Jones wasn’t even a huge PPV in the UFC let alone a household name internationally.
Which boxers are more popular in France than Ngannou and Gane? which French boxers are more popular outside of France than Ngannou and Gane? which boxing cards in France are doing better business both domestically and internationally than the UFC cards being held there?
And MMA isnt? The biggest post WW2 attendance for any combat sport in mainland Europe was from a KSW card.
I told you, from being a fan of both and watching a ton of both on a weekly basis, there seems to be way more MMA you can actually watch than boxing. As in a higher ratio of boxing cards are not even being filmed. Maybe they’re all being locked into their domestic market, shown only on tv in those places and blocked from having any footage on Youtube though, who knows…
I had a look at Tapology, i’m sure its not fool proof as what you can watch probably depends on your region etc, but FWIW, when you check whats available to watch via tv or streaming from now through October it lists 35 MMA events vs 18 boxing events.
Maybe, I wouldnt necessarily say “far more”, it would totally depend on what boxing is happening that weekend vs what the UFC is doing and what other MMA is going on.
In the time Jon has been fighting theres been literally three boxers who were bigger PPV draws than him in America ie Floyd, Pac and Canelo. If you wanna extent it to global PPV draws then AJ as well, but his fights cost a fraction of the price that UFC cards cost in the US.
You are moving the goal posts here. I’m sure you have been to France so you should know that there is substantially more Boxing shown on TV there than MMA. A French MMA fighter’s individual popularity doesn’t factor into it.
No MMA is absolutely nowhere near as big as Boxing in Eastern europe. I have been assuming that you have a level of knowledge that you do not seem to posess.
I’m not going to go to all the effort to prove this to you in the same way I’m not going to bother disproving someone who thinks Football (Soccer) is more popular than the NFL, NBA and MLB in the U.S.
I was trying to be civil when I said that.
You live in the UK and you previously acknowledged that isn’t even the case in your own country (saying the UK is an anomaly) so I don’t know what you are really on about at this point.
Again as previously mentioned we seem to be using completely different metrics here.
I was responding to someone talking about Jon Jones recognizability outside of the sport.
Most of his numbers are claimed because many are not officially released so I don’t personally believe a lot of them. Despite that he has never cracked a million once despite first becoming champion 13 years a go.
Listen I don’t know where you are hoping this exchange is going to go but I’am an MMA fan here I’m not trying to shit on the sport and bring it down.
This thread was just poke fun at those on the old OG who celebrating the death of Boxing somewhat prematurely.
Cant say ive really paid attention. I’m just asking a simple question though, if you’re knowledgable on the subject, can you point me to some big French boxing stars and big cards that have been happening in recent times? obviously with the UK, America, Australia, Japan etc its quite easy to do this, with France? not really. I mean according to Boxrec theres 7 boxing cards booked there from now through October, and hasnt been a card this month at all, in a country of 70 million people. Meanwhile Ngannou is a pretty big name globally, even Gane is far bigger than any French boxers.
Alright well again, i watch a lot of both sports and a lot of it comes from Eastern Europe, and thats not the impression that I get, at all. Obviously “Eastern Europe” is a broad range but it looks to me like KSW is bigger than any boxing in Poland, and DEFINITELY is when it comes to international profile. When it comes to Russia most of the boxing I see there comes from RCC which is also an MMA promotion. I see stuff like Nashe Delo and HFC getting millions of views at times but have yet so see that from Russian boxing events. I dont know if Bivol and Beterbiev are bigger than Islam or Khabib in Russia but pretty much any social media or Youtube numbers point towards the MMA names being bigger internationally at least.
I just gave you actual evidence along with my own experience lol. I dont know why its so hard for you to accept that theres more MMA out there that seems to be filmed and easily watchable for an international audience. I was just trying to search some of the fights of top French boxers and legit was struggling to find footage for most of their fights. I earlier on listed you like a dozen MMA promotions if not more that film their events and broadcast them live, often with English commentary. Its especially odd in the Youtube era that a lot of these boxing events dont have footage available.
But you’re about 15 years too late, brother. That whole boxing is dying, MMA is the sport of the future shit is so late 00s. Lots of UG’ers are boxing fans as well, and most of the MMA fans who shit on boxing are dumb casuals who dont have a clue anyway.
Maybe dinner and a blow job.
Again we are talking about the popularity of a sport in terms of how many shows are put on and the total combined viewing figures. Not how popular a individual fighter is.
Ngannou has never even fought for the UFC in France anyway.
