DAZN is a bigger company than the owners of UFC but less experienced and more focused on sports on a whole as their endgame rather than just boxing. Neither company actually uses much of their own money anyway it's mostly borrowed and DAZN are the one's who have to make the moves whereas Endeavor are relatively in a safe spot. It's in DAZN's interest to get more rights to different sports than to just remain with boxing. Endeavor are in debt (more debt than DAZN) but are relatively in a safe zone financially. It wouldn't surprise me if UFC gets sold off again within the next decade. UFC and boxing don't really make much money in comparison to the Premier League or NFL.
Glad that you understood how nonsense is to compare worldwide sales to US sales. Now... I agree that UFC is the biggest combat sports organization on the planet. Still isn't bigger than all of boxing together. When I call boxing a "global phenomenon", I do because boxing has large events worldwide involving fighters from every corner of the planet, people that really have no connection with the US. In UFC 234, Adesanya vs Silva, UFC made an event in Australia. The main event was a nigerian who lives and trains in the US fighting a brazillian that lives and trains in the US. The 15k people who bought the tickets for the events were not fans of neither fighter, they couldn't care less. They were fans of MMA or even UFC itself. Maybe just people excited about going into an international event. Compare that with a Jeff Horn, an australian boxer, when he fought Manny Pacquiao, the +50k people in Brisbane where there to watch and cheer for the australian fighter. When Horn won and became world champion, he also did not went to the US to give a interview to Joe Rogan or try to be a big figure in the US market. Instead, he focused completely on the local market. Now, you have a champion of the world that lives elsewhere, trains elsewhere and doesn't give a damn about the US as a market. The UFC has only got a small taste of that with some brazillian fighters, but they never went all the way in. Why? Because MMA/UFC is not a true global phenomenon yet. General consensus by who? MMA fans? Overall, despite MMA being smaller than boxing, they're in much better shape, as I said before. MMA fighters are more present on social media, they seem to attract more hardcore fans etc. That's amazing for MMA. Now, at the same type that's amazing, it also mean there's not much room to improvement, because you are already doing thing right. In boxing, on the other hand, you have fighters doing everything wrong. The biggest american boxing stars are nowhere to be seen. Boxing is a organizational mess. Still, the sport attracts an unbelievable number of fans. Doing everything wrong and still being able to put such great numbers show how much the sport can improve if the things start to go on the right direction. Look at the UK, they have fights like Usyk vs Chisora selling 1 million pay-per-views (Damn it if it's for 30 bucks, that's still 1 million ppv during a pandemic and still 30 mi revenue. That's a solid 400k ppv revenue in the US), boxing fighters are huge local stars, the sport is probably only tracking behind soccer/football right now. That's why I'm confident that boxing will have a huge increase in popularity in the next decade. P.S.: UFC should be paying attention to regulation. How long until the Ali Act is extended to MMA and/or UFC faces an antitrust lawsuit?
Actually, that are almost no publicly available numbers from UFC ppv, as they don't disclose that info. We do have fair estimations, sometimes. Those numbers are complicated to measure, because they are disclosed as worldwide numbers, when UFC has a ppv model established in several nations around the world, so it's hard to point out how many of those ppv sales are US based and how many are international. In boxing, the numbers disclosed are always US-based, so we have a fair assumption of how much that fight did locally. You mentioned Pacquiao v. Thurman and said the fight did 600k. But Pacquiao is fighting on ppv in the Phillipines. Imagine that we put the millions of ppv he sells there and come out with a headline like "Pacquiao v. Thurman sells 2 million ppv", without mentioning these are worldwide sales. I do agree that MMA stars have way more presence on social media, something boxing stars should emulate. Even though, to say UFC/MMA is generating more interest than boxing is a different story. If you look up the numbers, boxing still is generating more interest in the US, not by a far mile, but is. And from an international standpoint, there's no comparison. Boxing is much bigger worldwide. Man, GSP and Chuck Lidell were probably the biggest ppv attraction for MMA in the 2000s (I will not count on Brock Lesnar, because he was bringing more WWE fans than MMA fans in itself, so it's almost like if a boxer was bragging on boxing popularity based on Jake Paul's ppv). Even than, they were, for most fights, not bringing these type of numbers. GSP only made 1 ppv 700k+ in the 2000s, exactly in 2009, out of 6 ppv events he headlined in that decade. Out of 12 ppv events Liddell headlined in the 2000s, he only made one 700k+ ppv. So they were definitly not bringing the same type of numbers that we're seeing right now... Worldwide. They would. Canelo v. BJS would have made easily 1m+ ppv. It was the biggest boxing match in times and it was really well promoted. Canelo is also the biggest star in boxing, so every boxing fan, casual or hardcore, kinda stops to see him fight these days. Canelo vs Yildirim would have made around 300-350k sales as well. In retrospect, that's what the biggest stars in boxing do when they make those stay busy fights. Wilder made 275k sales to fight a rematch against Luis Ortiz and Wilder doesn't have nowhere the following Canelo has. 1.5 million is a fair estimate of what those fights would have generated between them in the ppv model. Actually, Canelo was selling around 350k ppv when he was fighting the likes of Angulo and Lara back in 2014, so it's really fair to assume that he can sell around 300-350k to fight Yildirim in 2021.
