Why is boxing still producing bigger stars than MMA?

[cade187]

Boxing is an 100 year old sport.
While UFC just passed 30. Even then, the only reason this got hype is because Ryan Garcia went psycho and the Mexican fanbase.

The Queensbury rules for boxing were published in 1867. The actual sport of pugilism is older than that. Boxing is much older than 100.

 

[Pboxingfan123]

How was Canelo Alvarez not even mentioned in the original post??

 

[orca]

Everyone in MMA is still impressed by Holloway/Gaethje and Alex Perreira but Ryan Garcia/Devin Haney was the biggest fight of the year.

Ryan Garcia is now bigger than any star in MMA (except McGregor).

Aside from him, there's Tank Davis. Who's also bigger than any star in MMA.

And of course there's Tyson Fury and Usyk.

All these guys are McGregor/Khabib level stars.

brother tyson fury vs nganou made 70k ppv buys

 

[chaos_36]

Almost everyone outside the boxing sphere will have no idea who Ryan is. Fury is probably the only boxer known on a global scale, Garcia is akin to someone like Neymar in football. Football fans know who he is but the rest of us are like who?

 

[NoSmilez]

Ryan Garcia is an influencer. He hangs out with other influencers. He gets into beef with them etc etc. There is drama with him. He has been doing this for over ten years. He has been on youtube for a very long time. He also fights out of California. He can make those celeb collabs. He is a boxer that happened to grow up on youtube and crossed over to mainstream culture.

 

[Gamer007]

UFC is bad at promoting their fighters, the fighters don't have the means to easily market themselves or build brands like boxers can because they're stuck in predatory contracts.

Boxing could dominate the PPV landscape, but it's too spread out with too many rivaling promotions. Boxing doesn't even have to put all its best guys out there, if you had a card featuring just 4-5 big stars the numbers would be crazy.

AJ vs Fury
Crawford vs Boots
Loma vs Shakur
Spence vs Thurman
Haney vs Matias
Mbilli vs Caleb Plant

This would easily sell 1.5 - 2 million ppv buys without breaking a sweat


Boxing will have the bigger stars for the foreseeable future, Davis vs Garcia did 1.2 million buys with a 22 million dollar gate. Conor is the trump card, but he's on his last leg (pun intended).

 

[sonhow]

Irin Mike biggest star in boxing

Insert bad Tyson impression here

 

[Dr Fong]

Premise is slightly faulty. Conor and Jones are more consistent, establised PPV stars than anyone in boxing outside Canelo in North America and AJ in the UK. And this includes Fury. Boxing does not have many proven PPV stars itself.

We don't know the results of Haney-Garcia, so we have no basis to claim it was a massive success.

Instagram followers also becomes a more flawed metric when the person involved is physically attractive and has followers who don't buy PPVs. Garcia certainly has a large segment of latinas that want to bang him, but I'm not sure how much this currently translates to consistent global PPV reach beyond strong A/B-side fights like the Gervonta one.

He can be a massive star if he doesn't go completely nuts though.

 

[moreorless87]

UFC is bad at promoting their fighters, the fighters don't have the means to easily market themselves or build brands like boxers can because they're stuck in predatory contracts.

Boxing could dominate the PPV landscape, but it's too spread out with too many rivaling promotions. Boxing doesn't even have to put all its best guys out there, if you had a card featuring just 4-5 big stars the numbers would be crazy.

AJ vs Fury
Crawford vs Boots
Loma vs Shakur
Spence vs Thurman
Haney vs Matias
Mbilli vs Caleb Plant

This would easily sell 1.5 - 2 million ppv buys without breaking a sweat, and it's not even bringing out the big guns.

Boxing will have the bigger stars for the foreseeable future, Davis vs Garcia did 1.2 million buys with a 22 million dollar gate. Conor is the trump card, but he's on his last leg (pun intended).

I tend to think its a deliberate choice by the UFC though, to try and make promotion of fighters as "in house" as possible because this diminishes fighters value when not fighting for them.

