I wasnt around back then, but I suspect this is an America-centric rose tinted glasses narrative and not really true. The HW scene was practically an American domestic thing for many decades, I have a hard time believing it ever held more importance around the world than something like the World Cup.
Good point about the World Cup, I was thinking of individual titles. And as you say, I probably have a strong America-centric bias at that -- its possible that individual Olympic titles or perhaps tennis titles had a bigger world-wide importance than HW boxing world wide.
I honestly think this is rose tinted glasses to some degree too. I do FEEL that Tyson was bigger when he was active than Conor is, but if you look at the actual PPV numbers. Mike generated 14.3m total buys across 14 fights/17 years, Conor 11.2m across 8 MMA fights/6 years, and then his boxing match with Floyd did like 5 million which is more than double the buys that Mikes biggest fight did. Conor/Khabib also did more than any of Mikes fights. And back then the PPVs were cheaper and it was much harder to get them for free. Mikes name/face was likely more known due to stuff like the Holyfield bite and going to jail, but as an actual draw there doesnt seem to be much in it. In the last 5 years of his career Mikes numbers were mostly pretty shitty too, like sub 500k.
In terms of pure numbers, as the population goes up the absolute numbers will increase. But I suspect Tyson had a bigger percentage of the world watching. PPV's were rare back then, most people weren't set up for them. For instance, I watched a couple of Tyson's PPV's when a group of us got together to rent the devices needed to get the PPV's -- so I think you have that part backwards, PPV numbers were more limited back then because most people had to go out and rent the necessary devices (in the same way that people initially went out and rented video machines along with videos when they wanted to watch a movie at home, because few people owned a machine).
Moreover, Tyson was a much bigger cultural force -- everything from the Simpson's to talk-shows to his own cartoon featured him. How many such things has Connor had? I'd be amazed if his name recognition still isn't bigger than Connor's, and that's despite him being retired for decades, with the falling popularity that comes with that.
When Ali was an active fighter the global population was like half what it is today, a much bigger % of people were living in poverty, less people had access to tv, no internet etc. I dont doubt that he was very famous at the time but its a safe bet 90% of the people that know his name/face today learned about him long after he retired.
Ali was celebrated in China (arguably for political reasons wrt Vietnam War) and Africa, and was heavily publicized in those regions by government sources at the time. Plus he was known because of the War even by people who never followed sports at all -- how many people who aren't into MMA and perhaps sports in general know who Connor is? Ali was invited to speak at universities by students and staff alike -- he even lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics, something Connor is very unlikely to ever do.
I agree that most of Ali's current popularity came after his retirement, but that's because half the world's population wasn't even born when he retired. At the time he was fighting he was even more popular (or perhaps well known is a better way of putting it, since he was often hated). You could argue that much of his popularity was tied to politics and charisma rather than boxing per-se, but that doesn't weaken the observation that boxers back then were better known than any MMA fighter today.
