Well I consider myself pretty well versed on UFC and Boxing, others may disagree but hey what can I say?
I've actually followed UFC, since the very first UFC tournament,where there were NO rules. When a #10 ranked Cruiserweight fighter came into the ring with one boxing glove on his hand ready to KO somebody, and got choked out two minutes later by Royce Gracie. When you could punch a guy in the nuts 10-15 times, and not disqualified. I saw Royce Gracie win against Ken Shamrock. I've seen Tank Abbott get his ass kicked a thousand times, Mark "the Hammer" Coleman, and his protege, Kevin Randleman come and change the sport with their "ground and pound" tactics. I've seen the UFC go from separate martial arts competing against each other to MMA, where everybody is cross trained in everything. I've seen it all in the UFC really, and for the most part I've liked it. Its been brutal. Now, though it has changed, and its still pretty good, but all the freakin yuppies, and young punks are getting into it and thinking they know something about fighting. They know Liddell and Ortiz. They know shit IMO. Anyway, point is, the pisshead Dana White, who apparently used to be a amatuer boxer, is making the UFC out to be a brand, he's taken it mainstream, and it has become almost like Pro Wrestling. No longer is it barred in most states, or an underground thing like it was. It's really become a traveling circus IMO. I still like it, but I don't love it like I do boxing. Boxing is great, because its on a lot more than UFC, and its just more of an art, more of a pure sport the way I see it. Anything can happen in boxing and has, and I love that. UFC has become a fad, and people will start to see that, the same fighters keep fighting one another way too often, and it will pass, least at the rate Dana White is going. Boxing however will never die.
*oh and for the record, grappling can be boring, but it is not that frequent anymore, and a good grappler will always beat a good strker, if that striker can't defend against the takedown or panics when he gets taken down, grapplers are very skilled, and there are tons of submissions out there.