Sean O’Malley, Ultimate Fighting Championship’s current Bantamweight Champion, has been chirping at boxers on Twitter for a long time.
Boxers are insecure around real alphas. It’s okay.
— Sean O'Malley (@SugaSeanMMA) October 31, 2023
Gervantes people just hit up my people and said I’m way to risky of a fight :(
— Sean O'Malley (@SugaSeanMMA) September 10, 2023
Dana White has usually been opposed to his fighters crossing over to boxing. The only exception was the fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor. This was one of the reasons why the UFC couldn’t sign Francis Ngannou to a new contract. He demanded, among other stipulations, the right to box.
Usually this would be an absolute nothingburger. It could be different this time for three reasons:
- Ngannou managed to shock the boxing world – without Dana.
- Dana’s old dream of breaking into boxing.
- Big boxing broadcasters getting out of the business.
All of this could culminate in another attempt by White to bring UFC’s Zuffa Boxing promotion into business.
As a request to comment on the current state of boxing, Dana has announced that he would like to put boxing fights on UFC FightPass, UFC’s own streaming service, which has received many more programming options besides Mixed Martial Arts recently.
O’Malley has publicly stated that he has been talking to the UFC about a boxing bout and discussions are moving forward.
Sean O’Malley revealed he’s in talks with the UFC about potential boxing fights. pic.twitter.com/KH9ZBxflH6
— MMA UNCENSORED (@MMAUNCENSORED1) November 1, 2023
Luke Thomas has been asking on Twitter for opinions how much such a headline fight would sell in Pay-per-view:
Serious question: however improbable or however competitive, how *big* of a fight is Tank vs O’Malley? Give me a PPV ballpark. https://t.co/y9GaqxupPa
— Luke Thomas🏋️♀️ () October 31, 2023
There were 38 guesses. The smallest came in at 200 thousand, the largest at 3 million, with an average of 784k and a median of 750k.
Frequency Chart
The Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight generated 5,2 million PPV sales. Which was very close to the all-time record of Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao with combined sales of 5,8 PPV.
Is a million PPV buys enough revenue for the UFC to afford the high fight purses a championship boxer would require to entertain the idea of boxing O’Malley?
Does the UFC have a different view on the potential number of sales it could generate?
Does the UFC have a marketing plan to pump these numbers significantly?
It might be a fun idea. O’Malley can sell fights and the build-up will be funny and draw in more people. Provided he has the right opponent that can also sell a fight.
It could also end in a quick KO of Sean O’Malley. Technique is much more important at lighter weight classes than in heavyweight boxing.
The likes of Francis Ngannou and Deontay Wilder have “the big eraser”, that’s what Teddy Atlas calls it. Extreme punching power helps them to either end a fight early, strike enough fear into the enemy to be more careful or get out of a sticky situation with a powerful shot.
Will it actually happen? Maybe. It is more likely today than ever before.