OFFICIAL DISCUSSION: Floyd Mayweather Vs. Conor McGregor |August 26 2017

Yeah, it has nothing to do with the practicality of punching people to gain control of a situation.

 

In an actual street fight, somebody would whip out a nine before any punches or kicks land

 

The silver lining is both didn't come out pregnant.

 

MMA in Britain is popular, sure, but it is still nowhere near as popular as boxing is. Boxing's popularity here is rising, and has risen pretty steadily, since the dip which followed the end of the Eubanks/Watson/Benn era in the mid 1990's and the decision of terrestrial TV to pull out of the sport after Benn-McClellan. Hatton had a lot to do with tha - despite his 'ugly' style he had very broad appeal and his willingness to take on all and sundry generated a significant recovery in terms of boxing viewing and participation.

The biggest boxing fights remain marque events in the UK. When the best British fighters are fighting, boxing is front-page news. I've never seen a newspaper lead with any MMA fighter, including McGregor.

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FS2

 

That article is full of MMA talking heads boasting about how popular MMA is. They are hardly impartial on that matter and there is little statistical data to back that up.

MMA has a good following in the UK and that following has certainly grown as UFC became a recognisable product. But to give some perspective: 300,000 watched McGregor's last bout according to that article. Joshua's win over Klitschko, which was on PPV here, did 'at least' 1.5m buys (Anthony Joshua's win over Wladimir Klitschko 'shatters Sky Box Office records' as 10m Germans tune in).

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And yes, Joshua is a HW and HW fight are still 'big' fights. But even fights like Froch - Groves sell around a million PPV's in the UK (Super-fight success is proof that boxing always rolls with the punches | Sean Ingle).

There is no question at all that boxing remains a much bigger draw than MMA in the UK. Boxing here is pretty much thriving.

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Anthony will now proceed to tell you what's REALLY going on in the UK. It's all smoke and mirrors... EVERYBODY is obsessed with homo-grappling!

 

Why didn't they host this conference at the O2

 

Antony is right that MMA is popular here. It has certainly grown in popularity over the last five years or so. But unlike elsewhere, this rise in popularity is not coming at the expense of boxing. Boxing is becoming more popular and more mainstream in the UK than it has for about two decades.

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Refreshing to hear. Makes me kinda wished I lived in the UK just for that reason.

How big a star over there is say....Kell Brook?

Back to America.... boxing's "death" over here is exaggerated at this point.

Just my opinion, but I feel the LOWEST point for boxing in the states was circa 07-12. There was a point around 2010/2011 where I did feel boxing might die in the states.

Boxing in America is DEFINITELY more mainstream in 2017 than it was 5-6 years ago.

Sports in the US is DOMINATED by the NFL & NBA. In that order. Baseball's popularity has yet to recover from the steroid scandal of years back. I can't name or recognize a single mainstream baseball star anymore.

So after American football & basketball, one could make the argument that UFC/Boxing are the next level down in terms of popularity, but once again, I can't overstate enough how much the NFL & NBA dominate American sports culture.

 

It also took place on a channel which has about three and a half million subscribers. Those fight numbers I quoted are PPV numbers, for fights not available on a subscription channel.

Hatton's fight with Mayweather took place in Vegas at about 4am UK time. It had 1.2m PPV buys (Ricky Hatton shatters viewing record)

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Hatton v Manny. On at stupid-O'clock in the morning too: 'could have easily done one million buys' (Pacquiao-Hatton PPV numbers something to celebrate, even if Arum refuses).

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I was looking at some Mayweather training videos. He's definitely not the same guy. His reflexes have dulled considerably.

 

Brook became something of a mainstream figure by the end of his run. I can't find his PPV numbers (SKY are actually quite poor at publishing a lot of them) but Hearn said in the week before his fight with GGG that the numbers were 'tracking Froch-Groves (How big will Gennady Golovkin vs Kell Brook be? - Boxing News).

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McGregors fight was on BT Sport. You pay about £10 a month to subscribe to that channel. Most of those who have it do so because football is shown live on that channel. It has about 3.5million subscribers. About 300,000 tuned in to watch the McGregor fight.

PPV numbers show those who pay actual money just to watch the big boxing fight. To the best of my knowledge (and I could be wrong, because I simply do not watch or follow UFC at all), there are no UFC PPV events in the UK. I think all UFC events are shown on the aforementioned BT Sport channel.

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The IRS thing has me a lil worried for lil Floyd. I said before that the only real concern was that if Floyd is shot he would still feel obligated to make $50 mil against a guy that never boxed before. If he's shot and in debt he could've been knocked out a dozen times in sparring and he'd still sign the fight.

 

Floyd called Conor a faggot....i bet nothing is made of this yet if it was the other way around the uproar would be quite something

 

Same here HOWEVER i hate hate hate bullshit double standards

 

i saw a video today in which Floyd guarantees a knockout. Would be interesting to see if he goes for it from the get go.

 

There's no reason for the tax evader NOT to go for a quick KO. He's in with a boxing novice making his pro debut. The last thing he wants to do is give that novice ANY confidence by going rounds.

If he's SERIOUS, and there's no fix in here, there's no reason why he can't stop McGregor within 4.