UFC might be making more money but the long term strategy is far from being where the company wants it to be who acquired it. I think they borrowed a ton of money to purchase the UFC and it may take another decade or longer to recover from. Whereas for example Tony Khan hasn't made a real profit yet with AEW but he didn't borrow money to start the wrestling company. It's more of a toy or hobby to mess around with to him. I thought the Canelo vs Plant fight was better than the fights on the UFC card but i didn't expect it prior to watching. UFC's product is more compared to WWE because it's copied the business model. I think UFC's product isn't as good as it used to be. The PPVs may be better than boxing but i think overall they've started to diminish in quality due to all of the Fight Nights they've been churning out. I think they could stack the cards better like in previous years. Instead of 2 or 3 good fights they could have 5 good fights with better matchmaking and less filler events. I didn't care for Namajunas rematch and i thought Covington vs Usman 2 wasn't as good as the first fight. Gaethje vs Chandler wasn't bad but it was just a bar room brawl. Gane vs Ngannou is interesting but i personally don't care to see McGregor vs Poirier 4 or McGregor vs Chandler. It won't really make any difference or answer any questions we don't already know. Poirier vs Oliveira is a decent fight but style wise i don't think it's particularly exciting. I just think there's more talent coming through in boxing and more potential exciting matches to come through in the future. UFC has some good divisions but they're starting to simmer out a bit. Volkanowski vs Holloway 3 Usman vs Edwards 2 Covington vs Masvidal Gane vs Ngannou - Stipe to fight winner Prochazka vs Rakic Poirier vs Oliveira Adesanya vs Whitaker 2 Sterling vs Yan 2 Moreno vs Figueiredo 3 McGregor vs Chandler or Gaethje or both. Khamzat Chimaev vs anyone in the top 10 is worth watching. Islam Makhachev vs anyone in the top 10 is worth watching. Alex Pereira if he keeps winning and goes up the rankings maybe he can get a shot at Adesanya. Amanda Nunes could fight Kayla Harrison if the UFC signs her. That's a big fight for women's mma. The rest i won't care to tune into watch because it's mostly filler fights. I might watch them but i'm not too bothered if i miss them or not. I think in nearly every UFC weight division it's pretty much confirmed outside of two divisions or three divisions who the top guy is. Usman has cleaned up his division. Adesanya is think is comfortably ahead of everyone else. Nunes has no competition. Shevchenko has no competition in her division. Volkanowski is the top guy in the division and only maybe Holloway and Ortega could potentially beat him if given another chance. Light heavyweight is missing Jon Jones and is still in a bit of limbo. UFC will be all rematches soon or much more filler fights with relative unknowns and recycled fighters being pushed as stars again when they've lost dozens of times. Masvidal and Nate Diaz are the equivalent of Dereck Chisora at this point. I'm no longer that interested to watch them fight. I'll watch them but i wouldn't ever make a bet on them to win these days. I think boxing has much more of a chance to hit a homerun with a star coming through who could reach the level at least of Canelo in the future than UFC does finding a fighter with Conor's star quality. It's harder to build a star in UFC by talent alone based on the dynamics of the business given it's easier to lose. Mayweather and Conor McGregor are anomalies and the majority won't ever reach their star level. Paddy Pimblett has some hype around him but i think he's gonna get knocked out before he gets going similar to Darren Till. If Darren Till kept winning he had potential to be a bigger name than he is. McGregor was fortunate he was in the right place at the right time on his rise through UFC. He didn't have it easy but he had it easier than a lot of MMA fighters coming up through the ranks.
Did you see the prelims of 268? there was a lot of great stuff on there. I thought it was one of the best nights of fights the UFC has ever put out tbh. Gaethje/Chandler was probably a top 5 all time MMA fight, Usman/Covington 2 was one of the best UFC fights of the year, Burgos/Quarantillo was a very good fight as well but it didnt hit as hard because it had to follow Gaethje/Chandler. Then there was the Chito/Edgar front kick KO, the Barnett/Villante wheel kick KO, Peireras debut and the flying knee KO, Ian Garrys debut and come from behind flash KO, the crazy comeback in the Curtis/Hawes fight, Green destroying Al, a pretty fun Imavov/Shabazyan fight. I mean..thats a lot of action for one card. The filler cards are unavoidable with the amount of events they're obligated to put out now. They still have plenty of stacked cards, Its just that now theres a bunch of lesser Fight Night cards in between those cards, whereas back in the day you went weeks with no cards at all. I get what you're saying about the rematches etc but you could argue that this is a side effect of the UFC actually getting the big fights made consistently, so they can potentially run the well dry quicker. I dont think they will fully run out of steam anytime soon though.
Ok...went and looked it up. Apparently Usman was going to earn $1.5M for this one. I don't understand how it's possible to have that much pay disparity. Canelo made a whopping 26 times more than Usman, and that's for an event with similar sales numbers. It's impossible for UFC to cost that much more to run, if that's the case then they are complete idiots. Or is Canelo making money from Mexican market? It can't be that much. Even plant made 6 times more than Usman, who is a UFC star and p4p top fighter. Is it really possible that Dana White literally pockets all the money from these fights? **** me.
