Mayweather v. Mosley head-to-head with UFC

[bourbonblues]

"There is talk of a huge head-to-head PPV as there are rumors of a Floyd Mayweather vs. Shane Mosley fight on 5/1, which would go head-to-head with the UFC show that night in Montreal. Given that UFC has a major lineup, if this goes down, it would be the biggest head-to-head boxing vs. UFC competition in history."
- Dave Meltzer

The last time a boxing ppv went head-to-head with UFC, boxing won bigtime. However both UFC events had very weak lineups. This time around, the expected lineup looks to be one of the biggest UFC events of the year. There is a Lightheavyweight title rematch to settle a disputed decision and the battle that was built up on the last season of their reality show (the highest rated season they ever had), with the winner likely getting a title show against the winner of the show's main event. The undercard looks good, too.

My friends who are big into MMA aren't interested in boxing at all. None of my friends are hardcore boxing fans. Those that are casual boxing fans are also casual MMA fans. But I wonder how big the crossover audience really is. The last two boxing events that went head-to-head against UFC did fantastic numbers, and the UFC numbers did what these shows probably would've done if they hadn't gone head to head. Based on the numbers, going head-to-head didn't really matter for either sport.

So, I think the buyrate battle won't take place in people's living rooms. I think the real question is, which event will the sportsbars choose to show?

[davemurphy]

Bourbonblues-
My personal feeling is that there really is no Battle, and I've always wondered why the hell some assholes in the Boxing Business have tried to make it into one, Dana White himself admits to being a Boxing Fan, and he didn't ask for this until people like Arum, Lampley, etc. got jealous that something was on PPV and they weren't involved and started popping off.

I know some serious boxing fans that enjoy MMA as well, either casually or big time (Davema knows I'm refering to our friend Gary there lol) but what we don't really see is MMA "Stealing" any Boxing Fans. Here's my take on that.......

Boxing has been around for over 100 years, and it's not like the MMA fans weren't exposed to it, even the younger ones. It's MMA that's relatively a new Sport, and I've noticed that NO ONE IS LEAVING being a Boxing Fan and giving up on it to follow MMA. Boxing is either not your Cup of Tea and MMA is, or you follow both. When it goes head to head, it doesn't effect either I don't think. A MAJOR Fight will likely outperform UFC, but then we don't have that many Major PPV's in Boxing (I'm talking the really big fights) wheras a UFC PPV is on every month and you have to take that into Account, even the recent ones that my MMA Friends said were Subpar Lineups didn't do bad considering the frequency of them.

[mh2365]

IMO it's like comparing ping pong to tennis ... yeah they are in the same family but they are two entirely different games

[bourbonblues]

That's pretty much how I see it, too.

[davemurphy]

I agree, good comparison. I think that if they really did effect each other, in terms of PPV Buys, it'd be something that would be so obvious that we wouldn't have to stop and figure it out. They simply draw from another group, those who buy the Boxing PPV's were probably not that likely to buy the MMA one and the MMA Buys are people that were probably unlikely to buy the Boxing one, and there's a mix that actually buy both. But there's not very many that would pick one over the other based on Lineup.

[bourbonblues]

Having said that, I think that UFC is doing a far better job at attracting new/young fans than boxing has been, at least in Canada and the USA. This might be the lack of a captivating World heavyweight champion, though.

[davemurphy]

There's no doubt they've doing a better job of selling their product to the younger demographics. I think a lot of it is the outside the Ring garbage that comes with our Sport.
We middle aged guys are used to the Organizations and the Politics and sometimes the Courts, we've accepted it or chosen to love Boxing inspite of it, but asking a younger fan to love the sport warts and all is difficult.

[bourbonblues]

If anyone is interested, the fightboxing won the "duel", 1.4 million to 500,000 (these are estimated numbers from google searches).

The events didn't end up taking place the same day (UFC showed a week later), and the co-main event (and biggest draw of the two, despite the other being a title fight) wasn't part of the show.

[davemurphy]

Bourbon-
I will say this about UFC, that's still a pretty impressive number when you consider how frequently they are churning out the PPV's. By my count, they've had 44 in the last three years, or about one every 3.5 weeks. It might look good that Boxing almost tripled it, but we don't put on Major PPV's as frequently.

[bourbonblues]

The estimates are for over 900,000 for the event this past weekend - the second ppv that month.