The reports of Boxings demise has been greatly exaggerated.
"Lmfao. Why can't some people just admit that much of his status and success is due to being "Latino" and pandering to that community where boxing is huge and they want "someone like them" to worship which is always okay in America when you're a minority."
Julio Cesar Chavez was a lot more popular in the latino community than Oscar ever has been, both in America and Mexico, and none of his fights ever came close to matching DLH numbers. Vargas had just as strong a fanbase as Oscar amongst Latinos, yet again, on his own he wasn't nearly as popular overall.
Oscar became a household name out of the 1992 Olympics because A) He won the only gold medal for the US team that year, B) He was good looking guy, and C) there was a great human interest story revolving around his mother dying of cancer and Oscar promising her he'd win a gold medal on her death bed. NBC played that story up huge and made him one of the biggest stories coming out of that years Olympics. None of that Olympic hype had anything to do with him being latino, and it was the hype from the Olympics that gave him the mainstream push in his career.
Besides, you can't do 2.15 million PPV buys based on the latino community alone. They are good for about 400 to 500 000 buys tops. The rest is about capturing the attention of the rest of the population. Saying DLH is a huge draw because he's latino would be like saying Tyson was a huge draw because he was black.
Besides, you can't do 2.15 million PPV buys based on the latino community alone.
As posted earlier, ESPN and HBO promoted the shit out of this fight. They mostly ignore MMA except to dump on it.
Great, DLH/PBF did 2.1 million buys, awesome, the UFC did probably somewhere around 4.5 - 5 million buys last year with no major sports coverage.
Imagine what the UFC can pump out with national sports coverage.
How many buys will boxing do next month or the month after that?
This was the biggest boxing fight in a decade and every major sports show, including radio hyped it to death in the run up. I don't see how this fight is indicative of some rekindling of an American love affair with boxing.
And, it was a lame point fight.
The UFC is growing, although if they expect people to shell out $40 for ppv cards like UFC 72, then they're going to start losing ground.
73 is totally worth it, as is any Liddell fight simply for the KO fireworks.
^^^and Spike promotes the shit out of the UFC. In fact, the entire network has basically become one big UFC infomercial. But besides that point, why the incredibly defensive and bitter post in response to a boxing card that did big numbers?? You sound as if it personally offends you that this fight did massive numbers and feel the need to dismiss it so that you can feel better about the UFC. It's strange that even as MMA has become more and more popular, a lot of the fans still carry around this massive inferiority complex that spills over anytime a succesful boxing match occurs. It's funny.
"Why can't some people just admit that much of his status and success is due to being "Latino" and pandering to that community where boxing is huge and they want "someone like them" to worship which is always okay in America when you're a minority."
This would be like saying that the UFC's success is due to pandering to the white community who wants to see someone like them to worship.
But maybe there's some truth to that, given the negative reactions by some people on this forum to the rise of minority MMAers like Sanchez, Koscheck, and Rashad Evans.
http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3922&zoneid=2
"THE MYTH OF BOXING AS A "DYING SPORT"
The facts are that last year was the second-biggest year in boxing history at the pay-per-view box office, with $177 million in gross PPV revenue for HBO.
It would also be inaccurate to say that boxing can't draw decent PPV buyrates without Oscar de la Hoya. While De la Hoya vs. Mayorga was boxing's biggest event in 2006, it only generated $42 million out of the $177 million in HBO's gross PPV revenue last year. The remaining $132 million in gross PPV revenue was drawn by fights that did not feature De la Hoya.
One of the reasons for the existence of this false perception about boxing's fortunes is the dramatic rise of the UFC on the PPV landscape in 2006. Even with boxing having its second-biggest year ever in 2006, the UFC surpassed boxing for the first time ever in 2006, with gross PPV revenue of $222,766,000 generated by UFC PPVs in 2006.
The drastic increase in the UFC's pay-per-view buyrates did not appear to negatively affect boxing's PPV buyrates. In fact, a major boxing PPV and a major UFC PPV aired at the same time on PPV last November, and neither event suffered any significant ill effects as a result of the head-to-head competition. There is some crossover between the two sports' fans, but nowhere near as much as one might assume.
Though many hardcore MMA fans hate the pro wrestling industry with a passion, the fact remains that MMA's audience overlaps much more with pro wrestling's audience than it does with boxing's. It has been pro wrestling, not boxing, that has seen its United States PPV buyrates collapse as the UFC's PPV buyrates have increased. It is pro wrestling, not boxing, that shares a similar demographic breakdown with the UFC. The #1 demographic for boxing is people over the age of 50. The UFC doesn't draw particularly well among 35-to-49-year-olds, much less people over the age of 50."
^^^ Not to mention the UFC's business model is pro-wrestling, but with real fights.
"I'm willing to bet that the Wed & Fri night fights on ESPN 2 are still doing better ratings overall than TUF"
Well, you would lose that bet Max. Last time I heard, the ratings for boxing on ESPN 2 was around 0.7 or 0.8.
Boxing is a dying sport?? Oscar made $45 million while Floyd claims he made up to $30 million. Dana White's underpaid champs can only dream about making $30 million in one fight. Dana White had the nerve to suggest that Mayweather fight Sean Shirk. Floyd's reply "why should I fight for a hundred thousand when I'm making millions from boxing?" How is a sport dying when the participants make this much money in one fight?
Boxing sucks and is on the way out. Pretty quick also.
"ufc has put tons of money into marketing it but the popularity is slowly declining.."
I agree that boxing is in no way dying, but how do you figure MMA's popularity is declining in the US. You hear more about it now than you ever have...at least I do.