Quote Originally Posted by 0james0 View Post
I don't think you can measure a fights popularity by the number of people at the event, or even PPV buys.

With all the live streams and full fight downloads available, it distorts how many people actually watched it. I bet most boxing fans have now watched the fight.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The purpose of a boxing event is to sell viewership and promote the sport itself. If people don't show up for a live championship event, where is the sport headed? If more and more people are showing up to watch UFC events vs Boxing events were less people are showing up, its an indicator of what? I don't have the stats to even know if that statement is even correct, it's just an observation.

You say piracy is a big problem, and it may be. Yet there are UFC event streams are all over the net, and their sport patronage continues to grow. I think boxing promotion might have a serious problem and this is just one of the indicators. Williams / Martinez II was not over the thanksgiving weekend and drew just 5,202 live ticket sales when it was being sold as a candidate for fight of the year.

My thought is, it might in part have to do with the ranking system and the multiple sanctioning bodies. Causal fans can't keep track of who are the champions. The mainstream media seems to be paying more attention to who is ranked as on the P4P list. Basically they are telling the general public who the champions of boxing are. While in reality they ignoring the sanctioning bodies ranked champions.