This really depends on your definition of "large". As far as I can tell the only boxing promotion outside of America today thats obviously bigger than the biggest none-American MMA promotions (One FC, KSW, Rizin, ACA, M-1, FNG etc) is Matchroom. Then theres the UFC itself touring extensively, in 2019 alone they went to Brazil, Canada, Australia and Russia multiple times, also went to China, the UK, South Korea, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, UAE, Czech republic, Uruguay and Singapore. Bellator tours too. Also if we look at the current P4P top 10 in both boxing has 5 countries represented and MMA has 6. Ah ok, so lets just pretend the original main event wasnt an Aussie defending his belt, with a co-main of a rising star form New Zealand. *50k people in Brisbane to watch an Aussie vs MANNY ****ING PACQUIAO. "they were there for the Aussie" *60k people in Melbourne for a world title main event literally between an Aussie and a New Zealander "They just wanted to watch an international event" You're making lemonade out of lemons with this. The conclusion a lot of other people would come to is that Horn is just not an international star. Its not that he doesnt give a damn about the US market, its that the US market (and everywhere else) doesnt give a damn about him. Thats why his countryman Robert Whittaker has literally 20x as many IG followers as him. This along with a lot of the other stuff you're saying just emphasizes how you're deluding yourself about boxings position. A lot of things indicate that boxing isnt even the biggest combat sport anymore and all combat sports are far behind the more established major sports in popularity. You get that practically everything points towards MMA having more stars/draws than boxing these days right? I suspect you do which is why you're specifying "local stars", which just sounds like mental gymnastics to brush that aside. Surely having international stars is better than having domestic stars? Social media numbers are interest, so are Youtube views, so is forum traffic, so are the PPV numbers that you're trying your best to discount. The one area boxing does marginally better in in the US is tv ratings. Thats through the combined power of PBC (which is on network television giving it an innate advantage, when PBC does events on Showtime instead they can barely outdraw Bellator on the same channel) and Top Rank on ESPN, with both of them giving away most of their biggest fights on regular tv. 2009: UFC 100 - 1.3m GSP/BJ 2 - 920k Penn/Florian (+ Silva/Griffin) - 720k Silva/Leites - 650k Evans/Machida - 635k Penn/Sanchez - 620k Machida/Shogun - 500k Randy/Nog - 435k Franklin/Vitor - 375k Tito/Griffin 2 - 375k Franklin/Wand - 365k Franklin/Hendo - 350k Rampage/Jardine -350k 2021: Conor/Poirier 2 - 1.6m Adesanya/jan - 800k Usman/Jorge 2 - 700k Usman/Burns - 500k Stipe/Ngannou 2 - 500k Oliveira/Chandler - 300k ....not seeing a huge difference there. The numbers being that similar dont fit your narrative that the UFC are giving us worldwide numbers either, because the UFC was nowhere near as established internationally in 2009 as it is now. So for the 2021 numbers to be worldwide but still that similar to 09 it must mean the American PPV audience had shrunk massively. Plus, like...so you're saying only 300k people on the planet were willing to buy Oliveira/Chandler at any price point, but 225k people in America alone bought Tank/LSC at a premium price point? does that sound right to you? And going back to Fury/Wilder 2. If that number is only the US buys it would mean the American PPV audience jumped from 325k to 1.2m in the 15 months between fight 1 and fight 2. Again..does that sound right to you? that would surely be the biggest increase in a PPV audience between two fights ever? for reference Tyson/Holyfield went from 1.6m to just under 2m from fight 1 to fight 2. Holyfield/Bowe went from 900k to 950k then down to 650k for the last fight. Lennox/Holyfield actually lost 350k buys between the first fight and the rematch. The Tarver/RJJ trilogy started at 300k and peaked at 400k etc etc. So if Fury/Wilder 2 really did do 1.2m in the US that would be unprecedented growth. ....ORRRRRRRRRR that 1.2m is a worldwide number meaning there was an increase of about 400k buys globally from the first fight, which sounds a lot more believable tbh. Maybe with like half of the buys coming from the UK for £20. And regardless, like I said before, the "ifs" regarding Canelo being on traditional PPV are more than offset by the "ifs" when it comes to the kind of numbers boxing would be doing if it wasnt for the Paul brothers, Floyd and 54 year old Mike Tyson
