UFC vs. Boxing Review - AUGUST

Updated Monthly

By Joe Harrison

8-31-09

DANA WHITE'S COUNTERPUNCH

If you are a big fan of watching fights, either mixed martial arts or boxing, then August was a pretty good month. Of course, it would be difficult to provide a bigger event than UFC 100 from July, but that definitely does not mean that big events will stop coming. UFC president Dana White is certainly beginning to make things interesting, but we’ll get to that later. While we review the month of August, let’s begin with boxing.

There were plenty of intriguing boxing match-ups that took place beginning with the August 1st junior welterweight doubleheader on Showtime. Devon Alexander won the vacant WBC title with his defeat of Junior Witter by 8th-round TKO. Also, WBO champ Timothy Bradley retained his title when Nate Campbell could not continue due to a cut over his eye, causing the initial result of 4th-round TKO. Later, the result was changed to a no contest when it was proven that the cut was caused by an accidental head butt rather than a punch.

Then, on August 15th, Roy Jones Jr. returned to the ring and scored a dominant 10th-round TKO victory over Jeff Lacy. That same evening, on another pay-per-view, Nonito Donaire defeated Rafael Concepcion by a unanimous decision to win the WBA interim super flyweight belt.

Unfortunately, one of our top “worst decisions” of the year took place on August 22nd when former lightweight champ Juan Diaz took on former junior welterweight champ Paulie Malignaggi. By the end of the bout, most viewers felt that Malignaggi had done just enough to earn the victory. Sadly, all three judges scored the bout for Diaz, 115-113, 116-112, and an outrageous 118-110.

The month certainly did not end on a negative note for boxing fans. On August 28th, ESPN’s Friday Night Fights had its season finale, and it undeniably went out with a bang. Two quality championship match-ups were televised for everyone to see. First, Tavoris Cloud faced Clinton Woods over twelve hard-fought rounds as he won the vacant IBF light heavyweight championship. Also, IBF junior welterweight champion Juan Urango successfully defended his belt with an 11th-round stoppage over Randall Bailey. Friday Night Fights actually will return one more time on September 18th to feature 2-time super bantamweight gold medalist Guillermo Rigondeaux.

As far as the month’s biggest event, it was UFC 101 that exceeded expectations. Actually, while earning around 900,000 pay-per-view buys, it became the second biggest pay-per-view only behind UFC 100, which received over 1.5 million PPV buys. It was in this event that BJ Penn submitted Kenny Florian with a rear-naked choke in the fourth round. In the co-main event, Anderson Silva knocked out Forrest Griffin in the first round.

Then, on August 29th, UFC 102 took place featuring Randy Couture losing by unanimous decision to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Another big event in August was actually provided by the MMA organization Strikeforce on Showtime the 15th. In the main event, the face of women’s MMA, Gina Carano, was stopped in the first round by Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos. Statistically, the event did pretty well, but not without a rival’s interference.

During the same evening as Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg, Dana White put up the replay of UFC 100 on Spike TV which was clearly intended to counter the Showtime MMA event. The UFC 100 replay averaged 2 million viewers while Carano vs. Cyborg drew an average of 576,000 viewers. On the other hand, the Strikeforce event did peak at 856,000 viewers during the main event. Strikeforce also nearly doubled their ratings from previous events and set a record for viewers on a Showtime MMA event. It should also be taken into consideration that Showtime is only available in 16-21 million households where as Spike is available in approximately 98 million households. That means the UFC 100 replay was available to five or six times as many people and outdrew Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg by only four to one.

Dana White is definitely no stranger to counter-punching his competitors by throwing up a UFC program to compete head-to-head that evening. When the now-defunct Affliction promotion put on its first live event in July of last year, UFC suddenly had one of its events scheduled for the same evening featuring Anderson Silva against James Irvin, but on Spike rather than PPV.

On September 19th, Floyd "Money" Mayweather returns to the ring for the first time in nearly two years for a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. That same evening, Rich Franklin and Vitor Belfort headline UFC 103. Suddenly, it was announced last week that, for the first time in the promotion's history, Spike will air several UFC 103 preliminary fights live before the pay-per-view card starts at 10 p.m. So which event will do better that evening? In an unusual twist, it was later announced that the Mayweather-Marquez PPV card would be available in movie theatres throughout the nation.

It does not end here. On November 14th, UFC 105 in Manchester, England will go head-to-head with mega-bout Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto.

Whether it is UFC vs. Boxing or UFC vs. Strikeforce, Dana White certainly does not fear the competition. At this point, Strikeforce is looking to schedule Fedor against Brett Rogers, most likely around November. Even though UFC 105 is scheduled for November 14th, UFC 106 is scheduled for November 21, "The Ultimate Fighter" Season 10 Finale on December 5th, and UFC 107 on December 12th; no one should be surprised if Dana White finds a way to put a program up against Fedor’s debut on Strikeforce.