Why is the UFC gaining popularity?

Last night wasn’t the best night for UFC.

That said, look at the betting lines in their main card and compare them against a boxing PPV. There are no 1/50 gimmies.

I did read the fighter pay was less than 50% of the gate, before you even look at PPV figures. Which is ludicrous.

I see why their fighters want to cash in on boxing but Hughie Fury would KO the UFC champ, let alone Tyson

 

As others have said,

The best fight the best.
One Belt per division
No Promotional/TV Network politics
Losing doesn't mean a fighters career gets derailed and as a result, less cherry picking.
Less rounds = more fights.

The ground game can be a little dull, but the more you watch and learn, the more you appreciate the tactics the nuances.

I still think the best Boxing matches beat the best UFC fights, but they are so few and far between. For the complete opposite of the reasons listed above, the stars have to truly align to see the fights we want. Think of some of the fights we've missed over the years....

Prime Floyd Vs Prime Pac
Crawford Vs Spence
AJ vs Fury
Prime Brook vs Prime Khan

Despite all the BS, I like boxing too much to give up on it, but I tottaly get why so many have switched to UFC.

 

I think a lot of the popularity comes down to the brutality of it and that it looks, on the whole, like street fighting, because that's what it is. It also attracts a large audience of 'radgies', who like to think of themselves as hard men. They can see themselves in the octagon knocking someone out.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone is like this, but there is definitely an element.

I've tried to get into UFC for years, but like others have mentioned, it's a lot of rolling around on the floor in the main, and extremely boring apart from the odd fight.

I've got the first ever UFC on dvd somewhere, it was a different beast back then, where they pitched wrestlers against karate blokes, boxers against sumo wrestlers, it was genuinely interesting and entertaining. They had to sanitise it of course as it was fairly no holds barred back then. I'd recommend finding it on YouTube for anyone who hasn't seen it.

 

Who knows? UFC's heavyweight division is poorer than it's ever been though.

 

The best fight the best. I can definitely see it going the way of boxing since there is more money to be made that way. Ngannou can make millions in boxing but last night he got paid 600k. The UFC keeps the fighters in line by having the best brand and putting on great shows. Once a fighter gets to Ngannou level and is primarily a boxer then I can see them cashing out in a boxing match. McGregor did the same. The problem for UFC fighters who can box is that they are low level boxers compared to pro boxers. I doubt Ngannou would even beat Charles Martin or Otto Wallin

 

Classic UFC casual response.

Last night was really interesting especially those who have followed Ngannou's whole career, his body slam was simply spectacular.

 

McGregor had more success on Mayweather than some boxers did infact he landed more than Canelo. The issue is not necessarily skill but cardio, they train for different round lengths and fight lengths therefore if you put a UFC guy in a 12x3 he will be gassed by the mid rounds. They need to do more to even up these crossover fights by varying the round lengths and glove weight.

 

Two main things, IMO, are the ones already mentioned. The UFC is a single, well managed, coherently promoted business monopoly where the best fight each other, and it's closer to a streetfight than any other mainstream combat sport.

People want to see who would win a streetfight between the two toughest guys on the planet, and the UFC scratches that itch better than boxing.

Boxing once could appeal to the more prim and proper element by criticizing the UFC's brutality, but the UFC responded by becoming an ostentatiously regulated sport with better steroid testing and less apparent corruption than boxing. So boxing doesn't have that point in its favor anymore either.

 

There's bad fights in boxing very often too. Also, if it was boxing, Gane vs Ngannou wouldn't have happened for at least 5 years more.

 

Very few boxing matches generate the excitement and interest that Fury v Wilder 3 did, look at the bantamweight title fight that was the co-main event on this card it was far better than any boxing match so far this year and featured far more skill than Fury v Wilder did.

 

Mate, the thread title sounds like something from 2008 for one. Its been popular for ****ing ages at this point.

Secondly, it got popular because its ****ing good. You're judging it by one bad fight, and the two fights literally immediately preceding it on the same ****ing card were great.

Thirdly, it sounds like you went into watching it with a bias against it in the first place. Hence you dismiss it as "rolling around on the floor" instead of trying to learn about that aspect of it so that you might be able to appreciate it more when it happens.

 

It was entertaining just for the freak show element but the fights were pretty ****ing awful for the most part in the early days. I think the most interesting thing about those early UFC events is seeing how rapidly the overall talent level improves pretty much year on year, and seeing the prototypical MMA skillset being molded as the fighters figure out what works and what doesnt.

 

Because the best are fighting the best and because there are no 5 or more belts / champions per category.

 

MMA is far more popular than it was in 2008 and far bigger globally, here in the UK where I live nobody knew what MMA was in 2008.

 

I'm from the UK and have been following MMA since before that lol. I wasnt alone either, far from it. Bisping, Semtex, Hardy, Alex Reid on Big Brother, TUF US vs UK etc was all late 00s. In the early 10s BAMMA was drawing big live crowds for domestic events too and was on TV.

I say 2008 because the late 00s is when the UFC really started gaining traction and doing numbers on par with boxing, especially when Brock showed up, pretty sure 08 was when they had their first 1m+ selling PPV too. OP is talking like its some obscure new fad.