That was an amazingly well put together card by the UFC top to bottom, which the UFC is pretty good at in general with their PPVs. Boxing needs to get its acts together and stack their PPV cards if they want people buying them. Canelo is probably the only guy who can sell a card on his name alone. Look at the poor numbers Crawford just did.
Another thing about Canelo is his PPV buys are from the Mexican fans only who will always support him. Canelo does not have much crossover appeal to other non-Mexican/Hispanic fans. he is not a de la hoya or tyson
Canelo has been pretty much the face of boxing since Floyd's retirement as well as being the p4p number 1. I think he might be the most famous Mexican in modern history, he has mass appeal and popularity in Mexico, pretty much everyone knows who he is. The UFC doesn't have a fighter with the popularity of Canelo so I'm not surprised. I'm pretty sure Canelo can easily do over a million ppv buys but a lot of his general fanbase don't know who he's fighting, mostly Euro level title holders nobody has heard of outside of the UK.
Joshua is another fighter who can make 1M-1,5M PPV buys, easily actually. But that is cheap UK style PPV, so not really comparable to expensive $$$ PPV revenues.
The UFC was doing half as many events per year back in 06-09, barely travelled outside of America, were on Spike TV, didnt get proper mainstream media coverage/acceptance. There was like a cult American frat boy culture around it back then with the Tapout/Affliction shirts etc which died, but the UFC is as a whole bigger and more established now, especially internationally. The UFC is having its best financial year ever right now. Raw and Smackdown gets better ratings than both the UFC and boxing, by a lot, and has done for a long time. Its just a different kind of product. UFC generally gets better ratings than Top Rank on the same network though. You were disappointed with UFC 268? the consensus right now is that it was one of the best UFC cards ever.
Im actually surprised Canelo beat the UFC head to head on this particular night to be honest. UFC had a pretty stacked card that night with multiple anticipated matchups. Plant isnt that well known and the fight itself wasnt 1) that appealing from an action standpoint, or 2) that appealing from a competitive standpoint (outside of a few people like me that thought it had potential to be somewhat interesting) There was no real drama here though. Drama as in danger. So for Canelo to be in that situation and still out perform the UFC card, is somewhat impressive.
Im not sure people who question the UFCs popularity are paying attention. Go look at the metrics. Youtube views, social medias, google trends. Look at their infastructure, how many shows they do, how many employees they have, (that takes $$$ to maintain), how far their reach has become, ect ect. If you think UFC was bigger in the 90s, because more people were wearing tap out shirts... eh.., idk. UFC is raking it in, and while popularity will always have cycles, its doing relatively well at the moment, all things considered.
UFC stack their cards and the fans always show up. Put £1 on the favourite for every fight on the UFC card, then do the same on a boxing card. Night and day. Imagine if it was McGregor fighting at the same time. UFC would trounce Canelo (Not because McGregor is a better fighter, which he clearly isn’t. But is a much bigger star)
One thing to consider... National retail chains Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings were playing the UFC card. They have exclusive deals/pricing. If there's a UFC card, big or small, it's at Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings. Hooters will sometimes on a rare occasion play a big boxing match. I've seen Pacquiao-Bradley III, Pacquiao-Vargas, and Fury-Wilder.
I've seen MMA fans ranting and raving about one of the worst PPV cards in recent boxing history somehow beating one of the most stacked UFC cards ever being some big W. The Weasle is leading that charge and has no objectivity on the matter.
Yes, but no. £25 might seem cheap when you convert it to dollars, but you also have to consider how many more people in the UK are struggling financially compared to the US. Most people can't even think of trying to pay £25, and barely anyone watches boxing in the UK. It's all football, that's all we really watch. £25 is nuts. So 1m is very very impressive.
That Canelo card was absolute shite....against a stacked UFC card. Its only a testament to Canelos general popularity. What I'm more curious about is what were the fighters purses? I read somewhere that Canelo was going to pocket $40M for this one fight and Plant $10. If UFC sales were comparable, what did Usman and Covington make?