No, the 1.2 million is the number of US sales. 850,000 from traditional methods and 300-350k from digital streaming. The UK sales were not disclosed, so it's impossible to know for sure how much the fight did there, because BT Sports, the network, often don't disclose their numbers. Based on Anthony Joshua numbers, it's fair to assume the fight made at least 1 million ppv in the UK, which means Fury v. Wilder II did anything between 2-2.5 million worldwide, which alone ties the numbers of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th best UFC ppv in 2021 together. I think you don't understand how strong boxing still is, maybe because you're not so much into the sport of boxing as you're into MMA/UFC. When you live in a bubble, it's easy to think your sport is outdoing expectations, just to be brought to reality. You definitly don't understand how boxing works. In boxing, promotions really don't matter. Most fighters are not even signed to one of them and are more often than not fighting in different organizations. Sometimes, you have the same fighter being promoted by several different promotions at the same time, like Fury, who is promoted in the US by Top Rank and in the UK by Queensberry. The business side of boxing is completely different and people are way more focused on the boxers instead of where they are fighting. Boxers make way more money as well. How the likes of Queensberry, K2, Sauerland and Teiken are smaller/less influential than the likes of M-1 is beyond me. In boxing, because promotion is way more decentralized, promotions don't need to "tour" another countries, because they often are already locally based. Also, it's very common to promotions being dedicated to a number of very few boxers. K2 promotions, for example, was one of the biggest promotions in boxing and on the planet for more than a decade. They were responsible for promoting the Klitschko brothers fights, GGG until 2017 and Usyk. Even though, you probably never heard of K2 promotions, even if you heard about the Klitschkos, GGG and Usyk. The reason is simple: In boxing, nobody cares about the event name, just the fighters. Also, it's not uncommon to see the biggest names in the sport to have their own promotions. De La Hoya, Mayweather, Klitschkos, now Canelo, even Devin Haney! So they end up owning "smaller promotions" that make bigger and more important events than all of those MMA promotions together and all of that without nobody realizing these companies even exist. If you ask, there's not a single big promotion in Central Asia. But if you ask people which combat sport is more popular in Central Asia, local people will say boxing without thinking. GGG is the biggest sport name in Kazakhstan, but he only fought there once, more than a decade ago. Being a global sport is not just putting an event in a certain place or having fighters from outside the US, it's actually generating a country-level engagement with the sport. The NFL makes several games every year outside of the US. Is (american) football a global sport with a global crowd?
Lol okay sure the US PPV buys almost quadrupled between the first fight and the rematch even though thats never happened before in any other fight, and (based on the numbers of a boxer who wasnt in this fight and doesnt fight in America in the early hours of the morning) the UK buys also more than doubled from the first fight. This is pure desperation, I was a boxing fan first, and am from the UK where boxing is perhaps more mainstream than anywhere else on the planet, and clearly I dont live in an MMA bubble considering i'm on a boxing forum. I also have eyes, and am not so biased that i'm going to do all kinds of straw clutching mental gymnastics when I look up PPV buys and see that the UFC consistently does better, or go on FG/FB/Twitter and see that their athletes consistently get much more followers than boxers, or look on YT and notice that UFC related content consistently gets much higher viewers/subscribers than boxing content, or go on MMA Reddit and see that its got half a million more subscribers than boxing Reddit, or go to a store and see a UFC game but no boxing games because EA ie the same people that make FIFA, NFL and NHL games dropped it a decade ago in favour of the UFC. Or see that a lot of PPV boxing matches today are freakshow novelty fights often not even involving boxers including the biggest fight of 2017 and the biggest fight of this year so far having MMA fighters in the main event. I mean, you have to wilfully ignore or come up with all kinds of convoluted excuses to brush all of this off. If all of these things were that consistently in boxings favour you'd think I was crazy saying MMA was bigger, wouldnt you? All mental gymnastics again. You know if you look up the schedule for both sports the actual number of events around the world on a typical week isnt particularly different between either. Like the number of boxing events scheduled around the world for the rest of the week is 54 vs 39 for MMA, and this is a week with no UFC or Bellator. If we go on Youtube to gauge the interest for the upcoming fights this week based on views within the last 24 hours,, Haney/Linares press con has 37k views, the Oubaali/Donaire press con has 3k views. FEN (the second largest MMA promotion in Poland) has a weigh in thats done 31k views (while the press conference for Szpilka/Rozanski on the same weekend in the same country has 21k), Oktagon 24 in Czech republic has 42k views, a hype vid for todays One FC in Singapore is at 33k etc etc but nobody cares about MMA outside of America doe lol.
