Boxing vs Mixed Martial Arts.. The Combat Sports Compared

[SirFozzie]

UFC is surging like never before. Boxing has fallen flat. I saw this stat in a recent espn.com puff piece on UFC 62.The recent Oleg Maskaev and Hasim Rahman Heavyweight Championship of the World fight (or at least, a part of the alphabet soup titles in the Heavyweight Division) did 60,000 buys. UFC, which featured Chuck Liddel versus Renato "Babalu" Sobral for the Lt Heavyweight championship of UFC, did over 8 times that, with 500,000 buys.

Why? Here's my thoughts.

1) Boxing's history actually weighs AGAINST it. Look at some of the heavyweights of the past. Jersey Jim Braddock. Joe Louis. Jack Dempsey. More modern times.. Muhammed Ali. George Foreman. Mike Tyson. Does the Heavyweight division have anyone with that quality today? Not even close. As the Heavyweight division goes, so goes a lot of folks casual interest in the sport.

2) Lack of the Alphabet Soup organizations. There's the WBC, IBF, WBA, WBO, IBA, and probably there's one named EIEIO by now. They all rank fighters differently, they mostly have different champions, and they work at cross purposes. In America, there's the UFC. In Japan, there's the PRIDE Fighting Championships. A lot less confusion.

3) Less chicanery in MMA compared to boxing. Too many Don Kings managing fighters. While there's questionable decisions in MMA (there always will be whenever judges are involved), it feels a lot less corrupt then in boxing

4) Boxing has been a victim of overkill in the modern TV age. Every night, on some network, you can catch a fight somewhere. UFC holds what.. 10 Pay Per Views a year? Maybe 6-8 Ultimate Fight Nights? A weekly fight when the Ultimate Fighter is showing? Although it will be interest ing if this HBO contract goes through.. the first step to possible overexposure?

Now we get to my concerns:

5) The Reality TV shows. UFC has the Ultimate Fighter (Soon to have UK and Mexican versions, according to an article I'm reading right now), Boxing has the Contender on ESPN now.

The fights on the Contender are somewhat fun to watch, at least only "somewhat" to me, because the fights are plastic to me.

Too many crowd shots. Too many shots of the fighters teammates. Too many shots of Sugar Ray Leonard mumbling something under his breath to someone else (with subtitles even).

Don't try to dress up a turkey fight with nothing happening and tell me it's a fight of the year candidate. I was watching the Ultimate Fighter Season 2 DVD set the other night, and they had an awful heavyweight fight. They showed it, and they had UFC President Dana White say flat out on the show/DVD it was a horrible fight.

They didn't try to disguise the fight with frequent cuts of the camera/footage. They sat it out there and let you make the decision, and it affected folks who were rooting AGAINST that fighter when he fought again.

Sergio Mora has gotten a good push from winning the contender, but in the MMA world, has anyone gotten a better catapult into fame from Forrest Griffin after his war with Stephen Bonnar in the first Ultimate Fighter Finale?

The fighters on The Ultimate Fighter seemed, well, more real/outlaw then the folks on the Contender.. usually on the Contender you might like a guy or dislike a guy, but HATE or REALLY LIKE? Not usually. Look at Chris Leben, also from Season 1 of The Ultimate Fighter.. was the most hated asshole on the earth.. till a couple of the fighters went a little too far to get payback for the things he had done.. and Leben suddenly, somehow became a good guy again.

6) That "At Any Moment" feeling. Boxing doesn't have a lot of guys with one punch knockout power.. the type that keeps you glued to your seat, and rooting even when your guy is losing badly. In MMA though, one good punch, and your opponent is down and out.

Just interested to see what you guys have to think on it..

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

UFC is surging like never before. Boxing has fallen flat. I saw this stat in a recent espn.com puff piece on UFC 62.The recent Oleg Maskaev and Hasim Rahman Heavyweight Championship of the World fight (or at least, a part of the alphabet soup titles in the Heavyweight Division) did 60,000 buys. UFC, which featured Chuck Liddel versus Renato "Babalu" Sobral for the Lt Heavyweight championship of UFC, did over 8 times that, with 500,000 buys.

