Would boxing be more popular if the best fought the best?

So you pointed out total 3matchups in recent year.and Ward Froch,from year 11 if i'm correct?
In ufc it's normal that champions fight number 1 contenders regulary.and if you are top 10 fighter,don't expect easy matchups.

Sad truth is,in boxing really highclass quality fights happen rarely.

And in ufc,most matches are 50/50.sadly in boxing,most matches,you know the result before the fight.in ufc this happens rarely.

This weekend ufc has Mcgregor #145pound champion against #155 pound number 5 Diaz.number 2 and 3 lightheavyweights and two top 15 welterweights.rarely if not ever this happens in boxing.and oh yes,the great part about these matchups.i don't have a clue.who is going to win!

And yes.boxing got Fury and Klitchko.amazing,meantime in ufc.Werdum Velasquez.Werdum Miocic.and next Miocic Werdum.also just have Velasquez Browne etc..

Champions have to fight top opponents everytime they step up.

Rarely ufc has hopeless contenders against champions.in boxing this happens on weekly basis.

We have to stop pretending boxing is great.because it's not.i want to see best fight against best.on regular basis.

Jon Jones was over year away.then first tuneuo was against number 5 contender.Ward was out over year.and since then only fought against fringe contenders.if Ward would be Ufc fighter,all this would not be possible.

 

:|

 

the number one sport in usa is football. 90 percent of professional and college games are shown on network television. and they only play 16 games a year.

Basketball nba mostly cable televison teams play about 90 games a year

baseball mostly cable television teams play about 100 games a year.

I would go with the henry ford model and make a car for every man
or the volkswagen or folkswagon car for everyone

you want the masses then sell to the masses. you want a niche product the be exclusive. its just a choice.

 

And one more thing.in boxing,we remember top fights because those happens so rarely.

Who the hell points examples like Froch Ward.Martinez Williams.Rigondeaux Donaire.those fights happened many years ago man!!

And let's take one more recent at WW.Thurman Porter.yes,both probably top 5.but really?in ufc,you have top 5 fights on weekly basis.not once in a year.why we not see Garcia,Khan,Spence,Brook etc there finding who is the top dog.there we have probably 6 best current WW's and only seen 3fights between them!and Garcia Khan happened what 4years ago?and Brook Porter 2years ago.and now finally this year Thurman Porter.

i don't want to wait a year everytime to see top boxers go at it.and it makes more difficult to watch the sport.i'm not interested Thurman beating Bundu and Guerrero of words.or Garcia beating Malignaggi of worlds.

I want to see Garcia Khan 2,Brook Khan,Garcia Brook,Thurman Garcia,Thurman Khan,Thurman Brook,Spence Brook,Thurman Spence.what,there is already 8great matchups.7 of those we have never seen.

Because top fighters are busy to take safe fights.

Where are heavyweights?i want to see Joshua Wilder etc..not marinade like Oscar wants..

 

Pretty much, only casuals think the best don't fight the best in boxing. Boxing does have a lot of mismatches but that's thanks to the massive amount of divisions and belt holders.

 

There are mis-matches in MMA, but proportion wise, in the top ten MMA has more, on paper, competitive match ups than boxing. Boxings problem in this regards is that they have four main sanctioning bodies with their own top ten so obviously not everyone in an organisations top ten will be an actual top ten fighter. UFC, for example, will not have this problem.

It is a simple case of boxing politics and maths that lets boxing down.

 

3 concussions and you're basically done. While heavyweights peak at their 30's...

Wlad's new gameplan was right all the way. He took some concussions and changed his game, perfectly done for a succefull career in the long run.

 

It would help.

 

True that. Casuals say they are done once they lose
But hardcore fans say they are bums once they lose. So its basically the same thing. Ufc is run so well. You always get the fights you want. Everyone loses. And its no big deal

 

A quick trip to Sherdog shows that these were some of the big fights that never happened in mma. There were a lot more of them, but these were the ones I saw kept coming up the most.

