In which country is MMA going to become the #1 sport

Elbower said:
Sweden if Gus becomes a long reigning champion.
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Impossible I'm afraid, even with 10 different fighters of Gustafssons caliber. The only remote scenario would be if we fastforwarded looong into the future, MMA became olympic sport, and that Sweden managed to produce a one of a kind olympian that broke sick records.

Even though Sweden has produced plenty of awesome combat athletes, the sports have never had any real audience. Sure we probably have had some Wrestlers that ppl looked up to and followed, but nowhere close to the biggest sports.
 
it will never be a #1 sport in any country. it may be the #1 sports entertainment category for a country.
 
Deadaim58 said:
UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. Also it's already beaten out MLB and soccer as well as a few other sports in viewership. However this is ridiculous of a question to begin with. Combat sports has always been a controversial endeavor even at its most popular. It's easier for you to children to watch football and basketball then it would be for you to let them watch to adults fighting and them not understand the violence. Boxing itself has never been the Number 1 sport in any country. It went in Europe from being considered barbaric to being regulated but it never surpassed games like soccer, rugby, or cricket.

Combat sports will never be a national past time. You'll never see an MMA fighter meeting the president after becoming champion. They don't even let NBA and NFL champions with records meet the president. MMA has recently just become "legit" in the eyes of many as not human ****-fighting. Even if MMA surpasses boxing as America's top combat sport, it will still not be it's number one sport. The fact remains that as big as a Mayweather fight is, he would be an idiot to schedule a fight during the Super bowl.
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That may have been true until 2009, but since then? That seems really doubtful.

Comparing the popularity of MLB and UFC in the USA is laughable. The UFC may have one show a month (two if you count the PPV) that outdraws ESPN's weekly Sunday night baseball game. There are 15 other baseball games around the country broadcasted in 30 major US markets on that very same day (and 5.5 other days a week).
 
Mumrik said:
Thailand is the only one I can think of, and even then I don't know if it actually is the most popular sport, or just popular and their national sport.
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Soccer is now the most popular sport in Thailand. I don't know if this is a relatively recent phenomenon (like in Japan).
 
On the surface it seems a silly question but in all seriousness Mongolia is a realistic answer. However that would be many years from now
 
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MMA will be one of the top sports in the world when it stops having violence.
 
Deadaim58 said:
UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. Also it's already beaten out MLB and soccer as well as a few other sports in viewership. However this is ridiculous of a question to begin with. Combat sports has always been a controversial endeavor even at its most popular. It's easier for you to children to watch football and basketball then it would be for you to let them watch to adults fighting and them not understand the violence. Boxing itself has never been the Number 1 sport in any country. It went in Europe from being considered barbaric to being regulated but it never surpassed games like soccer, rugby, or cricket.

Combat sports will never be a national past time. You'll never see an MMA fighter meeting the president after becoming champion. They don't even let NBA and NFL champions with records meet the president. MMA has recently just become "legit" in the eyes of many as not human ****-fighting. Even if MMA surpasses boxing as America's top combat sport, it will still not be it's number one sport. The fact remains that as big as a Mayweather fight is, he would be an idiot to schedule a fight during the Super bowl.
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In the States u mean? Cauz in Brazil is shit compared to Soccer.

I agree for almost all the rest you wrote
 
Just Feed said:
Although it's already amazing that there's an Icelandic UFC star, from a country of 350,000 inhabitants. That's like Spain having 100 fighters on the UFC roster! So if Gunni were to become champ, which isn't beyond the realms of possibility, then MMA could become Iceland's biggest sport.
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Pretty sure soccer is the biggest sport in Iceland, like most European countries and that won't change. They have and have had some really good players and they nearly qualified for the world cup despite being such a tiny country.
 
Probably no one for two main reasons:

1 - Exclusive contracts: fighters need to be employed by a promotion and that promotion need to be big; for example, UFC gets coverage on sports shows here in Brazil but Bellator doesn't and they have 2 Br champions. If fighters could fight for other orgs and become multiple org champs that would be something.

2 - It's a PPV based sport: people in US are used to buy boxing ppvs but that doesn't happen here in Brazil. If the cards held here were to air via ppv nobody would buy it.
 
Vollyball is bigger than MMA in Brazil, and so is beach volleyball.

People watch whatever sport Globo supports, but they will forget it once their heroes lose.

BJJ is kinda big and traditional in some regions (rio), but far from being a national pastime.
 
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mma will never be #1 in any country on this planet
 
HELVETE said:
Pretty sure soccer is the biggest sport in Iceland, like most European countries and that won't change. They have and have had some really good players and they nearly qualified for the world cup despite being such a tiny country.
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eidur gudjohnsen is one of the most famous footballers from iceland, any soccer fan the world over knows who he is and he's considered a national over there

gunnar nelson is a nobody in comparison
 
nfp said:
eidur gudjohnsen is one of the most famous footballers from iceland, any soccer fan the world over knows who he is and he's considered a national over there

gunnar nelson is a nobody in comparison
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Yup. Playing for Chelsea and Barcelona, even just warming the bench > being a UFC champ.
 
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