Throughout the 20th century, boxing champions like Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston and Oscar De La Hoya were considered the best fighters on the planet.
Fights like George Foreman and Ali’s famous 1974 heavyweight championship bout were so popular worldwide that today we refer to them by names, like the “Rumble in the Jungle,” or “The Thrilla in Manilla,” referring to Ali and Joe Frazier’s 1975 bout in the Philippines.
But boxing’s dominance over the world of fighting has come to a crashing halt since former boxing promoter Dana White purchased the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2001.
Sixty-nine pay-per-views and one successful reality show later, the UFC has surpassed boxing in average pay-per-view buy rates with an average of 300,000 people across America shelling out $49 to see some of the world’s most disciplined fighters in action.
This past Saturday in Houston, Texas, UFC 69 took place in the Toyota Center in front of 15,269 fans.
The card featured a co-main event between welterweights Josh Koscheck and Diego Sanchez as well as a welterweight championship fight between Georges St. Pierre and Matt Serra.
In the first half of the main event, Koscheck won a unanimous decision over Sanchez, but the Houston crowd showered both fighters with boos because of a lack of activity in the fight.
“This win is for all of the tremendous fans of Houston who booed me all the way to victory,” Koscheck said while mocking the fans. “Thank you for all of your support.”
Both Koscheck and Sanchez represent a new breed of mixed martial arts fighters that have emerged since White’s acquisition six years ago.
When the UFC first began in the early 1990s, cult-like fans tuned in to see no-personality martial arts nerds try to choke each other out while performing in front of an audience who only wanted to see one thing: blood, no matter whose ears, eyes or face it was coming from.
With the increased popularity of the sport worldwide, athletes with superegos like Koscheck have given the UFC fan favorites and villains, creating a circus-like live atmosphere that far surpasses every other sport outside of college and professional football.
“If you’re a fan of basketball, you might watch a game between two normal teams, but you won’t watch with the same intensity as if it were your favorite team playing,” UFC fan James Ellis said. “These new guys add to the whole atmosphere because people will root harder and get more into it when they are fans of individual fighters and not just fans of the sport.”
The UFC has also surpassed boxing in that their fighters actually want to fight, unlike boxing, which is a 12-round hug-fest between fighters who are more concerned about how much money they will make with a rematch, rather than fighting, which is supposed to be their job, right?
After watching the Oct 6, 2006, heavyweight title fight between Nikolai Valuev and Monte Barrett, it was confirmed that there is officially more hugging in modern-day boxing than at any family reunion in the country.
In the second main event, eight-to-one underdog Serra proved everyone in Vegas wrong, beating the former champion St. Pierre in the first round by technical knock out.
“I had a good game plan, and I was in pretty good shape,” St. Pierre said. “Just tip your cap to Serra; he is your new champion.”
A crowd that was primarily pro-St. Pierre gave Serra a standing ovation as White presented the underdog with his championship belt.
“Serra’s story shows why this is so appealing to so many people,” Ellis said. “David does not beat Goliath in very many sports, but in UFC it happens pretty often.”
With White’s recent acquisition of UFC’s top competitor, Pride Fighting, the UFC now owns a monopoly on mixed martial arts competition, creating a gap that will be too much for a dying sport like boxing to be able to overcome in pay-per-view sales.
“We are going to put together the Super Bowl of fighting,” White said. “The best fighters in the planet all in the same arena at the same time.”
—–Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]