By P. L. Carson
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UFC 110: Nogueira vs. Velasquez will take place at the Acer Arena in Sydney, Australia, this will be the Ultimate Fighting Championships first show Down Under. The appeal and interest has been amazing, despite how young the sport of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) is, it seems to be growing at a rapid pace.
Australia has hopped on the UFC bandwagon. The marketing of the UFC is what helps them garner new fans to the sport. I just watched the UFC 110 countdown show on Spike TV and they do something different, they showcase the co-feature bouts as well.
Boxing pre-shows only showcase the main event fight, this is why no one gives a crap about the undercards in boxing, because they have no clue who the people are on the undercard.
UFC president, Dana White, plans to take the sport of MMA global, he has already done fights in England, Ireland, Germany, Canada, this Saturday in Australia and upcoming UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
While boxing still has it’s international stars like Manny Pacquiao, Ricky Hatton, the Klitschko bros and Floyd Mayweather Jr., the sport has lost the interest of the youth.
This has to do with production and marketing strategies, UFC obviously caters to a younger crowd by filling their pay per view with lots of imagery, music and clips between breaks, so they have the viewers attention at all times.
UFC events don’t go into long diatribes in between fights, if they have a quick fight on the undercard they fill it up with a fight from their preliminary bouts, while boxing will usually fill the time with dead air and long speeches from the commentators.
HBO is the elite when it comes to boxing production. Showtime boxing and ESPN “Friday Night Fights” still don’t have that same feel and build up that a HBO boxing event has, although the one thing I like about ESPN Friday Night Fights is when Teddy Atlas breaks down the fight and demonstrates what needs to be done.
As good as HBO is, they could still use a few adjustments, like instead of going into dead air with just commentating, they should show video lead ups to the main event. They should do something similar to what Teddy Atlas does and physically demonstrate what the two main event fighters need to do to win.
Boxing is still strong internationally but in America it seldom gets any coverage and this has to do with mass media not willing to cover the sport anymore and the lack of marketing towards the youth.
Promoters basically just put on a boxing event and expect it to sell itself and that’s good enough for many boxing promoters, but that only works for mega fights like “Pacquiao vs. Mayweather”. Boxing should do what the UFC has done by doing more extracurricular activities with the fans and build up every single ppv like it was a special one.
Nobody is gonna pay for Edwin Valero no matter how exciting he is because the public has no clue who this guy is.
If boxing doesn’t wise up they could lose ground to the UFC on a world wide scale.
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