Man, the promoter itself gave those numbers. Why he would lie about that? If that's the case, what's even the point of the discussion? I can just say that "No way Usman x Masvidal sold 1.3 million *cof cof* worldwide" and call it a day, because I made myself believe there's no way such fight could sell that. That's exactly what you're doing. I'm not contesting any UFC numbers, you also shouldn't be contesting boxing numbers. It makes no sense. So we are in equal position, because I live in Brazil, the place where MMA is more mainstream, and was a MMA fan first. Here's the bubble you live in. There's a whole world outside of Internet. That's probably a good measure of how well each sports is doing with the american youth public, which I believe MMA is doing better, but 1) That doens't show how each sports is doing overall. 2) Doesn't show how well each sport is doing globally. 3) Doesn't show how much each sport can actually attract, especially with casuals. If you open your TV, you're probably gonna find several TV shows that you wouldn't watch. Even though, they're there. That's because there's people who like those formats. Someone who works on a strawberry field in Oxnard, CA may not be on reddit, may not buy videogames or follow people on Instagram, but he may buy every single boxing ppv event. He also may be the one watching those TV shows that you would never dare to watch. As far as I can see, UFC doesn't do better ppv numbers than boxing. UFC 251 (Usman vs Masvidal) sold 1.3 million worldwide. Of those, 900k was in the US, 400k international. In comparison, Wilder v. Fury II sold 1.2 million in the US and probably around 1 million in the UK. UFC 253 (Adesanya vs Costa) sold 700k worldwide. If the numbers of international sales are somewhat similar to what Usman v. Masvidal did, UFC 253 has probably done the same numbers of Spence vs. Mikey Garcia. The freakshow comments are rubbish, as well, like we're gonna suddenly forget that events like Bellator, and even UFC, are constantly putting 40+ legends that aren't able anymore to compete on that level to fight against much younger opposition or even against other old legends. In REAL fights, not exhibitions. Let's also forget that until McGregor, the only MMA star ever who is able to sell 1m+ ppv/fight, the biggest drawer in MMA was a WWE champion. Jon Jones never made a 1m+ ppv fight. GSP never sold 1m+ ppv/fight. Chuck Liddell never sold 1m+ ppv/fight. Only McGregor and Lesnar (Because of WWE fans) were able to sell that for sure. Anderson Silva broke even once, but I don't know if it was US sales or worldwide sales. Ronda Rousey broke even twice, but I don't know if it was US sales or worldwide sales. Now stop and think about that: UFC, in the last 21 years, has been able to produce only two fighters able to sell 1 million ppv per fight and NONE of them for MMA reasons. Lesnar had WWE fanbase and McGregor sells for his public persona, not because of his fighting skills or results. in comparison, boxing had in the same timeframe De La Hoya, Pacquiao and Canelo who are able to sell 1m+/fight only because of their boxing skills. How you look at that situation and say UFC/MMA is way more influential/successful than boxing is beyond me, to be fair. It seems that MMA has a much larger hardcore fanbase than boxing does and makes way more big fights per year than boxing does, BUT boxing is able to bring more people per big fight than MMA does. It also seems that boxing is way more influential in latino and black communities, while UFC is trending in white communities. Because there's an event happening in one place, doesn't mean the sport is relevant there. When I look at boxing schedule, almost always there's an event in Brazil, but guess which combat sport is on TV every saturday. You probably also have lots of MMA events in places where people look way more for other combat sports. There's MMA events in Mexico, but guess which combat sport is on national television every saturday. Event in place x is different from actual popularity in place x.
