From Our Contributors, Sports

MMA Went On Boxing Off

 
By Joshua Garcia
 
Arum Pulls Out Begrudgingly
Photo: Special to the NY Beacon
 
As every major sports league fell to the nationwide strategy of preventing the spread of the deadly coronavirus, two men stood firm in their convictions to continue with their respective sporting events. While Adam Silver and Rob Manfred conducted press conferences to announce the shut down of their leagues Bob Arum of Top Rank Boxing Promotions and Dana White CEO of the UFC mix martial arts prepared fighters and production crews to go on as planned. 
 
Dana White even went as far as to call on the big guns and use his friends in high places to assure his events would be exempt from sports restrictions the rest of the planet had already succumb to. When White says he is good buddies with President Donald J Trump, he means it. Via phone call White was personally permitted to hold his event last Saturday night by the Commander-in-Chief and Vice President Mike Pence. 
 
 
 
 
Bob Arum unlike Dana White was set to host his event with top prospect Shakur Stevenson at Madison Square Garden. Not only does Bob Arum not have President Trump on speed dial, but he was dealing with a midtown Manhattan venue in a city which currently has the highest growing numbers of the Coronavirus. Saturday’s Top Rank event at MSG was cancelled late Friday night even after agreeing to no fans in attendance. 
 
With no major sports to be consumed by the quarantined public, Dana White pushed even harder for his event to continue hoping to capitalize on sports hungry public. In a card with recognizable UFC names, the event put up the worst numbers in the history of any UFC broadcast on ESPN. 
 
672,000 viewers on a night where most of the public was indoors near a television with not one sporting event to watch and they still chose not to watch UFC. Either an indicator of the already questionable niche market, a nation wide craving of up to date news on a nationwide pandemic, or new Netflix show, who knows? One thing is for sure, if Coronavirus didn’t acheive Dana White canceling all UFC shows for theediate future, the numbers of viewers on ESPN last Saturday did.