Issue 035

March 2008

Picture the scene (you'll have to suspend your disbelief a little, here). It's the early 19th century. Some guy has just picked up a football and run around with it in his arms, barging other people out of the way. “Holy crap,” he says. “I've just invented rugby! This is awesome!”

Everybody freaks out about how awesome rugby is. “It's like football, plus extra shoulder-barging. Sweet! Nobody's going to want to play football any more now that we've got rugby!”

Fast-forward a few hundred years to today. We've got rugby. We've got football (soccer, for our overseas readers). Some like one, some the other, but neither is dead. And that's the way I think boxing and MMA will be for the foreseeable future.

Cast your mind back to 2007. The UFC is on a roll, the Ultimate Fighter TV conveyor belt is in full effect and there are practically monthly events with spectacular (and unexpected) outcomes. Dana White very publicly plays up how well the UFC is doing. Boxing pundits get butt-hurt and start writing scathing articles about our young sport, displaying knee-jerk responses that could have earned them an honorary spot in Chute Boxe. MMA writers fire back with prose declaring boxing to be on its last legs, out for the count, ready to be high-kicked into obscurity by Anderson Silva. I must admit, I bought into the hype somewhat.

Now the dust has settled. Sure, the UFC has enjoyed a meteoric rise in stature, but some feel they have reached a plateau. It will be difficult for the UFC to make a leap as vast as the one it already made from obscurity to its current popularity. I think they've got most of the fans they can with their current model; if you didn't like men in Speedos beating each other up last year, you probably won't next year, either.

This isn't an anti-UFC article. My point is that the UFC, and other promoters around the world, declared that MMA had KO'd boxing prematurely, and unnecessarily. There is no doubt that it is the next big thing in terms of spectator sports – there simply are no new sports on the horizon that command the attention that MMA does. And it can certainly command attention: at the time of writing, the UFC's most commercially successful event was Liddell vs. Ortiz II, which sold around 1,000,000 pay-per-view buys. In a short time, the UFC has leapfrogged from a no-rules freakshow broadcast on obscure cable channels, to a bona fide sport achieving almost half of boxing's biggest draw so far.

That 'biggest draw' was Mayweather vs. De La Hoya, which, along with Mayweather vs. Hatton, proved the sweet science can still grab the world's attention. The first set a new record in pay-per-view buy rates, with around 2.5 million people watching at home. Although figures were less than a million in America for the second, it was still a very high-profile and successful event, with over a million buys in England. Perhaps the most astounding thing for me was the sound of almost 3,000 English fans cheering for Hatton in their booming bass tones. Those were ones who got tickets; I heard rumours of 20 to 30,000 Brits in town just for the fight. I'm fairly sure that when Bisping last fought in the UFC, he didn’t take quite as many fans as that with him.

My point is, boxing is established and legitimate enough to draw a large crowd of fans across the ocean to support a fighter. That kind of entrenchment in popular culture can't be swept away in a year or two. The UFC, and MMA, does not have roots that deep. Yet.

The sport of boxing, to me, seems like a sleeping giant that has been awakened thanks to the two Mayweather bouts. It emerged from a slumber and shook itself awake. Millions of dollars fell from its shoulders like dust off a mountain. Natives gathered at its feet in the millions to hear it speak. And when it spoke, it roared.

You only have to watch one of the four excellently crafted episodes of “Mayweather Hatton 24/7” to see just what a juggernaut boxing still is; the creative pool it can draw from, the funds it can flex. The juxtaposition is even more effective if you compare it with the UFC Countdown shows. In Japan, it's the same. You don't hear a peep out of boxing for years, and then boom, along comes a Kameda brothers fight and half the nation, literally, is watching it.

It is my opinion that we need at least another generation of fans and fighters before MMA can form roots as deep as boxing. We also need some real personalities that can touch people beyond the sport of fighting. We need another Muhammad Ali (though preferably, not another Vietnam). Until then, I think boxing and MMA should, and conceivably can, co-exist in a kind of uneasy ceasefire. Think McDonald's and Burger King. As consumers, we should just count ourselves lucky to have a choice.