This is what was actually said.. "In regards to the Fury vs Wilder (II) Pay-Per-View, they don’t have the digital numbers yet. The digital is well over 300,000 buys,” Arum exclusively told World Boxing News. “It’s probably sort of accurate (the 850,000 reported). But then you add in the digital on top of that. So three hundred and change (to 850,000). It’s closer to 1.2 million.” He never actually specifies whether thats America or worldwide. And that comment is the wiki source for Fury/Wilder 2 being listed as doing 1.2m worldwide. Except you're baselessly claiming that the UFC is giving worldwide PPV numbers even though their current numbers are comparable to the numbers they were getting 10+ years ago before major international expansion. Meanwhile you're attributing millions of additional unrecorded PPV buys to boxing fights out of thin air. Oh look, more actual hard numbers that you're trying to find a way to brush aside so you can keep up your delusion. What a surprise. Yeah these millions of invisible boxing fans who dont use the internet but also dont show up in official PPV numbers either. Btw why doesnt MMA get the benefit of all these invisible fans too? I mean how about I just say theres a billion MMA fans on earth, they're just not registering in anything tangible where you could actually detect their presence. Yeah i mean its not like literally every possible search you could do and every available source unanimously indicates that it does, with actual hard numbers provided, with absolutely zero sources providing any evidence to the contrary. The only sources that state this as far as I can tell are two UK sources, the Daily Mail and the Sport Bible, and the latter article literally includes a screenshot of Mike Coppinger (who is also used as the official source for the 1.3m number claim on UFC 251s wiki entry) tweeting that it did 1.3m on ESPN+, which is the American PPV provider for the UFC. That same Mike Coppinger btw is your source for Adesanya/Costas global number, as he specified that as worldwide. Yet he specified Usman/Jorge as ESPN+.... Ah yes those magical invisible numbers again. So we've just given Fury/Wilder 2 an additional magical 1 million plus buys from its officially released number, we've also now magically made it so Spence vs Mikey Garcia actually did 700k buys instead of 375k so that it can be on par with Adesanya/Costa. This...is...****ing...bizarre. Indeed, Stipe/DC and Yoel/Adesanya is the same as Jake Paul vs Ben Askren. He was also a division 1 national champion HW real wrestler before he went to the WWE, and was a full time serious competitor in MMA who was actually competing in serious fights for titles and rankings. Btw excluding the three 1m+ breaking Brock PPVs plus UFC 100 which featured him but also had GSP and a bunch of other stuff, theres still Ronda/Holly, Rampage/Rashad, Weidman/Silva 2 and Ultimate 2008 that broke a million buys before Conor did. Fights that have broken a million buys in both sports since 2000... Lewis/Tyson ODH/Hopkins ODH/Floyd ODH/Pac Floyd/Marquez Pac/Cotto Floyd/Mosley Pac/Margatiro Pac/Mosley Floyd/Ortiz Pac/Marquez 3 Floyd/Cotto Pac/Marquez 4 Floyd/Guerrero Floyd/Canelo Floyd/Pac Floyd/Conor Canelo/GGG 1 Canelo/GGG 2 Wilder/Fury 2 Tyson/RJJ Paul/Askren 22 events with 21 different names involved, including 2 MMA fighters, a Youtuber and a retired 50+ year old RJJ. Conor/Khabib Conor/Dustin 2 Conor/Nate 2 Conor/Cowboy Conor/Nate 1 Usman/Jorge 1 Conor/Alvarez Conor/Aldo Ronda/Holly Brock/Carwin Ronda/Nunes Brock/Cain Rampage/Rashad Brock/Randy Weidman/Silva 2 UFC 200 (supercard) UFC 100 (supercard) Ultimate 08 (triple main event) 18 events, 20 different names involved, no Youtubers or boxers. Not even using the bottom 3 cards I listed as they were marketed more as supercards than on an individual main event. Now what if you expanded it outwards to all cards that broke 500k and the names involved? which do you think would have performed better?
If I was, would that magically make the PPV numbers, social media numbers and Youtube views all magically reverse in favour of boxing instead?
