deal? UFC is staging a PPV with its biggest star and the chick that has been on every mainstream TV outlet since she beat the 2nd biggest MMA star. PBC is putting on a "fight fans" fight among 2 guys not well known to casual fans.

It's not unexpected they'd move the show. No different than College Football put its playoff and national championship games on days when there was no NFL.

Other than Floyd, boxing right now doesn't have someone who would outsell a card with McGregor and Holm on it.

Maybe if Canelo beats GGG and Wilder beats Fury/Klit winner then boxing might again have the biggest "combat" sports draw.

[MDPopescu]

... The Thurman-Porter fight is promoted by GTB Promotions -- that is Tom Brown, who promotes Al Haymon (as 'adviser') fighters...

[ИATAS]

Don't you think that's kind of sad? Two young skilled fighters being outdone by women's figure skating? (even though I'm sure its an exaggeration) When pbc went head to head with fu cking UFC PRELIMINARY fights, they got blown out. Hell the most anticipated fight between a young lion (canelo) vs a hall of famer (cotto) only did 900k. While rousey's past ppv fights against mismatches did pretty much the same. Even though holm pulled off the upset it was still considered a mismatch beforehand.

Not really because the boxing community can forget about guys really fast and it's always been that way. Thurman, it seems like it's been three years since he was last in a meaningful fight. So we all kinda got tired of hearing about Thumran vs Porter will it happen will it not happen, as if it's some mega fight that people were demanding in the first place. These are the types of fights that should be being made immediately under PBC. The huge fights can understandably take awhile, the decent to good fights between contenders, like Porter vs Thurman and Quillin vs Jacobs, shouldn't take 1-2 years to make, they should be common practice.

The other thing is PBC is still figuring out all of this stuff, working out how to present it, when, where, etc.

What I hope is that PBC realizes there needs to be some consistency. Thurman vs Porter could be big if it followed up several other good fights/cards. That's what I want to see from PBC this year - consistency. Imagine, every couple of weeks good, solid cards? People get into it, they get into a grove and everyone is excited, there is anticipation for the next card, etc. They don't have that yet.