Saturday's UFC On FOX Event Will Lead Into Boxing, Not Compete With It

Two years ago, back when FanHouse was a thing, MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani interviewed boxing promoter Bob Arum before a press event to promote the Manny Pacquaio – Miguel Cotto fight. The infamous interview started with Arum talking about how no one would want to see Floyd Mayweather fight Manny Pacquaio. After a few minutes, the subject of the UFC came up and Arum went on one of the dumbest, most ill-informed rants in the history of dumb ill-informed rants. Arum told Helwani that UFC fans are tattooed skinheads and explained that UFC fighters are also skinhead white guys who roll around on the ground like homosexuals.

With the UFC set to make their network television debut on Saturday, this is the UFC’s giant “fuuuuuuccck yooooooou!” to Bob Arum. Not that Arum will ever see the video unless one of his grandchildren is watching before Thanksgiving dinner on that television typewriter thing. Of course, by then UFC On FOX 1 will have come and gone. Either Junior dos Santos (Brazilian, no tattoos) or Cain Velasquez (Mexican-American, “Brown Pride” tattoo) will be the UFC heavyweight champion. The winner of that fight will await the winner of the Brock Lesnar (Redneck, haircut you could set a clock to) – Alistair Overeem (Dutch, beautiful head of hair) fight.

Arum will have “promoted” another Manny Pacquaio fight that didn’t involve Floyd Mayweather. When the first UFC On FOX card was announced, many people – myself included – wondered why the UFC would be brazen enough to go head-to-head with Pacquaio, one of boxing’s only proven draws. Dana White quickly put that concern to bed when it was announced that the UFC would go at 9pm Eastern and be just the one title fight. The plan was to lead into and compliment Saturday’s Pacquaio – Marquez fight. White expressed that sentiment again in his video blog.

So is it really Dana White’s love of Pacman and the sport of boxing? Or is this just a cunning plan to get boxing fans gathering for one of their two major PPVs a year to start the party an hour earlier for some extra violence? It is well-known that mixed martial arts and boxing have a very small percentage of crossover fans. Could acting as a quality “undercard” fight to a major boxing PPV be effective in drawing new fans? Does it even matter when the sport is already being pushed non-stop on football Sundays? Probably not, but it doesn’t really matter. As long as it annoys Bob Arum.

[Via @DanaWhite]