Are fighting sports dead?

Boxing is doing well outside the US but not so well in the US. MMA is doing pretty well. Like all sports and other forms of live entertainment the whole "once in a hundred years pandemic" hasn't done them any favors.

I've watched the Paul brothers fight, and listened to commentary on the fight by real professional fighters, and their fights don't seem to be fixed (with one exception). However.... the phrase for the day is tomato can.

They are either fighting boxers who are well past their sell by date or former MMA fighters who have been carefully hand picked as opponents. Tyron Woodley was an elite wrestler but his first, and only, two boxing matches were against Jake Paul and Paul had been training and fighting as a boxer for years.

Tom Brady is a great QB. But if you give him a couple of weeks of training and then put him out there against a national team like New Zealand or Ireland in rugby he's going to get pounded into the turf. Its a different skill set and different sport.

When Logan Paul fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. we finally got to see one of the brothers in there against a warm body and it was... not very good. It was an exhibition bout and clearly Floyd had agreed to let Paul go the distance (he even held Paul up after apparently knocking him goofy at one point) but Mayweather basically clowned him the entire fight and only gave Paul enough to keep him from looking like a punching bag.

The Paul brothers are the modern version of dear old Butterbean but with better promotion behind them. The Bean looked devastating, and he was, against club fighters but if he made the mistake of fighting someone with boxing skills that wasn't on death's door he got carved up like a Christmas turkey.

Rough and Rowdy is awesome,