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Randy Couture
Jose Aldo vs. Anthony Pettis
Chael Sonnen vs. Wanderlei Silva
Anderson Silva vs. Matt Hughes
Josh Barnett vs. Fedor Emelianenko
Condit vs Daley
Diaz vs Mayhem
Jones vs Dan Henderson
Brock Lesnar vs. JDS
JDS vs. Alistair Overeem
Anderson Silva vs GSP or Jones
Lytle vs Condit
Cro Cop vs Couture
Sakuraba vs Rickson Gracie
Tito vs Dana
Gus vs Moose
Fedor vs Lesnar
Carlos Condit vs Matt Brown

I'm also seeing a lot of references to canceled events UFC 151, UFC 176, UFC 200 fighters getting injured, getting popped for PED use, etc. In particular, Jon Jones seems to come up for that stuff a lot. As for allegations of outright ducking, I'm seeing:

Tito Ortiz vs Chuck Liddell
Ronda vs Cyborg
Conor ducking FW
Bisping ducking MW top 10
Gus ducking the LHW top 10
Fedor ducking UFC
Anderson Silva vs Lyoto Machida
Woodley vs Wonderboy

I'm seeing a list on sherdog about the great mma fighters who never even competed in the UFC:

Kazuo Misaki
Paulo Filho
Sergei Kharitonov
Igor Vovchanchyn
Ricardo Arona
Megumi Fujii
Ben Askren
Cristiane Justino
Shinya Aoki
Fedor Emelianenko

This raises the specter of a question: How can the best fight the best in the UFC if some of the best never join the UFC? Indeed, it seems like there are many top fighters who fight for rival promotion companies from World Series of Fighting, to Bellator, to One Championship. Their promoters put them under exclusive contracts much like the split between HBO, Showtime, and PBC, which hinders major fights form getting made.

Ben Askren is with One Championship
Will Brooks is with Bellator
Patricio Freire is with Bellator
Cristiane Justino is with Invicta
Justin Gaethje is with World Series of Fighting
Phil Davis is with Bellator
Jake Shields is with World Series of Fighting
Michael Chandler is with Bellator
Marlon Moraes is with World Series of Fighting
Rousimar Palhares is with World Series of Fighting after being kicked out of UFC

This all suggests that the mma world is a lot less unified than we are lead to believe. It further proves that there is a lot more talent outside of the UFC, making it less likely that the best are always fighting the best there, instead of just the best available.

 

Great thread but unfortunately this won't ever happen.

 

So you're saying that UFC ranks Bellator and World Series of Fighting with it's own fighters? They don't just do their own top 10 like the boxing sanctioning bodies do?

 

We are fortunate in the UK that the fighters have that attitude in general.
Look at how fury wanted to face the champ Klitschko and even offered to face Wilder who I thought would jump at the chance, look at how brook went to America and beat Porter and is next facing golovkin, how l smith is putting his title on the line away against canelo. These are just a few examples but show how the UK fighter's are even willing to travel to take the fights.
Joshua in winning his title has beaten 2 undefeated punchers

 

Why do cretin sub-human re**** MMA fans always claim in the UFC they always have the best fight the best when you have the same ****en 10-15 guys fighting week in week out with abysmal records like 10-6...their excuse always is that there's so many way to lose in MMA
Champion or so called 'elite' UFC fighters with **** cardio, mental lapses and running face first into punches is bush league no matter how you spin it.

I do give UFC credit where it's due and thats how they market their fighters.
Imagine if they had a HW line-up of Wilder, Parker, Joshua, Fury, Ortiz, Haye and Klitschko. It would be million PPVs everytime and world tours. But I'm all good with them recycling Old man Overeem, Werdum, Hunt, Lesnar and those other bums.

 

Without a shadow of a doubt - yes.

Most casual/non fans I speak to come up with the usual "there's about 10 world champs in each weight now though isn't there?" or (if they're older) "I remember when there used to be one world champ and he was the man to beat if you wanted to be champ".

I believe most people these days are aware of the overriding politics ruling the sport and the "big fights" that suck in the fans and get all the hype turn out to be duds (ie Mayweather v Pacquiao).....It's no wonder fewer people are now drawn to the sweet science when you've got MMA at least offering a pretty clear-cut championship structure where ducking (from what I'm led to believe...I don't follow UFC or anything) seems to be kept to the minimum.

Most clued up boxing fans could reel off a list of potentially great fights between the top few guys in each weight class......about 80 to 90% of those will never happen and instead you get *****s like Bob Arum squandering what could've been a great "comeback" for Paqcuiao by putting him in with Jesse Vargas and souring the paying casual public's view even further. Sad but true.