Note to Mayweather & Boxing: The Battle is Over, and You Lost
by Jason Probst (jprobst@sherdog.com)
As the first boxing writer I know of to warn the sport about everything mixed martial arts was doing right, all I can say is, “I told you so.”
Five years ago, while readily employed as a contributor to Maxboxing.com/ESPN, I had an up-close look at the stark difference in the direction boxing was going compared to the rising tide of MMA. In the unique position as Max’s round-by-round fight scorer, I ordered every boxing pay-per-view from 2003-2007 and saw the grim deterioration in quality offerings. All the while, MMA continued to build its market presence, make intuitive matchups to establish champions and viable contenders, and, in short, act a lot like boxing used to.
The blowback at times was highly entertaining. I received e-mails from all kinds of people, both fans and industry types, about how MMA was a sideshow and would never go legit. These are the same kinds of people who said the Internet would go the way of CB radio, too vested in their own bias to objectively analyze the facts.
The only person at Max who seemed to sense the coming storm -- the inevitable crossing of two divergent paths -- was my editor at the time, Tom Gerbasi (who now is site editor at UFC.com). All my other fellow boxing junkies at Max -- who were and remain an extremely talented bunch -- didn’t see the train coming down the tracks. In 2004, I even fired off a lengthy, detailed screed to a well-known sports site (you’d know the name) on the exploding demographics of MMA and how they needed to cover it, but I never heard back. If there’s anything entertaining about journalists, particularly those covering sports, it’s how they know everything until the Precise Moment They Don’t.
Nowadays, the tone has changed markedly when journalists and fans discuss both sports and their relative trajectories. Instead of exploring whether or not MMA is a threat to boxing’s fragile market share (that’s so 2006), the topic is whether or not boxing’s goose is permanently cooked.
With the consistency of MMA offerings and the month-by-month process of chipping away at a fan base that is trending toward buying good fights instead of strictly boxing fights, I’d still say that boxing isn’t quite dead yet and never will be. It will, however, remain in critical condition unless things change. Today’s MMA fan might follow boxing if the sport delivered like it did 10 years ago or in the 70s and 80s. You simply don’t get the same bang for your buck with boxing that you used to.
After covering the sport for 10 years, and following it readily for 30, that’s the best I can offer. But more importantly, I no longer have to care. It’s like a once-wonderful marriage that went south in the last decade, and I’ve left it for a better one.
Four years removed from the seminal Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar classic on SpikeTV, the verdict is in. And with the desperate bleating of boxing people -- from Bob Arum to Floyd Mayweather and everyone else with an opinion a day late and several pay-per-view sales short -- boxing people are reduced to taking desperate pot shots at MMA to continue deluding themselves.
The latest entry is the public perception that this Saturday’s Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Juan Manuel Marquez bout is competing with UFC 103. It’s perfectly fitting that Mayweather himself instigated this pseudo-showdown, asking the bout be rescheduled from July to Saturday night after his injury this summer; his career is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with boxing, a once-great sport that has given shrinking returns to fans in recent years.
Mayweather “retired” after his last bout, a December 2007 stoppage of Ricky Hatton. Rightfully hailed as the sport’s pound-for-pound king, and with a deep cast of potential opponents, including Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, he decided there were no more challenges for him. Despite an $8-million offer from Top Rank to face Margarito, the sport’s pound-for-pound king deemed the cupboard bare and not worthy of contemplation.
The Mayweather-Hatton bout was a splendid example of what boxing can be when given a solid matchup. Mayweather was masterful in dispatching the unbeaten Hatton, and then disappeared, despite that win and a decision over Oscar De La Hoya earlier in the year.
Fittingly, that same night was a busy one for fans of both sports: “The Ultimate Fighter 6” finale was on. On a solid card, Roger Huerta scored a dramatic stoppage of Clay Guida. Since then, the UFC has put on 34 shows -- pay-per-views and cable TV cards, and assembled a list of champions in its five weight divisions that are probably the most marketable and talented in the sport’s history.
Meanwhile, boxing’s best continue to lurk in semi-annual bouts, as the sport’s lack of cohesive organizational structure hampers the public’s ability to see its finest talent on display.
Since that fight 21 months ago, the top five Ring Magazine pound-for-pound fighters have fought a total of 13 bouts -- Pacquiao (4), Marquez (3), Bernard Hopkins (2), Shane Mosley (2) and Israel Vasquez (1) -- and that’s counting Pacquiao-Marquez II twice because they’re both on the list. Boxing’s best talents are bottlenecked into a weird operational model where networks, pay-per-view, sanctioning bodies and belts form a messy series of conflicting interests. The UFC’s emerging grip on the sport elicits different opinions from different people, but the guy plunking down $44.95 for pay-per-views is really the last authority on the matter. And business just keeps getting better.
