Boxing vs. MMA: A Zero Sum Game?

by Luke Thomas on Jan 22, 2008 2:12 PM EST in News Comment 0 comments

Over at ESPN.com, longtime boxing reporter Royce Feour comments on the possibility (read: truth) that the rise in popularity of MMA has forced boxing to improve it's product due to competition. To wit:

I covered boxing for 42 years in Las Vegas, including 37 years for the Las Vegas Review-Journal before retiring in 2004. I was ringside for thousands of fights, including the biggest names in boxing, because I worked in Las Vegas. But I never covered a UFC fight card.

Actually, I didn't know the sport and I didn't really care for it. That was mostly because I didn't understand it and did not know the nuances of mixed martial arts.

Since then I've attended two UFC cards in Las Vegas as a spectator and enjoyed the action. There is always something happening at a UFC card: The UFC makes great use of its video on giant screens to show interviews and highlights between fights. Gone are the sometimes lengthy "dead" times between fights where nothing is happening like in boxing.

I think the success of the UFC had an influence in forcing boxing to step up by promoting better fights and offering a more enjoyable fan experience, although the boxing promoters won't admit it.

Boxing enjoyed a revival of sorts in 2007 because the good fighters started fighting each other, something that wasn't happening, at least that often.

Seems reasonable. But this begs the question: if the competition is real, then that means to some meaningful extent there is an overlap in the audience, right? Bob Arum thinks not:

But major boxing promoters say that the UFC -- by far the biggest and most successful of the mixed martial arts promoters -- hasn't impacted boxing that much.

"Boxing was impacted by MMA in one group and one group alone -- the young, male, Caucasian demographic," said Bob Arum, chairman of Top Rank. "They tended to go away from boxing and to mixed martial arts."

That was largely because, Arum said, the young white males looked at most of the UFC fighters and saw themselves.

"Boxing kept the older white males, the Hispanics and African-Americans," Arum said.

To some extent, there is some truth to this. MMA does not share the history nor the relationship with the African-American community that boxing does. Moreover, the expensive cost of training MMA coupled with a noticable lack of African-American stars within the sport (something that's changing everyday) renders the sport the apple of every suburban white male's eye. But without hard numbers, it's hard to tell to what extent this is affecting the business of MMA and boxing ostensibly competing with one another.

The issue not being addressed here is that MMA (read: UFC) has been successful to some extent at promoting big fights by having fighters of elite acclaim regularly square off with one another. While the two sports may not be competing over a similar pool of prospective fans, it's certainly plausible to note that boxing reinvigorated it's base by placing a stronger emphasis on marquee or meaningful match-ups than in years past.

Of course, if you ask Arum, MMA doesn't fit into boxing's picture at all:

"The record-setting financial success of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-De La Hoya fight in 2006 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas opened the eyes of promoters, managers and fighters to what a great boxing matchup could do," Arum said. "The tremendously successful Mayweather-De La Hoya fight was the catalyst that made boxing people realize that a lot of money could be made from matchups of the best and most marketable fighters."

He also added, "In my opinion, it had nothing to do with any perceived competition from mixed martial arts."