Morning Report: Jim Lampley says UFC will 'never' book an event as big as Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather

Last May, HBO boxing's Jim Lampley told the Rich Eisen Show that he "felt terrible" for anyone who paid any amount of money to watch the "fight of the century" between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

He was critical of just about every facet of the bout from its inception to its culmination, but you'd never guess it listening to him talk about the world's leading MMA promotion with Bill Simmons on his podcast.

"[UFC] make the top people fight against the top people," Lampley told Simmons. "It's more like the NFL model where any given Sunday top guys are going to fight top guys. But of course what that eliminates for them is the pinnacle event. When everybody has four to five losses you can't put together Mayweather-Pacquiao because the public wants to see people rise up way above the normal universe and then get together in some sort of summit meeting and that's when you get the million buy Pay-Per-View, or in the case with Mayweather-Pacquiao the 4.4 million buy PPV.

"UFC will never be able to construct an event like that as long as they use the model they're using. I'm not saying it's wrong. I think there are intelligent reasons for them to do what they do but we're always going to have the bigger showcase events when they happen."

Simmons countered by pointing out that the UFC holds far more consistently high-level events. Maybe not on the level of a Mayweather-Pacquiao, but that's quite the measuring stick.

If you thought Lampley would make it out of an MMA segment without insulting fans, don't you worry.

"That's why they're doing so well," Lampley responded. "It's a lesser amount of rounds and shorter rounds and it's more violent so it suits cyber-era attention spans better than the 12-round fight does. There are a lot of reasons why for young people at this moment the UFC is probably more popular that boxing, but we're not going away.

"We're not evaporating from the landscape. We still have a certain cache which goes with 125 years of gloved prize fighting existence and all the socio-political impact that our fighters have had."

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GLORY 28 Paris - Rewind Show

TWEETS

Heating up.

I want it. You want it. Your coach wants it. One battle took place but the war is not over! #UFC200 pic.twitter.com/kslOseYIQD

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Close.

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Did you watch?

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A photo posted by Urijah Faber (@urijahfaber) on Mar 21, 2016 at 8:00pm PDT

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— chad mendes (@chadmendes) March 22, 2016

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— Derek Brunson (@DerekBrunson) March 22, 2016

Get well soon.

@RdosAnjosMMA Eddie Alvarez

— Edward Alvarez (@Ealvarezfight) March 22, 2016

Beef.

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— Tony Ferguson (@TonyFergusonXT) March 22, 2016

Hmm.

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— Shane Carwin (@ShaneCarwin) March 21, 2016

Camping.

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— Alpha Cat Zingano (@CatZingano) March 21, 2016

Make it happen.

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FIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Announced yesterday (Mar. 22 2016)

Brent Primus vs. Gleristone Santos at Bellator 153

Frank Waisten vs. Jonathan Wilson at UFC 199

Marcos Galvao vs. Eduardo Dantas at Bellator 156

Abubakar Nurmagomedov vs. Matthew Fincu at WSOF 30

Steve Kozola vs. Gil Guardado at WSOF 30

Carlos Garcia vs. Jason Pacheco at WSOF 30

Adam Acquaviva vs. Andres Ponce at WSOF 30

Jeff Roman vs. Nick Salantri at WSOF 30

Heather Jo Clark vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz at UFC Fight Night: Arlovski vs. Overeem

Found something you'd like to see in the Morning Report? Just hit me up on Twitter @SaintMMA and we'll include it in tomorrow's column.