MMA Weekly just can’t help noticing that, judging from this year’s top 10 American Pay-Per-View Rates as published by Yahoo! Sports, the young mixed martial arts industry is fast catching up with its elder brother, professional boxing’s popularity.

See for yourself:

1. Boxing: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao, Dec. 6,.

The “Dream Match” was a much talked about event where pundits cried, “Mismatch!” The fight turned out to be less than what it was expected to bed. Legendary Oscar De la Hoya came up the ring like an old stiff retiree who was hugely overwhelmed by the Pinoy Pride Manny Pacquiao from round 1. Freddie Roach was right on the money when he said the Pretty Boy doesn’t stand a chance that he could even pull the trigger against his Filipino ward. It turns out, De la Hoya came to battle leaving his pistol at home. It was a mismatch alright. De la Hoya was no match against the much smaller Mexican Destroyer.

Views: 1,250,000

2. UFC: Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture, Nov. 15.

It showed that the Ivan Drago vs. Rocky Balboa story is only possible in Hollywood scripts. The older battle-scar riddled Couture just didn’t make it against the much younger and bigger MMA newbie.

Views: 1,010,000

3. Wrestling: WrestleMania, Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Paul “Big Show” Wight, March 30.

No shame here. What a man does for $20 million. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. isn’t called “Money” for nothing.

Views: 670,000

4. UFC: Georges St. Pierre vs. Jon Fitch/Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, Aug. 9.

This also earned St.-Pierre and Jon Fitch additional $60,000 each for the Fight of the Night award; Demian Maia and Rob Emerson also earned an additional $60,000 each for bagging the “Submission of the Night” award and “Knockout of the Night” award respectively.

Views: 625,000

5. UFC: Lesnar vs. Frank Mir, Feb. 2.

What can we say? Lesnar has been a crowd-drawer since he started with MMA.

Views: 600,000

The other top-rating shows were:

6. UFC: Quinton Jackson vs. Forrest Griffin, July 5 with 540,000 views;

7. UFC: St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra, April 19, 530,000

8. Boxing: Felix Trinidad vs. Roy Jones Jr., Jan. 19, 500,000

9. UFC: Chuck Liddell vs. Rashad Evans, Sept. 6, 480,000

10. UFC: B.J. Penn vs. Sean Sherk/Tito Ortiz vs. Lyoto Machida, May 24, 475,000

MMA Weekly says Mixed Martial Arts as a mainstream sport has finally arrived!