The Pereira fight was interesting and he proved he's dangerous with his power. The Edgar fight i didn't care much for because he's shot to bits at this point. He'll just lose to guys he would have beaten years ago. I'm usually more excited watching fights when there's something on the line like Conor vs Alvarez where many were writing Conor off. If you replaced Alvarez with Chandler back then it would have had a similar feel. McGregor vs Chandler for instance just isn't that interesting to watch now. Both guys have been reduced to gatekeeper and nearly journeyman level losing back to back. Villante fight i didn't care much for because he never really lived up to his potential and he was losing back to back. Ian Garry is undefeated but the wheels could quickly come off if he's fed to the wolves too fast which might happen. He's a bit raw but he should get better as he continues to progress. I think UFC need to sign a few more fighters. I don't think they need to sign tons more just more fighters to spread around each division. They signed a top heavyweight wrestler a year or so ago who never actually fought once in UFC. Another top mma heavyweight they signed became plagued with injury and he's been out for a long time.
Dana White is the president of the UFC currently, no longer the owner. I'm assuming the shareholders are the ones who see the majority of the profits and the fighters get their peanuts, enough to keep them happy and good money by most metrics but obviously not proportional to the revenue generated by the fighters. One thing I can say is that the lower level UFC fighters are generally paid reasonably well but that's really because the UFC is considered the highest tier organisation and even its lowest level is high for the average in MMA. MMA fans are fooled into thinking small hall show level fighters being paid accordingly is boxing cards is the equivalent to the UFC screwing their biggest fighters over.
Canelo doing 800k vs Plant against a UFC ppv same night is very good. No other current boxer could go head to head and draw those numbers against the equivalent of Caleb Plant. Not forgetting also UFC PPVs are $64.99. Even more impressive for Canelo when his ppv was $79.99
Al haymon is destroying boxing with his protected ducking cherry picking fighters and these **** ppvs. Even casuals know when Wilder, Charlo, Davis etc are beating up cherry picks. These idiots spent a billion and haven’t created one star and still haven’t figured out the mayweather model only worked for mayweather. Boxing vs MMA should be like the NFL vs NBA. Yeah more people play basketball it’s got more traction on social media blah blah, but nfl is just a better product that more people will sit down and watch. Right now the product of boxing sucks. Even on the rare occasion it doesn’t(wilder vs fury...still a weak undercard though) they’re not promoting it right because the promoters are literally 90 years old or not ‘promoters’ at all!
UFC had a stacked card however Usman is not a needle mover. If it was Conner it would have been double the ppv. Canelo although a big star was fighting an unkown- GGG would sell a lot more. UFC has a bit more momentum as it can put more quality fights on as everyone is in house. In boxing we have to pray to the rain gods to get two champs to fight. Boxing isn't dead though there will always be a following it's survived upto this point and thats a lot longer than most modern sports.
Conor is pretty much retired as far as his career goes, he hasn’t had a world class win in the UFC since 2016 and isn’t contractually obligated to the UFC. Floyd and Manny are bigger global stars than all of them but Canelo is the only one who is still active and world class.
Conor's baseline for PPV sales is 1 million+ sold. His tune-up fight against the washed Donald Cerone did 1.3 million. His two Dustin Poirier fights this past year each sold more than 1.5 million. Conor attracts fans from all groups of people not just one big national fan-base like Canelo and his mexican fans. 800k PPV's would be an absolute flop for McGregor.
interesting discussion. i missed the ufc card, and im a fan of both disciplines. they can both be high drama events. from my perspective, under the current model, mma will never overtake boxing as the king of combat sports. for a multitude of reasons. its not set up for it. the trajectory of careers lend themselves differently to long term investment from fans. ufc fighters are unknown to the ppv viewing public until they beat someone who is known. then they dont have a long enough stay at the top to build a historic following. while boxers can start gaining recognition from the amateurs. people have time to allow this fighter to become part of your life. a human connection. the differences in allowable technique result in huge gaps between how long a fighter can dominate the competition before his weaknesses are exposed. just look at rhonda who was the biggest ufc star at one point, and everyone drooled over how dominant she was. and all she had was a frickin armbar, thats it. you think ggg would have gotten where he got if all he had was power? or look at the gracies. it looked for a time like they came in and taught mma how to fight. now how many from their school are holding belts? boxing is more specific skill based, so the separation between the good and the great is more telling over time. and you cant really measure popularity from the number of ppv events one from a card. you have to look at actual profit made. if you charge twice as much but get half the buys, youre still equal to the competition. lobster is still better than shrimp. there are other reasons i see boxing keeping its crown. it just has too much advantage. heck, boxing grew out of mma, which has been around since the first man attacked another man. it made an art form out of savagery.
Only people who buy Canelo's PPVs are Mexicans. They don't have any other sports to follow. Even their soccer team is garbage.
