Let the Debate Begin: MMA, Boxing, and PPV

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This might be the only area where there actually could be an MMA/Boxing rivalry.

Next to merchandise, pay-per-view is the biggest potential source of revenue for a night of fights. The fact that in recent years, MMA PPV numbers have skyrocketed while all boxing PPV numbers outside of Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather have gone down in as big a way. Other MMA promotions have attempted pay-per-view, but only UFC has been able to consistently put on PPV’s that draw 220,000 or above, a number that engulfs any MMA competitor’s attempts at PPV and even at the minimum amount listed above, it still matches or beats most boxing PPV broadcasts. Case in point: Jones/Calzaghe and Pavlik/Hopkins were two of the most anticipated fights in the boxing world in 2008, but each only did around 215,000 buys a piece whereas UFC 82 (Henderson/Silva) did just past that number and was considered a bad night for UFC; that’s the signal about where the business fortunes of these two sports have gotten to in recent times.

In the case of boxing, it would seem that those within the sport depended on the big names for far too long, to the point where those names were the only names people cared about in boxing, that being an even more serious thing considering most people could care less about boxing below the heavyweight division (where all of boxing’s current stars are). From 1993-2003, boxing could always count on Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr., Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, and even Lennox Lewis for good and even phenomenal pay-per-view business as several fights from that time period make up the five most bought boxing PPV’s of all-time. The fact that De La Hoya/Pacquiao and De La Hoya/Mayweather made it into the top-five list does show Pacquiao and Mayweather’s ability to captivate John Q. Public, but also shows De La Hoya’s lasting value as a draw. However, take out Floyd and Oscar and Manny, and there is basically no draw in the sport that is going to get even close at this moment minus maybe Ricky Hatton, whose long-lasting value is still undecided in my view. Looking at the heavyweight division, Chris Arreola seems to be the best candidate to become boxing’s next big heavyweight draw as he is a guy who satisfies the public’s two major urges for heavyweight fighters: he can hit hard and he knocks people out. Arreola seems to be the only guaranteed knockout artist these days in the heavyweight division despite not moving up to the top tier of fighters in the division, but for the moment he is quickly earning the public’s admiration and that could mean their dollars soon enough.

In the case of UFC, their answer as to how to make big money on pay-per-view during the fledgling early years of the Zuffa era could be boxing’s answer right now: free T.V.

How big of stars would Liddell or Couture be without the first season of The Ultimate Fighter is an interesting question. While not a fan of reality T.V., I will admit that reality T.V. (in this case TUF) did have an undeniable impact on UFC’s fortunes and those of Liddell and Couture. Up until that point, Liddell and Couture were the two biggest draws in the UFC, but on PPV that only added up to shows nearing or being at the 100,000 mark for buys. Back then that was perfectly acceptable and even great, but when Liddell/Couture II did 265,000 buys with the help of weeks of hype via the reality show and the third fight between the two did around 400,000 buys, the message was clear: free T.V. creates viewers. The fact that it took UFC so long to realize this and that boxing has completely forgotten this are both interesting things. In UFC’s case, they did have a small deal with Fox Sports Net before SpikeTV and TUF came around, but that was at the beginning of the reality T.V. boom, so it apparently just took Dana an extra year or year and a half to put the two together. To be fair, I wouldn’t have thought of reality T.V. as meshing with or even being a good fit for mixed martial-arts, but it worked. Plus, UFC not only had the reality show, but their finale was an MMA show in itself with only part of the card dedicated to the reality show. The early success of specials like this made it a staple of UFC programming and was the same conscious decision that boxing hasn’t made that the next generation, the young guns, would get their chance at exposure with shows like these. The intelligence here lies in the fact that people will take an entire night of unknown fighters over a one-match card every time if they don’t have to pay for it because a one-match card will fail more times than succeed as far as entertainment goes, but the numbers are on the viewers side if there are 8-10 fights with young, hungry fighters in there against each other. UFC could’ve settled with just the reality show, but they brought the main aspect of their FSN programming with them: past matches. Like Pride did on FSN, UFC had separate programming to show past matches introducing people to and educating people on MMA while also hyping future shows by showcasing the people who are going to be on the shows and subtly mentioning that, “hey these guys you just watched are fighting in a few weeks, so buy the show.”

