Now that last weekend’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) blockbuster UFC 214 from Anaheim, Calif., is officially in the rearview mirror, the focus of the combat sports world will shift to the massive boxing super fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor on August 26 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The bout has been called […]
Now that last weekend’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) blockbuster UFC 214 from Anaheim, Calif., is officially in the rearview mirror, the focus of the combat sports world will shift to the massive boxing super fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor on August 26 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The bout has been called a farce by some and the most anticipated combat sports bout of all-time by others, but only one thing is truly certain: the fight is going to sell, and it’s going to sell big. A large part of that is due to the hype and promotion McGregor brings, his brash style somehow placing him as a smaller underdog than many of Mayweather’s recent opponents despite him never having stepped into a professional boxing match.
That outspoken, at-times controversial style of trash talk has the 49-0 Mayweather hearkening back to his early days as one of the finest talkers in the fight game, and never was that more evident than during the pair’s recent four-city world tour to promote the bout in a series of press conferences a few weeks back. With tickets now on sale, SHOWTIME Sports released the first official commercial today.
The video flaunts the wealth and lavishness of both ultra-rich superstars of their sports, something both fighters did exceptionally well during the world tour. Check out the 30-second video that touts the fight as one where ‘kings will collide’ right here:
How would a UFC star fare in the boxing ring? That’s the question everybody seems to be debating in the build-up to Conor McGregor’s blockbuster fight with Floyd Mayweather on August 26th, but it’s worth keeping in mind that ‘The Notorious’ is far from the first UFC fighter to have fought in the squared circle. […]
That’s the question everybody seems to be debating in the build-up to Conor McGregor’s blockbuster fight with Floyd Mayweather on August 26th, but it’s worth keeping in mind that ‘The Notorious’ is far from the first UFC fighter to have fought in the squared circle.
In all fairness, the circumstances surrounding McGregor Vs Mayweather are unique. We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude before – a UFC champion at the peak of their career head to the boxing ring, let alone agreeing to face one of that sport’s all-time greats.
Nevertheless, there are a number of fighters currently fighting in the UFC who do have professional boxing bouts on their records, often from much earlier in their career’s, and in this article, we’ll take a closer look at how they did – from the good and the bad through the downright ugly.
Anderson Silva
One of MMA’s all-time greats, Anderson Silva has also tested his skills in the boxing ring twice during his combat sports career.
His pro boxing debut took place in his native Brazil all the way back in 1998 when he was just 23 years old. At the time he was only just getting started in his MMA career too, with both of his wins at the time having come during a single-night tournament a year earlier.
Despite his lack of experience, Silva was handed a tough first outing against Osmar Luiz Teixeira, a cruiserweight (200 pounds) who held an 8-2 boxing record and had finished six of his fights inside the distance.
No video or photographs exist of the fight, but officially it was recorded as a victory for Teixeira due to Silva retiring after the second round, allegedly due to body shots.
After a two year absence, Silva returned to MMA, and by 2005 had amassed a 15-3 record, but after surpisingly being released by the PRIDE organization, he briefly opted to return to the boxing ring.
This time he faced Julio Cesar de Jesus, a newcomer who would prove to be no match for Silva’s by-now seasoned striking and was finished with punches to the body and head in the second round.
It wasn’t long before Silva signed for the UFC and he would go on to achieve superstardom as their long-reigning middleweight champion, but over the years he’s also harbored an ambition to fight legendary boxer Roy Jones Jr in the ring.
However, despite both indicating their interest in the match-up, this particular super fight has never come to fruition.
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017. After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time […]
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017.
After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time of downward-trending PPVs without flagship stars Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey anywhere close to the octagon.
True, McGregor will return to the ring against Floyd Mayweather, on August 26, but that could be hurting the UFC’s actual numbers more than helping them. We’ll get to that shortly.
Regardless, both the preliminary card television ratings and pay-per-view buyrates for July 8’s UFC 213 from Las Vegas were recently revealed, and the numbers ultimately amounted to some of the most dismal overall viewership turnouts the UFC has ever seen. Now, women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes’ extremely late withdrawal from her championship bout versus Valentina Shevchenko most definitely caused the lack of buys, but the numbers are concerning nonetheless.
