Guest UG Blog columnist Niall Doran is the founder of Boxing News and Views. You can follow him on Twitter at @NiallerDoran
MMA and boxing have been linked together perhaps more than ever in 2016. Right now the most famed combatants of this generation, Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, continue to hurl insults at one another amid speculation of a showdown in 2017.
But if you look beneath the surface a little bit you’ll see there is something much deeper going on.
New Generational Shift
As a guy who runs a boxing site and a lifelong boxing fan I pay close attention to what boxing fans are talking about, and at the age of 28, am probably one of the older ‘millennials’ at this stage. But what I’ve seen from the younger boxing fans and indeed friends of mine who I grew up with watching all the big boxing fights and also the Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz fights back in the day, is that many of us still watch both sports.
Yes, the two sports are completely different, but at the same time, there are many out there who also just enjoy watching a good fight when one rolls around. It’s not our fault. Fighting is in our DNA.
I see this mutual audience steadily growing all the time. It will only continue to gather steam over the coming years I suspect.
Brothers From Another Mother
In many ways, the sports have always been closely linked, given the history of how MMA started out in terms of seeking to become State regulated in the US like boxing – establishing judges to score the fights and so.
Further, boxing will always be a part of MMA given its utilization as a main skill by some of the sport’s best protagonists.
Yes, being well-rounded in MMA is absolutely vital to reach the top, but when you look at what Conor McGregor does best in the Octagon for example, there is no denying that a lot of it is how he leverages his excellent boxing skills, albeit from an almost karate type stance.
The fight community is a close-knit one in both sports. These communities are starting to come closer together than ever before in the social media age we now live in.
They Actually Help One Another In Ways
Mixed martial arts’ rapid rise to popularity over the last number of years has forced boxing to up its game. Slowly – and I mean slowly – but surely, boxing promoters are starting to step things up in terms of the promotion of boxing.
The UFC as MMA’s main promotion has obviously played a massive role in growing the sport through not just matching the best fighters in the world on a consistent basis, but also using innovative marketing over the years through digital channels, among other means
One way I believe boxing might be helping UFC fighters, is that the likes of Mayweather and other boxers who put out their PPV incomes publicly are making the UFC raise the bar for MMA athletes who also want some of those big paydays. Conor McGregor mentioning that he wants an equity percentage in the company after his UFC 205 win over Eddie Alvarez could be an indication of this growing trend that the big MMA stars now not only want the big paydays but much more.
I predict by 2020 we’ll see some notable professional boxing and MMA shows co-promoted – as the fan bases of both sports continue to grow in proximity.
Imagine a Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight, with every boxing fan buying the pay per view, and every MMA fan buying the pay per view. Together, we are bigger than ever.
