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Message: [QUOTE="Towney007, post: 2904675, member: 5832"] You're not wrong here in the sense boxing isn't going anywhere. It's healthy and doing fine. And to be clear- I was a boxing fan long before I was an MMA fan and I love the sport. Don't like it - love it. But I don't think fighter pay - while it's a huge issue - is an indicator of popularity. It's just that UFC likes price controls. They're a private business with a roster of fighters who only fight other fighters in that same company. It's different in boxing where there's so many more interests to leverage in order to make valuable fights. There's also a cultural difference fans more or less accept in each sport. In boxing, taking a loss sets fighters back years in some cases. So to keep their promotional value high, promoters do more to protect their investments. That's good in a sense that you get longer life spans out of fighters as draws, but it hurts fans because it's so hard to put real, marquee fights together. In the UFC, they tell 95% of the fighters who they're facing and they take in 95% of the money. And if you lose in MMA, as long as your entertaining, you're going to get big fights. It's why guys like Nate Diaz - who's lost almost as much as he's won - are big stars still. That and like I said before - just too much flukey stuff in MMA that can happen. Chris Weidman has lost 4 of his last 5 fights after dominating the division for a period of time. And he's not necessarily a bad fighter or a fighter who's been passed by thanks to the sport evolving. He's just made a mistake in each of those fights and paid for them about as badly as you could. Doesn't make him sloppy or undisciplined - he just hasn't gotten away with anything, ever. He fought his best fight in years the other night.. and then just got clipped. Nothing more, nothing less. My point being - there's less risk when you control everything. The company is rolling in it, but fighter pay goes nowhere. In boxing, fighter pay is where you start - then everything else drops from there. [/QUOTE]

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