MELBOURNE, Australia -- The sheer noise reverberating around Marvel Stadium as Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya bumped fists inside the Octagon and readied themselves for battle told you everything about Australia's love affair with the UFC.
Here were 57,127 fight fans crammed into an Aussie rules football stadium to watch two of the region's greatest mixed martial artists go head-to-head for the world middleweight title. Some had gone so far as to bill the occasion the biggest one-off sporting event Melbourne -- a city often dubbed the sporting capital of the world -- had ever seen.
The main event might have lasted only eight minutes and ended with home crowd hero Whittaker losing his middleweight championship belt, but it still managed to deliver on the hype. From start to finish, the crowd was in a frenzy, watching an enthralling contest unfold.
The extraordinary rise of MMA Down Under has been well documented, but sitting cageside on Sunday afternoon, it became blindingly clear that the UFC had not only drawn level with boxing in Australia but also surged well clear.
"It's just so much more entertaining," one UFC fan told ESPN. "Boxing can be good, but more often than not, it's all hype and a boring fight. You get far better value for money with UFC. It delivers every time, and that's why I think people really love it."
There was a genuine sense that Australian boxing was in a great place after likable Queenslander Jeff Horn emerged from obscurity to score a monumental unanimous points decision over the legendary Filipino Manny Pacquiao in July 2017.
The upset win at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium was a victory for the sport as much as it was for Horn. Australian boxing had been crying out for a fresh face, someone who could take on the world and win back thousands of fans who vanished during a decade-long dry spell.
With the world welterweight belt strapped around his waist, Horn was that man.
However, he lasted just one title defence before flying to Las Vegas and being humiliated by pound-for-pound superstar Terence Crawford, a fight ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas likened to a "Volkswagen versus a Ferrari."
Since then, Horn has managed to beat only a 43-year-old, starved Anthony Mundine, and when he came up short last month to little-known Michael Zerafa in Bendigo (that's right, Bendigo), it all but brought the curtain down on a roller-coaster boxing career that never lived up to the hype.
One of the great challenges boxing Down Under faces and has faced for a number of years is a serious lack of talent. Aside from Horn, the biggest Australian bout this year might be Barry Hall vs. Paul Gallen. No disrespect to either, but two washed-up ex-footballers is not what's needed to keep boxing alive in Australia.
While Australian boxing is again struggling, UFC 243 proved that there is certainly an audience for combat sports. Sunday's crowd was the biggest ever assembled for a UFC event, and more than AU$8 million (US$5.4 million) was taken at the gate.
"This is an incredible market for us," UFC's chief operating officer, Lawrence Epstein, said after the fight. "Pound-for-pound one of the best in the world."
Until four years ago, the UFC had just dipped its toes into Australia. There had been a few events scattered around the country, but it wasn't until UFC 193 was booked in Melbourne that the sport really took off.
The 2015 event, headlined by Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm, was initially met with scepticism, but it turned out to be a raging success and the highest attended single UFC event in the sport's history -- until Sunday.
From that moment on, MMA has thrived in Australia. Six Australian fight nights generated sellout crowds as the sport continues to go from strength to strength.
"Every time we come here, the fights are really good," UFC president Dana White said after UFC 234 in Melbourne. "I believe it has a lot to do with the energy here in Australia and the fans. Fighters feed off that. This is one of the funnest places in the world to come fight."
Sunday's jam-packed and entertaining card also proved how many talented mixed martial artists there are in Australia and New Zealand. Three Australians (Megan Anderson, Callan Potter and Jake Matthews) and three New Zealanders (Brad Riddell, Dan Hooker and Adesanya) tasted victory at UFC 243.
"There's so many guys and girls who are at the top of the sport [MMA] right now," another fan told ESPN at Marvel Stadium. "That always helps for interest and getting people along to these events."
The appetite for cage fighting Down Under is clearly still alive, and there's no sign of the UFC slowing down anytime soon.
"The future of the UFC is going to be here in Australia," Epstein said. "We're definitely back in Australia in 2020 and 2021, 2022 ... as far as you want to speculate."