MMA.....explain to a Boxing fan?

My opinion as well

 

Wow, I guess Bob Fitzsimmons, Sam McVea, 154lb champion Masashi Kudo, Paul Berlenbach, HW champion Jack Dempsey, must all be 'gay' as well?

 

Did they put on tighties and have a bit of a cuddle on the canvas?

Guilty as charged.

 

I have to admit before I really got into boxing in my teens it was UFC that first caught my attention. I cant remember what channel it was on but they used to have re runs of old cards.

I kind of fell into them late at night and they seemed exciting but brutal in a way that appealed to me as a teen. I can remember the rivalry that Ortiz and Liddell had. It was exciting seeing these two enormous guys go no hold barred on each other. I can see why it appeals to a former wrestling fan as the characters were built up and its a natural and easy transition from WWE to a genuine combat sport.

I still have a passing interest but it never really took off, boxing for some reason took over. Probably because it has a history and more identifiable British fighters to get behind at the time Lewis Hatton Clazaghe.

That said I am still aware of some of the top British UFC guys like Bisping Daley and Etim.

I think one of the weakest arguments that people wage against UFC as a promotion is look how little x mma star got compared to Mayweather/Pac etc. Thats the thing that kills boxing is all the money is funnelled into the top echelons of the sport so guys have all the power.

Boxing has designed itself in a way that marginalises the sport yet squeezes the most possible money out of that ever diminishing fanbase in order to get a very very small minority ie a couple of fighters and promoters the majority of the money involved in boxing.

Interesting thought actually I wonder what the estimated turnover of boxing worldwide was last year? £500million? If the profit on that was £150million I bet about 80% of that went to the top 1% ie Floyd, Pac, Arum, Goldenboy

 

its a bit different, Lesnar was a national champion in wrestling (amateur not pro fake wrestlin) so he already had a great base for MMA, plus the fact that the guy was a genetic freak 280 odd lbs strong as a bull and knew how to use his size to his advantage, and the champion at the time was randy coture who was coming off a year and half lay off was about 47 or somethin daft and weighed about 215 lbs... plus the UFC HW divsion was farely weak at the time and randy wasnt the true #1 in the world (fedor)
a better comparison would be in anthony joshua came in and beat Alexander Povetkin (if alexander agesd14 years over night and anthony outweighted him by 50 odd lbs)
again very unlikely but MMA is still quite a young sport and most people who are athletic and weigh 250lbs would rather go to the NFL

 

Without the total number of PPV buys, amount of TV revenue (domestic and foreign licensing), merchandise, live gate-- all rated against the individual fighters drawing power, salaries by themselves don't matter.

GSP draws the same live gate and PPV numbers as Mayweather or Manny Pacquaio and he gets $4-5 million dollars. Even after Arum takes his cut, Manny gets in the $20 million range.

As you go down the UFC roster to lesser known guys, the divide between boxing and MMA is even worse.

 

:?

 

I hate seeing someone like Gareth Davies of the Telegraph described as the 'Boxing and MMA Correspondent'. I am a huge sports fan generally but MMA is something I just can't watch and I hate having it lumped in with Boxing. Two grown men rolling around barefoot on the floor hugging and wrapping their crotches around each other. The rare times it does resemble boxing is when it becomes entertaining i.e. stood up having a pop at each. Unfortuntaely, that doesn't last long. I find it boring and I'm a sporting anorak, so shows how good the promotional side of it has been.

 

Undoubtedly :deal

 

Davies has little clue about either to be perfectly honest. I listen to his podcast and he makes loads of errors and when it comes to boxing he is truly clueless

I'm a boxing writer and I love MMA. You finding it boring has nothing to do with the 'promotional side' not being succesful either (what does that even mean?)

 

No real competition as of yet, though the sport is growing internationally and in time other organizations will emerge to threaten the UFC dominance. The problem for them is that they have no chance of challenging the UFC's roster depth. So if they want a big-name fighter, they have to really pay him a lot of money to get him away from the big stage of the UFC. That means that a new promotion is looking at risking shitloads of money for a big name to fight a relative nobody. Anything goes wrong, it's a disaster for them. And keep in mind that less than 10 years ago, the sport was virtually extinct in the West.

But as time goes on, the steadily-increasing pool of fighters and number of fans all around the world will mean that other promotions get their foot in the door. The UFC can't be everywhere at once. :good

1) So many ways to lose a fight.

2) If you're a top-ranked fighter, you're fighting top competition basically every time out. There are VERY few "gimme" fights in the UFC. The #3 contender doesn't get to pad his record with 5 fights against cans while he waits for a title shot.

3) At this stage, almost all the elite fighters are in the UFC. There might be a half-dozen guys outside of the org who you'd perceive as a legit threat to the UFC champions.

