Has boxing finally thrown in the towel?

Most people wouldn’t classify themselves as boxing fans, but they’ve probably heard of the name Floyd Mayweather before. Floyd Mayweather seems to be the only name that gets people excited to watch boxing anymore.

Millions of people pay a significant amount of money to see if another challenger will be able to break his undefeated streak. In August, Floyd came out of retirement to fight the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s biggest star, Conor McGregor, in a boxing match.

This fight hauled in over 4.6 million pay-per view buys, the most boxing has ever received. However, if someone were to ask the average person if they saw arguably the sport’s two best fighters compete, Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin, they’d probably say no.

Senior Lurjan Sela was one of the people who didn’t have much to say about boxing.

“No, I did not watch the Mcgregor vs. Mayweather fight,” Sela said. “I honestly couldn’t tell you the names of any boxer currently fighting right now.”

According to the sports website Metro.com, Floyd made 100 million dollars just for stepping in the ring and Mcgregor acquired about 30 million. The highly anticpated fight achieved a grand total of 700 million dollars.

These numbers seem insurmountable, since regular pay-per view programs don’t come close to reaching this level of prominence. Alvarez was only given five million and Golovkin three million dollars for their most recent fight. This main event featured two of the most talented boxers in the sport, but McGregor made three and a half times as much money then the two other fighters combined.

According to boxingusa.com, the average professional boxer makes about $60,000 for a regular fight and up to $375,000 for a title bout. Only the elite boxers such as Mayweather, Pacquiao and a few others reach the million dollar range. This large imbalance between the amount of money each boxer makes, proves that there isn’t enough interest in the sport.

If only five boxers are reaching a million dollars and the rest are making around a hundred thousand, this shows how the sport has become more about the individual athletes. People are only spending money on established names over talent and upcoming stars.

Junior Angelo Sewall is one of the few fighting fans that isn’t just a casual viewer. However, he still prefers Mixed Martial Arts over boxing.

“The only time I watch boxing is to see if Floyd Mayweather is finally going to lose a fight,” he said. “The other fights really don’t appeal to me, I’m just a casual viewer. However, I do prefer MMA over boxing. In the UFC, they allow to do so much more.”

Boxing has been ahead of Mixed Martial Arts for decades, but over the past five years this has changed. The UFC has matched boxing’s television buys this past year and seems like it will eventually surpass them.

UFC.com says that it has promoted its product more than boxing by nearly doubling the total amount of commercials and other social events.

The UFC athletes at the press conferences and weigh-ins seem to hype up the fights better than the boxers. About a hundred thousand more people tune into these events for the UFC, compared to boxing.

Junior Josh Mathios is an avid fan of these type of UFC events.

“I love to tune in and watch the UFC press conferences whenever Conor McGregor gets ready to fight someone new,” Mathios said. “He always gets me excited to watch his matches.”

The commercialization and the fighting itself has gotten more people to watch mixed martial arts over boxing.

This appears to be the new generation of fighting entertainment moving forward. Owner of the UFC, Dana White, was on the record stating how boxing viewership has declined.

“Boxing has been dying, waiting for an exciting heavyweight champ,” White said. “It may no longer maintain its relevance to the majority at the current rate it’s going, it seems like the beginning to the end.”