It was marketed that way, but the public has caught up with the game the promoters are trying to play with the alphabet trinkets and simply just don't buy into it anymore. The sad part, the people who control boxing, the promoters, probably still made more off those 60,000 buys than if they put it on Showtime of HBO.

1) Boxing's history actually weighs AGAINST it. Look at some of the heavyweights of the past. Jersey Jim Braddock. Joe Louis. Jack Dempsey. More modern times.. Muhammed Ali. George Foreman. Mike Tyson. Does the Heavyweight division have anyone with that quality today? Not even close. As the Heavyweight division goes, so goes a lot of folks casual interest in the sport.

I think you mean Jersey Joe Walcott?

As far as the last bit, unfortunately that is correct. There is some amazing boxing going on from the featherweights up to the middleweights, but for some reason the public just doesn't get into it like they once did. In the early 80s, after Ali and before Tyson, there was a huge interest in the welterweights and middleweights thanks to Leonard, Hearns, Duran, Hagler, and others. For whatever reason, the general public isn't buying into Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Jermain Taylor like they did before.

"Boxing" is going to have to figure out what it was about Oscar De La Hoya that the causal fans latched on to and learn how to sell it for other fighters. The future of the heavyweight division looks bleak so they can't count on that to rebound anytime soon.

Every night, on some network, you can catch a fight somewhere.

I wish this was actually true...

The fights on the Contender are somewhat fun to watch, at least only "somewhat" to me, because the fights are plastic to me.

This is my problem with the show too. They show maybe 30 seconds of the actual round, very frequently reshowing the same few seconds from different angles (at different moments when showing the round even to make it look like it was different).

I've always thought that the show would be better if they just showed all 5 rounds. Counting the time between rounds, that's 20 minutes. It's frustrating to keep rewatching the same several seconds over and over and have them call it a round. And we're supposed to know who won a 3 minute round off of 20-30 seconds? Ugh...

6) That "At Any Moment" feeling. Boxing doesn't have a lot of guys with one punch knockout power.. the type that keeps you glued to your seat, and rooting even when your guy is losing badly. In MMA though, one good punch, and your opponent is down and out.

Sure there are. Unfortunately, none of them are American Heavyweights (although Calvin Brock might become that guy), so the media doesn't give a crap about them.


In my opinion, the reason boxing has declined so much is mostly because of three things. Promoters, Organizations and Judges.

It's not so much the existance of all of these organizations. Boxing got along fine in the 80s and most of the 90s despite their existance. The problem is they just don't know when and how to put their damn foot down. For instance, Adrew Golata draws Chris Byrd for the IBF title...ok, fine. Then he loses to John Ruiz for the WBA title. THEN, he goes against Lamon Brewster for the WBO title....huh? There was once a time when a fighter coming off of a lose had to win again before he got a title shot, or if it was a damn good fight, he got a rematch (but that fight was TERRIBLE). The WBO should have told King to go fuck himself and that they would not have been involved in such a sham.

Instead, they just take their insane sanctioning fee and promote yet another "Heavyweight Champion of the World!" fight.

Since I don't know the inside of the business works for Organizations, I don't know why this is, but for whatever reason, unless one fighter is head and shoulders above the rest (as was the case with Bernard Hopkins in the middleweight division), the alphabet boys do not like having their champion holding the title belt of another organization. Maybe the more titles a fighter has, the less the sanctioning fee they receive, I don't know. Whatever the reason, they don't like it.

Promoters only see $$$, and they control boxing. It's how Don King can get the alphabet boys to take it in the ass. If they can get more money off of 60,000 PPV buys as opposed to putting it on HBO, they will do it, and they probably do get more money that way. Until the boxers, managers, TV networks, organizations, ANYONE tries and succeeds in wrestling away some of the control they have, promoters will continue to put on sham after sham as boxing continues to die and slow death.