1) Nobody in boxing gives worldwide numbers. That's an UFC thing. The numbers disclosed are US-based. The answers are always focused in the US. 2) We don't know which was the question made by the reporter, only Bob Arum answer to it. 3) The numbers of how much the fight did in the UK have not been disclosed. You're dellusional. The reason the fight outperform the first fight it's because there was a much bigger promotion for it, with FOX and ESPN (Now under the same Disney banner) joining forces to promote the event. In the words of Kevin Iole: "They will rematch on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, with only their 2018 draw sullying their records. The pay-per-view is a joint production of Fox and ESPN, which have teamed with Top Rank and the Premier Boxing Champions to put on a promotion unprecedented in reach and scope. There was a live news conference last month on Fox, that was simulcast on ESPNews. Fox is in more than 110 million homes. The final news conference on Wednesday was broadcast live on ESPN2 and Fox Sports 1. On Saturday, ABC will broadcast a live preview show. That’s another network in over 100 million homes. It doesn’t stop there. ABC is going to show Saturday’s fighter arrivals on tape during the broadcast of the Milwaukee Bucks-Philadelphia 76ers game. And on “SportsCenter,” they plan to show the ring walks of both Fury and Wilder live, which might entice a few last minute buyers. Fury appeared during ESPN’s coverage of the college football national championship game. Wilder was on the Super Bowl pregame show and worked Radio Row ahead of the big game. There were eight commercial spots during the Super Bowl, some in the pregame, some during the game and some in the postgame. All of the major talk shows on ESPN have had fight-related coverage, and its biggest stars, including Stephen A. Smith, have been a part of the promotion. Fox Sports 1 also had several of its shows on site at the MGM Grand that have had Wilder and Fury on. On Wednesday, the champions appeared on Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” which according to Nielsen had 7.1 million viewers and performed above average in all key demographics. Fight weeks in Las Vegas generally kick off on Tuesday with a fighter arrival ceremony. An MGM Grand spokeswoman said the media turnout for it was the largest she could remember." - https://sports.yahoo.com/deontay-wi...diction-expect-a-late-stoppage-190354341.html As you can see, with that level of promotion, these numbers become very real. So instead of being bitter about the fact boxing is able to put a single event that outperform half of UFC's yearly top 5 together, you could just admit that UFC is not doing so well as you thought initially and boxing is doing better than you would like to admit, despite all the problems it has. I'm not claiming anything. UFC's sources said these are worldwide numbers, not me. Funny enough, you keep talking about 10 years ago, but you don't talk about 5 years ago, when UFC was having it's worst year (2017). In 2009, UFC's numbers were pumped by names like Lesnar (WWE fans), GSP and Liddell. Tell me: Who is the UFC athlete today, except for Connor, that has GSP and Liddell appeal? It does. This boxing fans do appear. Who do you think are buying the Terence Crawford ppv? Not every single MMA fan is online as well. But UFC seems to have a much younger, engaged crowd than boxing does. Even tought, boxing has way more casual fans that are more than eager to engage with the big fights. That's why boxing produces the likes of Canelo Alvarez and Pacquiao, who can sell 1mi+ ppv/fight without speaking a single word of english, based purely on their talent, while MMA can't produce not even one. UFC 251 made 1.3 million worldwide. 900k in the US, 400k international. If Adesanya vs Costa did 300k international sales, the fight actually did about 400k sales in the US, about the same number of Spence vs Mikey Garcia. Again, you're conveniently forgetting the fact those amazing numbers: 700k, 800k, 1.3 mi are worldwide, so their US representation is smaller than this and closer to what major boxing events are doing. Why UFC releases their worldwide numbers, not US numbers? I don't know. You could ask Dana White. But the fact is that you cannot stand here and compare UFC worldwide sales with US boxing sales. How many millions ppv buys Pacquiao v Thurman would have if you cont the number of ppv bought on the Phillipines? How many ppv Fury vs Wilder II would have if you count the numbers from the UK? To be fair, you need to use the same criteria. Let's pretend you don't know I'm talking about fights like Rampage Jackson v Wand or Tito Ortiz vs Sonnen. These fights are not the same as Jake Paul vs Ben Askren, they're worse. Putting old legends to fight themselves FOR REAL to make some money because the company pays it's fighters peanuts. Shameful. If you read what I said, the point was never about him being a serious MMA fighter or not. It was about the fact his numbers have absolutely nothing to do with his career on MMA and everything to do with his career on WWE. The same way, McGregor's numbers have nothing to do with his career on MMA and everything to do with his public persona. Conor has been an above average MMA fighter for half a decade now, even though he never sold so much. Again, and I have quoted those fights if I remember well, the point was never about having single fights beating the 1mi mark. It was about producing stars capable of doing so based on their fight skills. MMA/UFC has never got one. The closest was GSP. Boxing, just in the last 20 years, has at least 4 names capable of doing so and that's because the last 20 years boxing heavyweight division, often the biggest, was controlled by the Klitschkos, who were big drawers, but on Europe, not in the US. You can break down boxing numbers in those few names: Tyson, De La Hoya, Mayweather, Pacquiao and Canelo. These were the main figures, recurrently bringing those numbers. You can break down UFC numbers in those few names: Conor McGregor and Brock Lesnar. (P.S. Usman/Masvidal sold 900k, not 1mi). Conor and Brock are the only fighters in the history of MMA who were capable to attract recurrently those types of numbers. None of them for MMA related reasons. If you stretch, you may put Ronda there, with would be the first to attract this type of public for his MMA performances. But them you would have to stretch boxing definition too and Cotto and Juan Manuel Marquez would have to be there as well. For a sport that is outdoing boxing in such a landslide, it seems funny that it's biggest names have never been capable of recurrently bringing 1mi ppv, nor it's biggest fights have been able to be anywhere close the biggest fights in boxing. The biggest drawers in the history of MMA are a WWE champion and an average fighter who is really good in promoting itself, but it's boxing who can't generate engagement.