Things didn’t get better two weeks later when UFC on FOX 25 aired live from the Nassau Coliseum on July 22. Despite former middleweight champion Chris Weidman securing an emotional headlining win over Kelvin Gastelum in his hometown, the card had the lowest-ever ratings for a UFC on FOX event in overnight ratings, a number that rose to “only” the third-worst of all-time when the time slot spillover numbers for the main event were factored in.
That continued a disturbing decline for big FOX-aired cards in 2017, but those numbers are also simply indicative of the overall trend of the year, where pay-per-view rates have went down drastically in addition to TV-aired events and PPV prelim numbers.
There are several big underlying factors for this sharp and disturbing decline. On the eve of the biggest pay-per-view of the year, let’s take at the five most impactful.
Promoting Only McGregor & Rousey:
The UFC enjoyed their most lucrative two-year stretch in history from 2015-2016, a time when their biggest-ever crossover stars in Rousey and McGregor were winning big fights in dominant fashion. Rousey was being called the most dominant fighter in MMA, and McGregor won both the featherweight and lightweight titles while becoming the sport’s biggest star.
But that time period simply couldn’t be sustained, as Rousey infamously lost the belt to Holly Holm at UFC 193, following it up with another unsuccessful title fight in her 48-second loss to Nunes at 2016’s UFC 207, after which it appears Rousey may never fight in the UFC again.
McGregor is not gone; at least not in the same sense as Rousey. He’s obviously involved in his hyped-up boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and while the UFC will obviously get a ton of attention and hype from that massive spectacle, it brings up one vital, overarching point – the UFC simply promoted only their top two stars in recent years, and while it clearly worked in that regard, it left them much too dependent on McGregor and Rousey for success, because their other fighters just aren’t bringing in any numbers at all.
If they ever want to get back to the level where they have their big draws and their mid-level stars; say in the time of dominant champions Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre where mid-level stars like Rashad Evans and Rampage Jackson could still sell an in-between card for 350-400,000 buys, they’re going to have to diversify their promotional strategy.
If Floyd Mayweather’s team has their way, a face very close to Conor McGregor’s career will be walking out with their team when the legendary boxer faces McGregor on August 26 in Las Vegas. That’s according to Jason Lee, a member of Mayweather’s vast entourage, who told TMZ Sports that he’s made a call to […]
If Floyd Mayweather’s team has their way, a face very close to Conor McGregor’s career will be walking out with their team when the legendary boxer faces McGregor on August 26 in Las Vegas.
That’s according to Jason Lee, a member of Mayweather’s vast entourage, who told TMZ Sports that he’s made a call to Nate Diaz, the UFC bad boy who handed ‘The Notorious’ his sole UFC defeat back in March of last year:
Lee revealed he’s from Stockton, and he’s motivated by what went down between his boy Mayweather and McGregor at the final world tour press conference stop in London two weeks ago, so he’s going to get ahold of the younger Diaz:
“I’m from Stockton, California, and I was just in London with Floyd when the shit went down with Conor. I’m gone make a call to Nate Diaz. I would love to see him walkout with Floyd.”
Mayweather and his team have repeatedly cited the fact that McGregor tapped out to a Diaz choke in their first meeting at UFC 196, pointing to that as evidence that the UFC lightweight champ is a quitter.
But “The Notorious” rebounded well to outlast Diaz in a closely-contested majority decision at August 2016’s UFC 202, avenging his only loss and moving on to dust Eddie Alvarez for the UFC 155-pound title that November. Diaz immediately began calling for a trilogy fight with McGregor after the controversial loss, so he could either want to support a fighter with a common enemy, or turn down the offer because he believes he should be the one fighting the Irish superstar.
Do you think Diaz should walk out with Mayweather in Las Vegas?
Following last weeks both controversial an exhausting world tour, August 26’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor is rapidly approaching from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. McGregor will attempt to do something no man has ever done, and that’s defeat the 49-0 Mayweather in a boxing ring. And the Irishman will do it without a […]
Following last weeks both controversial an exhausting world tour, August 26’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor is rapidly approaching from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor will attempt to do something no man has ever done, and that’s defeat the 49-0 Mayweather in a boxing ring. And the Irishman will do it without a true professional boxing fight to his credit, even if his trash talk and pre-fight hype has somehow placed him as roughly a +400 underdog on the quickly shrinking odds, a figure fall smaller than many of Mayweather’s recent opponents who were considered some of the best pugilists in the sport.