I would say a big issue as well is that whilst MMA has grown in profitability strongly since the UFC's rise in the late 00's most of the money from that has gone into the UFC's pockets meaning that investment in talent has been far less than in other sports of a similar size.

Beyond the profits it gives the UFC honestly I wouldnt be supprised if this was also a tactic about control, the UFC wants enough talent to be able to run things in a certain way and no more.

 

[jsbx45]

There are 8 billion people in the world. That means that about 0.15% of the population follows him on Instagram. And approximately 99.85% of the population does not. The average person has never heard of him.


Why does Ryan Garcia have a lot of Instagram followers? He's successful, good-looking, and he has Mexican heritage. Boxing is huge in Mexico.


UFC is big business, but it's still ultimately a niche sport, and their business strategy is promoting the UFC brand rather than individual fighters.

The boxing business model is different, with a bunch of rival promoters each trying to create breakout stars.

TLDR; The UFC doesn't give a shit about creating stars. The brand is what matters.

Boxing needs to make stars to generate interest. No one tunes in to watch a random boxing match. Lots of people watch UFC without particularly caring who is fighting.

Great analysis. Well said.

 

[Dr. Rose]

The Queensbury rules for boxing were published in 1867. The actual sport of pugilism is older than that. Boxing is much older than 100.

I think he is referring to modern boxing with gloves and shorter number of rounds, so 1889-1890 with the bout between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain being one of the last major bk fight.

Then again, that is still a lot more than 100 years. So who knows.

 

[LostMyBlackBelt]

Because no upper weight limit.

 

[The Bloody Nine]

The amount of people on this planet who can become great at MMA is much smaller than boxing.

Everyone and their mother can train to become a boxer. MMA takes years to learn.

A pro wrestler won the UFC HW title in his 4th fight. A kickboxer is now a 2 weight UFC champion in 12 fights.

 

[Wreckless]

A pro wrestler won the UFC HW title in his 4th fight. A kickboxer is now a 2 weight UFC champion in 12 fights.

Cool you were able to come up with 2 examples that don't apply to 99% of people.

How did CM Punk do?

 

[whocares]

.
.
.
.
.
<------------

 

[HuskySamoan]

Ryan Garcia has 11.6 million instagram followers.

only McGregor and Khabib in the UFC have more than that (and they're both basically retired).

Islam, Charles and Nare Diaz have like 7-9m instagram followers. Topuria and Omalley are edging towards 5m themselves. Conor and Khabib are over 30m each, aren't they?

 

[Bobby Boulders]

I've been a boxing fanatic since the 80ies and MMA since UFC-2. I can tell you from my own observations, that I'm aware of who boxing's stars are because of what I'm told and then shown. However, I know who is a star in MMA, because I've seen them develop and reach their goals.

Ayyyyyy

 

[Hellowhosthat]

The amount of people on this planet who can become great at MMA is much smaller than boxing.

Everyone and their mother can train to become a boxer. MMA takes years to learn. Perfect example is Jake Paul and all those Youtube boxers.

Not to mention a lot of these boxers with 30-0 records have a padded record with a bunch of bums.

I'm not ready to say boxing has more stars, but even if it does, we're just talking about a few people. As a sport, MMA is crushing boxing and has been for quite a while. No one even takes boxing seriously these days.

Kind of the opposite tbh, I'm as big an MMA fan as you're going to find but the amount of boxers who reach world championship level when starting training as an adult is tiny compared to MMA.

 

[HuskySamoan]

Kind of the opposite tbh, I'm as big an MMA fan as you're going to find but the amount of boxers who reach world championship level when starting training as an adult is tiny compared to MMA.

That's changing rapidly before our eyes in MMA, Pantoja, Omalley, Topuria, Islam, Dricus and Aspinall all started super young. Leon at 18-19 was old, Pereira was late for kickboxing and MMA. And I can think of several boxers who started late that are currently champions.

That said, I agree with your point, @Wreckless is either trolling or insane.

 

[The Bloody Nine]

Cool you were able to come up with 2 examples that don't apply to 99% of people.

How did CM Punk do?

About as well as he'd do stepping in against a pro boxer of similar standing to Gall. What's your point?