Lol I cant be arsed with this anymore. We're going in circles here, you've been disproven with readily available widespread facts and numbers over and over but just cant accept reality. Theres individual parts of your post that I could easily pick apart and disprove with evidence (for instance I could just show you PPV numbers for Usman, Adesanya or whatever compared to Chuck when you say nobody other than Conor has Chucks level of appeal) but its just getting boring honestly. I mean I admire your tenacity and glass half full attitude but maybe you should take the hint and realize that the reason none of those numbers are ever in favour of your argument...is because you're wrong. This is why you're having to twist and speculate and goalpost shift endlessly to try and keep up your narrative as your 28 posts in 6 years troll account cheerleader MPG says "TMLT is an MMA fanboy hur hur" while I just keep listing you objective publicly available information with readily available sources like PPV numbers, numbers of events, social media numbers, Youtube views etc. The PPV numbers show the UFC is doing better - fact. Those numbers are then further backed up by using common sense when seeing that the UFC is going to PPV much more regularly than boxing and not using Youtubers, boxers etc to sell their PPVs. Obviously the actual available information is not on your side so thus begins the twisting, goalpost shifting and speculation - firstly you try to downplay the UFCs numbers by saying they're worldwide (suggesting they arent purchased at full US PPV price) then you compare those devalued numbers not to the actual PPV numbers for boxing, but HUEwarriors own made up PPV numbers where fights get double the buys that were actually reported. Because apparently accurate information for every PPV provider in every country is given when it comes to the UFC, but boxing promoters for some reason just love to make their PPV numbers sound far shittier than they really are. Then after seeing your speculative fictional PPV numbers for boxing, a curious person might go on the internet and check freely available widely used global platforms like Youtube and social media in order to gauge interest for the two sports. If they did that obviously they would see that things consistently go in favour of MMA there too. So once again, the bull**** artistry from you begins, this time its that boxing fans dont use the internet but MMA fans do. So essentially, your entire argument is based on imaginary numbers coming from imaginary fans.
I have done the exact same thing, the difference is that I give context to the info I put here, while you just drop numbers. You was talking about MMA being way more relevant than boxing, but them I showed you that MMA has never been able to produce ONE fighter that could attract 1m+ ppv/fight because of MMA, while boxing, just in the last 20 years, had 4 or 5. Them I showed you that while a name like Pacquiao, who doesn't know a single word of english, is able to pull 1mi+ ppv/fight based only on his boxing skills, the best MMA fighters of the last decades, like Jon Jones and GSP, never made ONE 1mi ppv fight in their lives. Jones vs Cormier 2, one of the biggest fights in MMA in the last decade, only attracted 860k buys. In comparison, Pacquiao vs Marquez 3, a fight between 2 foreign guys that cannot speak a single word of english, has sold 1.4 mi ppv. Canelo vs GGG, a fight between two foreign guys that can barely speak english, sold 1.3 million. US sales, not worldwide sales. I also showed you that your glorified numbers (1.3 mi, 800k, 700k) were worldwide numbers, not US numbers. That you had been caught on Dana White's bait to pump up numbers. And that MMA's numbers were actually pretty close from boxing numbers. And that you was being unfair to boxing, as you was comparing UFC worldwide numbers with boxing US numbers. Why Usman v Masvidal 400k ppv foreign sales count, but the million ppv sales in the UK for Fury vs Wilder don't? Why the millions of ppv Pacquiao sells in the Phillipines don't matter, but Adesanya international ppv sales count? Double standards. Actually, what they show is that boxing does regularly better worldwide, that boxing is more of a worldwide sport than MMA/UFC AND the numbers of US sales are tied with boxing normal events, while also largely underperforming in premier events. Jon Jones can't sell 1mi+ ppv, GSP couldn't sell 1mi+ ppv, Khabib couldn't sell 1mi+ ppv without McGregor, GSP couldn't reach, nor Liddell, Cormier, Adesanya, Ngannou or any other MMA star REGULARLY. Who could? A WWE champion and an average MMA fighter that is good at personal promotion. They're using WWE superstars and old man uncapable to fight, instead. UFC