Anderson is a brutal and clinical finisher. He has finished 13 of his 15 UFC opponents. (Not counting one who retired due to injury.) It's a joy to watch Anderson completely clown a good fighter and knock him out like it's nothing.

GSP is certainly the most obvious example of a safety-first fighter operating at a high level. His fights are sometimes not so exciting, though they always feel like a big fight. However, he doesn't stink the joint out so much as his reputation would have you believe. He's incredibly well-rounded, spends a fair amount of time outstriking people on the feet, and it's fun to watch him completely neutralize an opponent.

Not many IMO. The weight divisions are more spaced out than boxing. Lots of people called for Anderson-GSP for years, but GSP is a little midget next to Anderson. Now people are calling for Anderson-Jon Jones, but Jones is an enormous monster next to Anderson.

Several. Mostly involving Fedor.

Promotional issues. His company, M1, basically wanted to co-promote with the UFC. M1 existed purely because of Fedor, but none of us know how much money he turned down to fight in the UFC, what M1's demands were etc.

Can't help you too much on this one. PRIDE used to get massive crowds that dwarfed UFC arenas. But that was years ago, in Japan, and they never really tried to promote events outside of Japan.

Mayweather and Pac will beat a UFC card. But the UFC PPVs sell fairly consistently. It helps that they almost always have more than one fight with title implications - they don't generally build an entire PPV around one fight like boxing does.

If a fighter is pink-slipped by the UFC, there's nowhere for them to go to get anything close to the money, competition or exposure that the UFC brings. So good fighters have sometimes been frozen out because they won't sign away their image rights, aren't allowed to wear their clothing line to the cage etc. On the other hand, many fighters who have gotten into these disputes have ended up in the UFC anyway. Because if enough fans call for you, the UFC wants you on their roster.

Number one is that the fights get made. Floyd Mayweather, boxing's longtime p4p #1, has fought five times in the last six years and shamelessly avoided the one fight that EVERYONE wanted to see. That doesn't happen in the UFC. He would have been stripped of his belt a long time ago. You can't duck your competition and hold the belt hostage in the UFC. :good

Boxing - Promotionally, there are no pros for boxing. It's in a sad state.

MMA - Lots of pros. Fights get made. It's VERY easy to follow fighter's careers because you see established high-level guys in bouts underneath the main event. Guys can lose and two fights later they're back in the thick of things. Nobody runs their record to 30-0 against bums and then gets a title shot. Fans' opinion carries WAY more weight. Weight classes are sensible and easy to keep track of. Everyone knows that there's only one champion in each division, and everyone knows who he is.

Made a real effort to give the fans what they wanted. To make the fights the fans wanted to see, and to engage with the fans. Also VERY aggressively invested in growing the sport - hosting cards all over the world, for one. It's only March, and so far in 2013 the UFC has hosted cards in three different US states, plus cards in Brazil, London, Canada and Japan. And in a couple of weeks they're hosting one in Sweden. :good

:hat

 

Not true, GSP never sold over 1 Million PPVs.

 

:deal

 

The top guys not being unbeaten shows the top talent are fighting each other, plus because of all the different disciplines involved upsets are a bit more likely than in boxing imo. Matt Hughes(UFC legend) said if you haven't been beaten you aren't fighting the right people.

 

MMA is for weird guys, who want to get attention at High School or, if stucking in adolescence, at college.
They want to be "mysterious", "hard", "bad-ass", "tough" .. in one word, they want to be different.
They join the yard with Tapout shirts, sinister eye, bandana, some cheap tattoos from a cheap studio and a supplement shaker in the hand. The funny thing, they mostly dont have even muscles.

They claim to be "warriors". They want, that everyone says behind their back: "Oh be carefull, this guy is MMA'ler", "he likes this brutal sport, he must be a very, very dangerous man".

The typical MMA fan wants to have this reputation, because he wants to get attention for a special girl, in who he fall in love years ago, while beeing the victim of bullies.

He don't know, that he is a weirdo and people make bad assumption whenever they see a Tapout shirt.

Summarized:

MMA is not a sport to be a fan of, it is this whole "culture", what makes people loving MMA. Those guys cheering like crazy, when someone landed a jab. I watched after Bradley - Provo one MMA fight in Canada. To be honest, it was my first fight and probalby my last.
Later I realized, that it was some special fight for MMA fans .. since then I only was assured in my assumption, that this whole sport is a joke.

A lot of blood, wild men on steroids who behave like wild animals, trouble before the fight during stare downs etc. .. that is, what people love. Wrestling without a script.

Lets wait untill Wilder or Jennigs will step up and beeing someone, then most of these "fans" will run with Ali and Iron Mike shirts to the yard.
Only the weirdos, the "warriors" stay loyal to EM EM EJ!