Why isn't female boxing at the same popularity as female MMA?

[sentax]

You had Ronda Rousey of course, but with Cyborg and Nunes, Karate Hottie etc there are quite a few female MMA fighters who are relatively well known at least among fight fans.

Why is this not the case for female boxers?

[Eddy Current]

UFC pushes them a lot. They make the women's fight the main event a lot it seems.

[chitownboxing]

Neither is extremely popular.

[BWC]

Aside from Rousey and maybe Cyborg for a minute, they are both equally popular, which is to say not at all.

UFC puts it as filler on a lot of cards because they fight for peanuts compared to men. It's a harsh fact..

[Ray*]

Female combat is more suited to MMA, most of their fight happens to be stoppages at the higher level, in boxing the female don’t usually stop each other when it comes to their fights, they are notably wayyyyyyyy slower than their men counterpart, while the MMA women version seems as exciting as the male version.

[Phenom]

Same reason female WWE stars are more known I guess

[papichulosweg]

Because boxing in general is dying

[sicko]

Women MMA have more TALENT off the top of my head I know Women MMA Fighters: Cyborg, Amanda Nunez, Valentina Shevchenko, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Rose Namajunas, Holly Holmes. Reason why I know that is because the UFC does a GREAT Job Promoting these ladies and including them on Big UFC Cards

Women boxing on the other had, other than the fighters with Lou DiBella or Eddie Hearn, the rest you have to chase them down to keep up with their Careers. Clarresa Shields, Katy Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Heather Hardy...that is al I know and I rarely even see them fight besides Shields and Taylor who do have the backing and in Shields case she is a great self promoter

But Women boxing needs some Knockouts like Cyborg and Amanda Nunez delivers...

Women boxing Highlights never make it on ESPN Highlights because they don't deliver any HIGHLIGHTS! The UFC Ladies DO!

[rolshans]

There are a lot of fans of UFC as a whole, rather than of just fighters, which gives every men's and women's division a huge push.

[billeau2]

You had Ronda Rousey of course, but with Cyborg and Nunes, Karate Hottie etc there are quite a few female MMA fighters who are relatively well known at least among fight fans.

Why is this not the case for female boxers?

Oh lots and lots of reasons. One of the biggest problems can be traced back from the late 70's and onwards... it has to do with quality control. If we look at all the combatives we get a better picture. With boxing there were some female fighters who had good reputations, but competition was spotty. So for every Christy Martin, lala Ali, you had a lot of fighters who had very little ability. Even when a rivalry could take root, for example if Ali had fought Ann Wolf, a fearsome puncher... It would have left the rest of the division behind.

There are other international fighters in boxing, and they do have a little better standing because of the ammy program that brings up talented female fighters. Kattie Taylor is a product of the Ammys and there are other such fighters. but once you scrape the top level of the patina off, so to speak, there is nothing underneath to sustain the sport, or talent level.

With combatives in general it is a little more interesting because of how it parallels mens combatives. In both cases, the Gracie Brothers were the first professional influence on the development of the sport. Where as with men, there was a tradition of guys who modified, created hybrid arts, etc to compete with martial arts... the woman had a stock in trade group of female martial artist competitors. these women competed in tournaments, usually focusing on forms: Karen Shephard, Cynthia Rothrock, Gracela Casillas. and eventually
kathy Long.

Of these names the last two Casillas and Long were the two interested in fighting and if we understand their paths we will in a sense understand the path of woman's fighting arts to the present day: Casillas was a traditionalist. Her South East Asian Weapons Arts, Kempo Karate training was such that she fought because she liked to do so, but she fought as a martial artist, in a tournament circuit representing her art. because of the fluid dynamics and her talents she did well, but its important to understand that her success was contained within the conventions of the martial arts tournament exclusively.

Long was the first breakout from this mold. And while Casillas was a traditionalist, Long was a martial artist who promoted her own abilities as a kick boxer. So while Long drew sustenance from the traditional martial arts paradigm, like the men who created kick boxing to free up competition Long was more interested in using the martial arts skills to become a talented kick boxer, which she did and may have been the first to do so. her success presaged the entry of people like Luciele Riker, etc...woman who were fighters and not martial artists per se.

Out of this mold, the same one that propelled many karate tournament men, people like my own master teacher, Riley HAWKINS, and men like Bill Wallace, Chuck Norris, Tom LaPuppet, etc into the sport of Kick boxing, woman like Long also benefitted from the new paradigm. Unfortunately while men's kick boxing did become a force that is still around today, with women it was functionally eclipsed by woman's MMA.

In essence when women decided to train in MMA, it became a separate development where martial arts training could be considered a useful attribute at best, at worse? forms competition, and other forms of the tourny circuit simply were not applied to woman's MMA. So we can pretty much put an end to the line of woman that developed out of the tourney circuit and came to fruition in Kathy Long's domination of woman's kick boxing.

What we see now is the same uneven quality that has always plagued the woman. Rousey was perhaps the one exception, being a Judo prodigy did help her dominate the scene when she did. But women like Nunes, Tate, who I would argue is one of the most consistent performers... Are more boxers and wrestlers than traditional martial artists.

Now you know a brief history and what does it tell us? To me it says that women are still struggling for a place of consistency and uniform talent at the table here. I do not believe Nunes will last much longer... these women all suffer from being very talented on one area of the sport, but not really understanding the bare bones technical roots of how to succeed as a technician vis a vis martial artist.

These women may want to take a page from the history books and watch some of their predicessors, who might not have had the fighting skills, but were technically accomplished in their arts when it came to fighting and competition. For example, Nunes was left for dead by Cat Zingano... unable to deal with her grappling attack. We know what happened to Roussey, and Holm? what is it that stops Holm? who could on a good night beat Nunes (I am convinced at least) from really becoming one of the best?

Hope this helped