Its partly that but then its also that the UFC has a way bigger share of the talent in MMA than any boxing promotion has with boxing. We are talking around 1 in 10 of ALL active pro MMA fighters on the planet being in the UFC. Its not all that common to see champions in other orgs who seem legitimately as good or better than their UFC counterpart, and its extremely rare for another promotion to have a whole division thats stronger than the UFCs. Its basically the NFL or NBA of its sport, boxing doesnt have that.
How many potential champ vs champ fights are there out there that seem more compelling than the UFC champ just fighting their current top challengers instead?
UFC have a stranglehold on the sport but Fedor was easily the best Heavyweight for year's and they refused to work with him because he wanted to compete in Sambo alongside MMA, can you imagine a prime Fedor against Cain, Dos Santos, Mir or Lesnar who were all active at the time
Conor wasnt "manufactured" though. At one time he genuinely did walk the walk as well. That Aldo win was pretty jaw dropping at the time.
We are talking 15+ years ago here though which shows just how rare it is. When Fedor was at his peak it was pretty much consensus that Pride as an entire org was no1, it was before the UFC had fully exploded yet. Fedor vs Brock or Mir around 08/09 would have been interesting. I think Fedor was probably starting to decline a little already by then though, and Cain and JDS werent champs until after Fedor started losing.
I agree but the point is in boxing regardless of how corrupt it is at least we see unifications between different organisations last year Spence-Crawford, Fury-Usyk and Bivol-Betterbiev all five star match ups UFC don't even acknowledge other org's like Bellator and keep things in house similar to PBC and it just kills interest in the sport
But its not a comparable situation when most of the biggest and best MMA fights possible are in house with the UFC anyway, whereas boxing is massively fragmented and requires cross promotion and unification bouts for most of its biggest fights. Also lets face it a lot of the reason stuff like Spence/Crawford, Fury/Usyk, Bivol/Beterbiev etc are considered 5 star match ups is because they get marinated for YEARS which makes them feel like a bigger deal than if they'd just happened when they were supposed to and then the winner moved on to the next thing.
When was the last time a fight of the magnitude of these 3 happened in the UFC - Conor vs Khabib Also aside from Spence/Crawford the other fights haven't been marinating for that long a year maybe two at the absolute max
What is the magnitude really? its just the perceived 2 best guys in a division fighting each other. Like I said it feels "bigger" when that happens in boxing because its not as common, and to an extent also because theres so much emphasis on fighters keeping their 0 for their cash out mega fight. If Fury/Usyk had happened 2 years ago we'd have probably already realised by now that neither of those guys are actually the best in the division anymore, or at the very least that we massively overrated one of them, and we would have already been clamouring for the next no1 vs no2 fight, and the next, and the next. Same with Spence/Crawford. Boxing just moves very slowly.
One good thing in MMA is fighters 0's are not protected but like I said when was the last big fight in the sport Islam vs Volk not sure if that's on this level
If we are talking from a commercial perspective theres lots of stuff in both sports thats bigger than Beterbiev/Bivol tbh. Its a great fight but its one for hardcore boxing fans more so than casuals, its not gonna do anywhere near the numbers Tank/Garcia did for instance. Even Fury/Usyk is nowhere near as big as AJ/Wilder or AJ/Fury would have been if they had happened at the right time.
No, we will now see more super fights because of the Saudi`s, the Saudi cards are really good, undercard fights are usually crap, the Saudi`s are saving boxing.