put 44 year-old Anderson Silva, with a record of 1-4 (1) since 2012 to fight against Adesanya in 2019. I'm not downplaying anything, just said it's unfair to compare boxing US numbers with UFC worldwide numbers. If you want to compare, use the same standard, mate. You put 1.3 million worldwide for Usman/Masvidal? Put 2mi+ to Fury v Wilder II. The problem is your double standard. I also didn't suggest they were not bought at full US PPV price, you did that when you downplayed boxing sales in the UK because the ppv there cost less than in the US. Actually, it's quite the contrary. Boxing has always focused on local ppv sales. So when the numbers were reported, you was always talking about how much the fight sold in the US. UFC, for some reason beyond my knowledge, start to report their worldwide numbers. Boxing never does that. You don't see Pacquiao v Porter numbers being disclosed with the millions of ppv sales in the Phillipines, nor how much revenue Canelo Alvarez earns each fight because his fight is on free TV in Mexico and each fight is watched by dozens of millions of mexicans, being almost Super Bowl like. To get an idea of how popular boxing, especially Canelo Alvarez, is in Mexico, the two biggest TV network joined forces to buy the TV rights and exhibit the fight. So you literally have the biggest networks in the nation exhibiting the exact same thing at the same time, so the entire country is watching and talking about the fight. You don't see Eddie Hearn talking about this income. Unlike UFC, most boxing numbers are available. Some of them are not, especially in countries outside the US. In the case of Fury v Wilder II, for example, the UK numbers were not reported, BUT, based on the fact Anthony Joshua could sell 1.5 mi for his rematch against Andy Ruiz just 2 months before and the first fight between Fury and Wilder had already done 450k sales, it's reasonable to believe the fight sold around 1mi ppv in the UK. Again, I never said that. I said the two sports seem to have different performances in different demographics. In the US, boxing seems to trend more between latinos and black communities, while UFC seems to be stronger in white communities, especially around young people. The problem, of course, is that Internet is only a share of the reality. A TikTok star is probably well know by every single person under 18, but may be completely unheard by a large of segment of population that is older and don't use this app as much. In Japan, Tenshin Nasukawa is a huge social media star. Twitter is the biggest social network in Japan (Only Youtube and LINE, an instant message app, are bigger social media platforms). In Twitter, Tenshin has 510k followers. Naoya Inoue has 300k followers. Even though, Naoya Inoue is much bigger than Tenshin in Japan. Because despite Tenshin being more popular with young audiences, Inoue really outperforms in the 30+ man audience. As a consequence, Inoue has way more TV air time, has more recognition, his fights bring way more audience etc. You shouldn't base your entire view about how popular something is based only in social media trends, because they can give you a distorted view of reality based on the demographic that is inclined to use more certain social media platforms.
Today, combat sports are on a limbo. MMA still is the combat sport with biggest recognition, but all the popular MMA fighters are the old legends, guys like Big and Lil Nog, Anderson Silva, Vitor Belfort and Wanderlei Silva. The current brazillian UFC champions are not popular at all. Pretty much nobody knows who Amanda Nunes is or Deiveson Figueiredo. Charles Oliveira also doesn't have a lot of casual fans, but this could change if he's able to maintain his title, especially because he's on the prime division of MMA. Right now, boxing in Brazil is slowly going through a renaissance. We have two fighters that could become stars in Esquiva Falcao and Robson Conceicao, but they're not popular at all. Even though, Esquiva has got a new sponsorship from a huge retail company that has connections with the government and now has an IBF middleweight title eliminator in Germany. If he wins, he becomes the mandatory for GGG. He will make an exhibition fight with Brazil's second biggest youtuber that must bring a lot of popularity to him. Brazil's biggest youtuber, who is also Brazil's biggest comedian and even a top charts musician, also trains boxing regularly and posts on social media. He's looking to make a boxing exhibition as well. These things may help to put more eyes into Esquiva and Robson, the last one a gold medallist in Rio 2016, and, if they're able to win the world title belts, there's a good chance boxing will make a huge comeback.