Look I cannot really be bothered to go to all the hassle of proving to someone on the internet what should be blatantly obvious in country where MMA was only legalized 4 years ago. If you want to believe I’m lying and full of shit then that is your prerogative.
You watch a lot of sports on TV in the UK and that tells you that MMA is more popular in Eastern Europe than Boxing?
Okay…
lol I apologize for that I was sure I had deleted that line I wrote about you making shit up in your head but can see it was still there.
I will go back and edit it out now.
The thread was just a little bit of fun to see if I could bait any of the people I remember celebrating the death of Boxing on the old UG.
Most of them were going off of Joe Rogan’s prediction in 2008 that there would be no new stars in Boxing after Hopkins and De La Hoya (because they would all go to MMA) which clearly did not age well to put it lightly.
Don’t go full retard
1 Like
For those interested his excellency Turki Alalshikh has already put up the full fight of Joshua vs Dubois on Youtube less than 48 hours after the event.
Anyone have friends over for the fight? Cant remember doing that since Tyson was biting ears and threatening to eat children.
Nah just watched it at a local Pub.
Hard to find on a screen here. Last time I went to 10 places and they all said no we ain’t showing boxing
1 Like
But the viewing figures are pretty speculative. Most evidence suggests that theres not much decent scale boxing happening in France at all. I actually remember some French guy over on Shitdog saying that Doumbe was the most popular fighter in France a few months ago, no boxers were mentioned.
What? when did I even say MMA is more popular in Eastern Europe than boxing? all I know is theres a fuck ton of MMA events of a decent scale coming out of Russia and Eastern Europe and lots of high level fighters.
Always hated that video. It was Rogan all full of piss and vinegar because the UFC was snowballing into a boom period so he got carried away. If you look at the comments you can see the people agreeing with his take are complete casuals that never watched boxing in their lives. I dont think the UG or even Shitdog was ever really like that.
Okay, can you elaborate? which boxers in the last 20 years do you think have more recognisable names/faces than GSP, Chuck, Randy, Anderson and Jones then?
By my count its Floyd, Pac, Wlad, AJ, Fury, Canelo. Any more in your opinion?
Edit: maybe Usyk?
It really shouldn’t be a competition. Back in the day we thought it was, but now we see both can co-exist together.
Both sports have their fanbase with a significant portion being crossover fans of both.
On every big boxing match you see many of the top guys in MMA posting about it online, they are fans too.
Vegas just sold out two big events for boxing and MMA on the same day.
1 Like
MMA usually has better cards top to bottom, but a big boxing event feels bigger than a big MMA event with celebrities in attendance and crowd etc.
I love both sports equally, no need for either side to be insecure about the other at this point. Both sports can co-exist and thrive together.
1 Like
1 Like
You just dismissed your own point you idiot.
Currently inoue is bigger than sakuraba in Japan. He will be in the hall of fame.
Ricky hatton was bigger than bisping even in his losses.
There are ZERO Mexican mma stars and are over shadowed by berrara, Marquez, and morales.
You live in a bubble.
If that is what you want to believe then I won’t try to convince you otherwise.
Well you strongly implied it in your previous post below. Again it doesn’t really matter you are free to believe what you want.
It’s quite depressing the amount of people who have posted relatively recently on the video who claim it has aged well.
Rogan definitely got way to carried away there but Lou Di Bella came across very badly as well IMHO.
I thought fighters were only being paid more/ teh sport picking up due to all those rich saudi blokes funding events?
1 Like
@James_III @TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle Good shit, I enjoyed this exchange. Some valid points brought up on both sides. I definitely think boxing is more popular on a global scale, with more people knowing what it is, even if they aren’t fans.
MMA is more of a combative that has big scenes in more regional areas, but is mildly popular around the world. ESPN certainly accelerated its growth but a lot of people still don’t really know what it is. I’ve talked to many people from here in the states that still don’t even know the term “MMA”, although they’ve seen “UFC” because of social media and such.
I don’t think MMA will ever close the gap and it doesn’t need to, but it is interesting and noting there is some fan overlap, although (seemingly) a large percentage of people who like one, but not the other. There are some fighters in the UFC who are popular in their countries and therefore their reach is spread to surrounding areas. But overall I would say there are a lot of people in Western Europe who don’t know who Topuria or Gane are.
MMA isn’t as engrained into our culture as boxing is, and some of the biggest stars in boxing have transcended the sport. VERY few (almost no) MMA fighters have done that.
1 Like