HBO Boxing commentator Jim Lampley feels that, because of it’s business model, the UFC will never hold events as big as in boxing.
Although UFC 196: McGregor vs. Diaz has been the most successful pay-per-view in UFC history, with estimated 1.5 million buys, it didn’t come even close to the 4.4 million that boxing’s so called “Fight of the Century” between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
HBO boxing commentator Jim Lampley, who is never shy to criticize the UFC or MMA in general, now has an explanation, why even the biggest UFC cards fail to reach the buy rate of a blockbuster boxing event.
“[UFC] make the top people fight against the top people,” Lampley recently explained during a podcast from Bill Simmons. “It’s more like the NFL model where any given Sunday top guys are going to fight top guys. But of course what that eliminates for them is the pinnacle event. When everybody has four to five losses you can’t put together Mayweather-Pacquiao because the public wants to see people rise up way above the normal universe and then get together in some sort of summit meeting and that’s when you get the million buy Pay-Per-View, or in the case with Mayweather-Pacquiao the 4.4 million buy PPV.
“UFC will never be able to construct an event like that as long as they use the model they’re using. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I think there are intelligent reasons for them to do what they do but we’re always going to have the bigger showcase events when they happen.”
While it is true that the UFC has never managed to get at least half as much people to buy a single pay-per-view than the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight did, they put on high-quality events with at least solid buy rates on a regular basis, which Simmons also noted. Boxing on the other hand has far more successful singular events, but with that success dependent only on a certain circle of fighters or special match ups.
UFC 200, which takes place July 9 in the newly-built T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, is expected to become the biggest UFC event in history, and will reportedly be headlined by a rematch between Nate Diaz and Conor McGregor.
Transcription via MMA Fighting