Worth a repost..thanks to ShaneTx
In time, UFC may TKO boxing's audience
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Charles Jay / BoxingScene.com
Posted: 9 hours ago
The sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) is developing a substantial following, but is it cultivating any of boxing's mainstream audience?
Zuffa LLC, the Nevada company which controls the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and is thus the sport's dominant player in the U.S., has attempted to reach more avid boxing fans by courting the boxing media.
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At last year's Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) dinner in Las Vegas, UFC had a substantial presence. Kevin Iole, the boxing beat writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has covered every UFC event held in the city and thinks the barriers to acceptance by the mainstream boxing press and public have more to do with the limitations imposed on the major media than the quality of the UFC product.
"In newspapers, space is at a premium, even for boxing," says Iole, who says he's grown to appreciate the UFC as he's seen more of it. "To go to MMA, that requires the writers taking the time to understand the difference and to search out the demographic, and the writers aren't going to do that. They're going to try to get more space for what they already know and are comfortable with, and that's boxing."
One of the reasons newspapers aren't clamoring to cover the UFC is that mixed martial arts fans are not their customers. UFC's demographics skew younger, and young people are reading newspapers less and less these days. According to a study done by the Online Publishers Association, for only nine percent of adults aged 18-34 is the newspaper the first or second medium of choice.
Also, mixed martial arts has still yet to be sanctioned in many states. Fewer than half of state athletic commissions, which were formed for the purposes of regulating boxing, allow it; among those who do are influential states such as Nevada, New Jersey, Florida, and California, with an MMA-only commission having been recently been established in North Dakota. Because of that, UFC is still working to combat its "outlaw" perception — not the least of which is a confusion with Toughman contests, with which it has no affiliation — that is not often compatible with mainstream media coverage.
Generally, the safety aspects of the UFC, the result of a restructuring of the rules in the late 1990s, stand up favorably to those of boxing, but commissions have been slow to catch on, principally due to a lack of understanding of the disciplines the sport encompasses.
Larry Hazzard, commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, was the first commissioner to give MMA his stamp of approval. But Hazzard brought plenty of background to his decision; he has black belts in Karate and Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and has taught close-quarter combat at a number of law-enforcement academies.
"Yes, this is a combat sport, but it's still a totally different animal," Hazzard said. "People are used to boxing, and they know what they're looking for. And it seems this (MMA) loses a lot of people once it gets to the ground. They don't understand the wrestling and the submission holds. If you put together a highlight clip of MMA action, it seems more brutal, and that's probably turned some people off."
Younger viewers are as likely to know UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes as they are the big names in boxing. (John Gichigi / Getty Images)
"It's still more a spectacle than a sport in many people's minds," says Tim Graham, boxing writer for the Buffalo News, who was recently elected president of the BWAA. "But I'm a fan of it. I see it as a very pure and worthwhile sport that's a worthy competitor to boxing."
Graham looks upon the fact that the UFC is both the promoter and the sanctioning body as a positive for the fans. "They basically control their product, and they can put on the very best matchups possible and give the fans what they want on a very structured basis. So from a business standpoint, it's everything boxing isn't."
Iole echoes that, making the point that not only does the UFC seem to be more responsive to public demand than most boxing promoters, it has the business model necessary to do something about it: "If there's a big matchup in a division, they get that fight made right away."
Old-line boxing people have expressed little interest in the UFC or mixed martial arts in general, and that prospect is not likely to change. International matchmaker and agent Don Majeski points out that there was more commonality between boxing and wrestling fans in the 1950s and '60s, but he doesn't see it happening with boxing and MMA.
"Years ago there used to be wrestling and boxing in the same place, where you'd see a wrestling match one night and boxing the next night, or vice versa," Majeski said. "And often the boxing promoter and the wrestling promoter were one in the same, or they had a great rivalry between the two of them, where each disdained the sport of the other, and they went after each other's fans. (With MMA) I haven't seen much crossover promotion."
Younger boxing promoters, however, may be more accepting of MMA events. Scott Wagner, 37, who promotes his regular "Ballroom Boxing" series out of Glen Burnie, Md., says that if the sport was sanctioned and regulated in his state (it is not), he wouldn't hesitate to put on shows. "I'd do it in a minute," he says. "Actually, it wouldn't even take me that long."
Wagner recognizes something in the UFC's approach that boxing doesn't have a hold on. "People who don't like it are basing their judgments on something they don't know about," he says. "What I see about the sport is that the demographic, as far as sponsors go, is a bonanza. It's male, 18-25. I went to one of those events. They sold 16,000 tickets or however many that joint held. You couldn't get in that place. How many boxing matches do you go to and see that many people?"
There is little question that mixed martial arts is one of the fastest growing sports in America. "By the end of this fiscal year," says Hazzard, "we will have sanctioned more MMA shows than pro boxing shows in this state, which is a first."
It likely won't be the last time we'll hear that. MMA promoters, specifically the UFC, seem to possess more marketing savvy than their boxing brethren. They may not be capturing the boxing audience now, but they're latching on to a generation of customers who will eventually make up more and more of the demographic pool. And as its dyed-in-the-wool loyalists become fewer in number, boxing may in time have problems arousing the interest of fans who have been weaned on MMA.