That’s a testament to “The Notorious’” sheer ability to promote a fight and get fans believing in him, and it’s obvious that Mayweather has partnered with SHOWTIME Sports to become the biggest name in boxing himself, even if he has been retired for two years. It all leads to a massive co-promotion with the UFC that could legitimately be the biggest combat sports fight of all-time.
With the date just over a month away, SHOWTIME released the official fight poster (not the announcement poster) on Twitter this weekend. Check it out:
Most mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members will most likely agree they are glad that last week’s exhausting Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over, as the media spectacle hyping August 26’s boxing super fight from Las Vegas devolved into a contrived circus of off-color and unnecessary back-and-forths plain and simple. Those unadvisable […]
Most mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members will most likely agree they are glad that last week’s exhausting Mayweather vs. McGregor world tour is over, as the media spectacle hyping August 26’s boxing super fight from Las Vegas devolved into a contrived circus of off-color and unnecessary back-and-forths plain and simple.
Those unadvisable gaffs included McGregor’s supposed ongoing racism, claims he denied only to continue making even more crass and specific jokes concerning race, this time while humping the air at Brooklyn’s absolute flop of a press conference. Mayweather, perhaps miffed and looking to do the Irishman one better, did just as bad when he blurted out a homophobic slur at McGregor.
The press event tour did produce some equally memorable moments, however, as many felt the second stop in Toronto pushed the hype into the stratosphere. And much of it was because of McGregor’s golden tongue, as he spit out slick, stinging one-liners that required so little effort that it seemed to bring out the old, seemingly long-gone trash-talking version of Mayweather.
One joke among several that stuck for McGregor was his reference of Mayweather’s muscled bodyguards as ‘juiceheads’ after they ‘formed Voltron’ around him at the Brooklyn conference. One of those security specialists is named Greg La Rosa, and he recently addressed the situation in an interview with Submission Radio (via Bloody Elbow):
“….He looked over at me and the other guy Ray (Jizzy Mack) and he said, ‘look at these two juice heads,’” La Rosa recalled. “So I guess at that point he probably had enough of him, he had to go at me. So I thought it was very, he looked at me and he said, ‘look at these two juice heads,’ and Floyd, I can’t remember what Floyd said after that. Floyd said something after that.”
“So I think he walked away for a bit and then he came back and said some stuff to me like, ‘you’re on juice,’ and I told him right there, I said, ‘no, never,’” he continued. “I said, ‘I’m not’. I said, ‘I’ll do a USADA test right now and I’ll bet you a hundred thousand dollars that I’m not,’ and he said, ‘yeah right, yeah right,’ and I said, ‘I’ll take it right now, I’ll take the blood right after the show.’”
“And it kind of got him like, ‘no way’ and he said, I think he said something along the lines of, ‘this is a real body,’ or something. And then I just told him, I said, ‘you know what, when you’re standing next to me’, I said, ‘put on a shirt cause you’re embarrassing yourself standing next to me’. I figured it would just rattle him up a little bit. That’s all it is for me.”
SHOWTIME Sports
So La Rosa is just trying to get inside McGregor’s head and help Team Money pick up the win in the massive super fight, yet no one has yet to do that in any of his fights in MMA. “The Notorious” is clearly one of the most confident athletes in combat sports, but he is going up against a legendary fighter whom many feel is arguably the greatest boxer of all-time.
La Rosa acknowledged his skills and praised McGregor for his accomplishments in both the cage and in promotion, but overall, he thinks the UFC’s leading name is just out of his league here, and that became clear when he rubbed Mayweather’s head at the final world tour stop in London:
“Conor’s an excellent athlete, he’s an even better promoter, I take my hat off to him,” La Rosa said. “He’s done things in four years that people didn’t even think were possible, so I got nothing negative to say in that aspect. But in terms of getting in Floyd’s head – impossible. I believe the turning point of what showed that he couldn’t get in his head is at the point when he touched his head in London.
“To me, that showed a sign of weakness in Conor because basically, the touch, you’re not supposed to be touching the other guy obviously, and I believe that touch was to try to bring something out of Floyd and he was basically saying, to me anyways, that I can’t do with words, I can’t do with actions, I need to try to do something else here,” he added.
“And even when he touched him, Floyd wasn’t even paying attention. He was on his phone and was just laughing at him, just laughing. He was talking to other people while Conor was doing his bit and I think that was really getting to Conor.”
