By Richard Gardner - Bookmaker, Bodog.com
Special to VegasInsider.com

Whether you are a fan of mixed martial arts or not, one can’t dispute the rise in popularity of the sport, especially in bouts involving the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization. Indeed, UFC betting volume is on average much greater than that on boxing, usually between 60 and 70 percent more each month.

Frankly, boxing betting revolves mainly around a few super-fights a year. Something like a Floyd Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya fight. The Golden Boy always was one of the top draws at the gate and in terms of betting volume, and UFC president Dana White has said De La Hoya was the only draw in boxing he feared. We do expect decent betting numbers at Bodog for the Nov. 14 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto, but neither of those guys draws much of an American audience. On the flip side, UFC usually has a great card once a month or so.

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Another unique trend we notice on MMA events is that fans appear to have more interest in the undercard fights. In boxing, the undercards are usually forgotten about (and not seen on TV) by a majority of bettors, as they wait for the main event. In MMA, the betting is spread out among all the undercards. Overall, there has been only one month this year where our boxing handle was higher than MMA and that was May, which saw a big boxing fight between Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound king, and Ricky Hatton, among others.

The four major American sports are still well ahead of MMA in betting volume, and golf, tennis and soccer still have a lead over MMA in volume at Bodog, but we expect that to change with those three sports as early as mid-2010. MMA already has surpassed NASCAR, which has been sinking for a few years.

And the UFC knows marketing, as witnessed by the fact it will show UFC 105 via tape-delay on Spike TV the same night as the Pacquiao-Hatton fight. UFC also has UFC 103 scheduled for Sept. 19 (the undercard on Spike with no commercial interruptions, the main events on pay-per-view), which just so happens to be Mayweather’s return to the ring against Juan Manuel Marquez. Guess which sport will get more pay-per-view buys and more betting volume?

Promoters are trying a gimmick to get more views of Mayweather-Marquez, as they will show the bout live in about 170 theaters nationwide, with ticket prices expected to be about $15. The rise and profitability of pay-per-view ended what was a long-time U.S. trend of showing big fights in theaters. Among the last fights widely shown in them was Sugar Ray Leonard's "no mas" victory over Roberto Duran in November 1980.

We expect to see big volume for this Saturday’s UFC 102, with the main fight pitting UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champ Randy Couture against former PRIDE heavyweight and UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Couture has opened as the sizable favorite despite the fact he is 46, and the early public action seems to be all over him. Both guys enter off a loss.