MMA vs. Boxing: What is the hotter sport right now?

MMA is for sure the "hotter" sport right now. I've been following MMA since before it was called MMA. I love it! I'm not a martial artist...just a former wrestler, hardcore fan with a tiny bit of Jui-Jitsu experience. I thoroughly enjoy boxing too but MMA has been putting on better events than boxing for the last several years. MMA is easier to relate too because it's more useful in real life. I don't believe it's a fad and I do think it will eventually be bigger than boxing on a consistent basis. For years and years (all of recorded history i'd guess) mankind has wanted to know what the most effective style of hand to hand fighting was. MMA has finally answered that question and the answer is that the most effective "martial art" is a hybrid of Wrestling, Muay Thai & Jui-Jitsu. Obviously that is a generalization and there are always exceptions(Machida, Fedor etc.)Espectially when you consider how most techniques were birthed out of other techniques (i.e. the Judo/Jui-Jitsu connection) but in general when you walk into an MMA gym today for an MMA class they are focusing on Wrestling, Jui-Jitsu and Muay Thai.

I think MMA is the hotter sport for the simple reason that it still has what boxing now lacks - the fact that "to be the champ, you have to beat the champ". There are no ridiculous International, Inter-Continental, Youth or "alphabet soup" titles, and even the number of different organisations in MMA is balanced out by the rule differences they employ (e.g. cage in UFC and Strikeforce, ring in M-1 and K1 - stamps allowed in PRIDE, banned in UFC - wrestling and grappling allowed in "cage" fights, clinches very quickly broken up in K1). I think MMA fans also tend to be more educated (or maybe they are just more fanatical about their sport) in that the "brand" you're in doesn't carry a huge amount of weight - Fedor Emilianenko, for example, is rated by many as the number 1 heavyweight, despite not being in the UFC (number 1 brand in terms of exposure), whereas I think many boxing fans are just sick of all the "paper champions".