The fact that boxing has shown fights for free since the beginning of television and stopped around the end of the 20th century shows the arrogance and greed of those within the sport. Boxing’s pay-per-view numbers were still consistently up (as were HBO and Showtime broadcasts) during the late-90’s and early into this decade, but nobody apparently saw the writing on the wall. By the early part of this century, Holyfield was aging noticeably, all of Tyson’s ability (except that one big punch) seemed to have faded, and Roy Jones Jr. fell from grace in amazing fashion both on PPV and HBO. So why at this point did those within the business make the conscious decision to start showcasing the next generation so as to make sure they would make the same oodles of cash their predecessors did? Because there was still too much money to be made with the names as long as those names still had value, and they did. The public is usually the last group of people to see the end of a fighter’s career if that fighter is beloved and that was a painful thing the sport has had to relearn over the past five or six years. The recent example would be Oscar De La Hoya who for some reason was a big favorite going into the Pacquiao fight despite having only one fight under his belt in the nineteen months leading up to the fight with Pacquiao.

Boxing on free T.V. had been something I enjoyed as a child, as did thousands of boxing fans going back several generations; it was an alternative to paying for the PPV broadcast or waiting for the HBO broadcast of fights, it was a chance to see new people and new fights, plus it had a completely different feel probably because it was for free. The tragedy of boxing’s gradual distancing from free broadcasts on network T.V. is that up until around ’06, networks wouldn’t have touched MMA with a ten-foot poll, but boxing would’ve been welcomed with open arms every time. Either of the Klitschko brothers would’ve been perfect for T.V. because not only would it have not been asking too much of people to watch either of these foreign heavyweight beasts for free, but it would’ve at least given more people an opportunity to know who these guys were before they were thrust upon the world in 2002-2003. In the past, early fights on free T.V. have helped the careers of Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Michael Moorer take off and offered a perfect breeding ground for younger talent as well as the older and decaying talent that still had some drawing power left, as they could be put on a show and help the draw both at the show and on the tube while helping the younger guys’ standing in the process.

HBO’s only pay-per-view broadcast of the year so far will be Pacquiao/Hatton on May 2, an incredibly smart move from a network that apparently understands boxing’s position right now. Boxing is at the point where it can’t compete with MMA on pay-per-view and can’t draw at all on pay-per-view without its top draws. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fights being able to rack up 50-75,000 buys each time is a great start to a fighter who at 39-0 is just getting started with his career; remember his dad won 90 of his first 91 fights and the fruit doesn’t appear to have fallen far from the tree here. And while that may be a good sign for Chavez himself, there’s nobody else in boxing who can even do that by himself on a consistent basis. If you’re showcased on HBO or Showtime only, then you’re only known to people who watch boxing or watch HBO and Showtime. But that doesn’t take into account the massive mainstream audience who doesn’t watch boxing or watches it, but doesn’t keep up like insiders do. Those are the people that need to be reached to bring in the big numbers, and the way to reach them (again) is to give it to them for free so they will pay the money later. Remember these two sports are asking people to shill out $40 or $50 a pop to watch this with only a few of the fights on the card actually hyped to the masses. So either these few fights better be good or the people in it better be people that everyone wants to see. In the case of MMA, Dana White and Joe Silva have been honing their abilities in this area and have gotten quite good at it not putting too much on one card while ignoring another. Boxing on the other hand has not as there is no incentive to watch, it’s just “watch this guy fight this guy, you care about these guys right?” The problem—and main difference between the two—is that because of boxing’s exit and MMA’s entrance to cable and network T.V. has directly caused a shift in power within the fight game as MMA is producing the stars of tomorrow (Brock Lesnar, Frank Mir, Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans, Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez, and so on) while boxing has been relying on the previous generation far beyond the point they should’ve been relied upon for big PPV numbers. And boxing is still doing so except now they’re only relying on one man and he’s a bit younger than most of the men boxing has put the future of their sport in over recent years. But with no indication that free T.V. is even in the cards for boxing and the fact that boxing almost seems content to weather the MMA storm (a mistake in my opinion), it seems that this article—like many I write—will serve only as one man’s warning to something he loves about the direction it’s been going in and where it will go if something doesn’t change behind the scenes.