Judges...well, there have been some poo-poo decisions, but not as many as the casual fan perceives. Part of the real problem is that a casual fan will see one fighter land 3 really good shots, but then lose the rest of the 2:50 of the round and think the guy who landed the 3 nice power shots should win the round, even though he is embarrased for the other 2:50. IOW, boxing judges value things a bit differently than the casual fan, and thus you get these "controversial" decisions. But, having said that, there have been some really bad decisions out there.

The last problem is that it seems that most boxers out there don't want to fight anyone! All prospects are so scared to death, even if they don't admit it, to put a lose on their record, that they just keep fighting situp after situp. Even if he is the real thing, there is no build up. There is no hype.

And then there's a lot more things wrong with boxing, but I'll stop here.

[sabotai]

dola,

One last thing. Fighters do not fight anywhere near as oftan as boxers did in the past. After losing to Frazier, did Ali sit on his ass for a year, schedule a sit up, win well and then try to get another title shot?

No, he was in the ring 4 months later fighting Jimmy Ellis in July. He fought 2 more times in 71, and then fought 6 fights in '72. He fought 4 fights in '73, including 2 wars with Ken Norton. Did Norton and Ali try to fight a sit up or two to promote their rematch more than a year later like they do today? Of course not, less than 6 months after their first war, they go to war again. No sit ups in between, just a straight up rematch. Yeah, he only fought twice in 74, but his two fights were Joe Frazier and George Foreman.

The only time Ali took a year between fights was between the 2 Liston fights. He defended his title 5 times in 66, and then 2 times in the first 3 months of 67 before he was forced out.

That just doesn't happen anymore, and I don't think the casual fan can get attached to a fighter who only fights once or twice a year. But then again, I don't know how oftan UFC or PRIDE champions defend their titles.

[SirFozzie]

The face of UFC, the Iceman Chuck Liddell has fought twice so far this year, at UFC 57 in February (beating Randy Couture in the rubber match of their great trilogy to retain the title), and then again at UFC 62 last month against Sobral. He's scheduled to fight again, but his proposed opponent is in the air.

The problem is, that in six months, UFC had 4 events in between, and with Lidell being the top star, they couldn't feed him tomato cans.

The Heavyweight Champion, Tim Sylvia has fought three times this year, first against Ausserio Silva and then twice against Andrei Arlovski (first to take the title from Arlovski, the 2nd time in the rematch)

The Middleweight Champ Rich Franklin has only fought once, but there's just not many folks in his weight class built up..

The Welterweight Champ Matt Hughes has had one fight, against Royce Gracie.

The good thing is that with the expansion of the UFC, hopefully we'll get to see the champs fight more.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

The face of UFC, the Iceman Chuck Liddell has fought twice so far this year, at UFC 57 in February (beating Randy Couture in the rubber match of their great trilogy to retain the title), and then again at UFC 62 last month against Sobral. He's scheduled to fight again, but his proposed opponent is in the air.

Here's a question. Who decides when Chuck Liddell fights and who he fights, Liddell (or anyone associated with Liddell) or UFC?

[dervack]

I think Liddell was hurt for a little while after the Couture fight, possible foot injury, I believe.

I think the head booker for the UFC, his name escapes me, books the fights that will draw, with some input from the fighters on whether they feel the matchup would be good for them. But don't quote me on that. Sorry if I wasn't more helpful.

As for Chuck's proposed opponent, if Tito beats Shamrock again, which he should, Tito vs Chuck on December 30, 2006.

[Deattribution]

Dana White and Joe Silva propose the matches, and then the fighters decide whether they want to accept the match or not, the big name guys also have input before hand.

[SirFozzie]

A lot of the fighters inactivity has to do with the fact that the UFC runs so few shows, that they don't like putting more then 1 world title match on per show, etcetera.