Former UFC heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos added some fuel to the ongoing MMA vs boxing discussion on the latest edition of The MMA Hour. When host Ariel Helwani asked the skilled Brazilian boxer if he watched last Saturday’s boxing “Fight of the Century” between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, he said:
“As everybody, I did. I enjoyed it a lot. It was a good fight between big champions. That was a good fight,” he said. “When I can I watch it because I love boxing, I really like to watch a boxing fight, but it’s hard to be watching, especially here in Brazil. When I can, for sure I watch it. For sure, the UFC and MMA became way bigger than boxing. Of course, the athletes in boxing make a lot of money, that’s the biggest difference. For sure, we are as famous as they are. We are bigger than boxing now.”
Mayweather-Pacquiao has arguably been the biggest boxing fight in history, at least judging by the numbers. The event did a 70 million dollar live gate at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and is expected to have sold several million pay-per-views, rumours of 5 million buys are swirling around.
The best-selling UFC PPV of all time was UFC 100, which was headlined by a rematch between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir. That event did 1.6 million buys and a live gate of 5.13 million dollars in the Mandalay Bay Events Center.
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