Boxing Anti MMA/UFC article

Mark Hamill

http://cbs.sportsline.com/columns/story/10162545
This is what the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather fight, one of the most important events in recent sports history, really means: It's boxing's last stand.

Boxing is fighting for its life, and in some ways the largest obstacle to its rebirth is its greatest competitor -- the worst league ever invented, the UFC. Which means it is good vs. evil, Halle Berry vs. Courtney Love, true sport against the mosh pit of sweat and bloodied skull fractures known as ultimate fighting.

It's up to Oscar and Floyd to get boxing back on the national landscape. (Getty Images) De La Hoya and Mayweather can single-handedly save their sport from deteriorating into dust while simultaneously stopping the advance of the UFC barbarians at the gate, trying to destroy boxing by polluting pay-per-view with their brand of low-brow, ghetto-fabulous hooliganism.

This is it. This is when boxing emerges from its great depression riding the shoulders of De La Hoya and finally strikes a blow to the caged ignorance that is mixed martial arts.

It will happen.

In the coming days, you will read foofs who will say boxing can never survive, despite one of the more glorious bouts just several days away. On Thursday, you will attempt to stomach the dopey ramblings of my good friend Gregg Doyel, otherwise known as Captain Persnickety, downplaying this grand moment in history. He's probably another ultimate fighting apologist as well.

Mixed martial arts will never be as good as boxing on its worst day. Many of the ultimates are nothing but thugs and ruffians. All that league has done is take a few former nightclub bouncers, knuckle crackers and parolees, put on some fancy TV graphics and told them, "Kick the other guy in the nuts."

No skill is required to knee someone in the groin (and it happens despite rules stating it is illegal). I'm kneeing Doyel in the groin now. See, was that difficult?

Next on Spike TV: Man eats another man's face. Then some dork will call it a sport.

The UFC has no credibility. UFC equals the Ultimate Farcical Clown league.

And please do not wax poetic about the UFC's popularity. Of course people watch the UFC. It's human cockfighting. It appeals to the lowest common denominator of human existence.

The message boards and my e-mail will be irradiated with balderdash about how the mainstream media is simply a bunch of snobs and we don't "get" the Ultimate Farcical Clown league. I love the NFL. Only Roman gladiators had a more dangerous sporting profession. The NFL is more violent than the UFC, but football at least possesses a veneer of being civilized.

Boxing is almost comically imperfect. It is full of crooks, con artists and ear biters (and that's just a weekend in Atlantic City with Mike Tyson). Despite its faults and notwithstanding the massive greed that has caused boxing to collapse on itself like a dying sun, boxing has more charm in its broken pinky than the Ultimate Farcical Clown league does in its entire crappy organization.

No UFC goon has or ever will possess the grace and natural showmanship of De La Hoya or the true fearsome fighting skills of Mayweather.

Notice the word: skills. This match will not resemble a bar-room brawl but meticulous, highly practiced, man-to-man warfare between two skilled, all-time athletes.

It is only a matter of time before the UFC suckers, er, fans realize they have been fooled by a Jedi mind trick.

The UFC should be banned; the De La Hoya-Mayweather bout should be embraced.

The fact a non-heavyweight match is getting so much attention shows that boxing still has appeal (and even I once thought it was dead). The fact boxing has survived despite so many scandals and crooked promoters demonstrate it has resilience.

"This (fight) is important because boxing is at its lowest point and boxing has been at its lowest point for quite a while now," De La Hoya told the New York Post. "Boxing is always taking these low blows left and right from people. This will give it a good shot in the arm."

The fight can do more than that. It can begin a resurgence perhaps not seen before in American sports. If the fight is particularly competitive, casual fans will give boxing another look and the all-important advertisers will again open their wallets instead of turning their backs.

Then maybe we can begin to put the sad joke that is the UFC behind us.

And once again we can get excited about a real sport.

Mike Freeman(author):
http://cbs.sportsline.com/columns/writers/freeman

Mark Hamill

That article was hilarious in its stupitity

Many of the ultimates are nothing but thugs and ruffians.

And all boxers come from the upper eschelons of society, drink tea with their little fingers sticking out and call boxing "fisticuffs"

No UFC goon has or ever will possess the grace and natural showmanship of De La Hoya or the true fearsome fighting skills of Mayweather.

Em, how about Randy Couture for grace, and Gonzaga (after what he did to crocop) for fighting skills.

De La Hoya told the New York Post. "Boxing is always taking these low blows left and right from people. This will give it a good shot in the arm."

A shot in the arm? of what, steroids from those crooked boxing promoters?

mikeruurds

What a load of tosh. The author of that article is a horses ass.

No insult to boxing as an art. Boxing has it's place as much as MMA. Why does it have to be one or the other?

Edit: It's coming from a rival television station to Spike TV, so propaganda ridden.

Edit2: I just emailed the guy to tell him that his view is a little myopic and too exclusionary

cowzerp

This dude is not a boxing fan but a journalist trying to get a name by being controversial like eamonn dunphy tries to be, he is just anti mma, like a lot of mainstream fight fans-this is changing and real fans will just laugh at interviews like this-he's just jumping on boxing's biggest fight to make a story! you would not believe the amount of people who say to me that mma has no rules when i tell them i do it!!

mikeruurds

cowzerp wrote:

This dude is not a boxing fan but a journalist trying to get a name by being controversial like eamonn dunphy tries to be, he is just anti mma, like a lot of mainstream fight fans-this is changing and real fans will just laugh at interviews like this-he's just jumping on boxing's biggest fight to make a story! you would not believe the amount of people who say to me that mma has no rules when i tell them i do it!!

At least Eamonn knows what he's talking about

SorGan

anti mma or ufc?

cowzerp

mikeruurds wrote:

At least Eamonn knows what he's talking about

well i suppose he does always say that ronaldo is useless.

O'Leprosy

He should be writing for sir o'reilly's independent newspapers. Unfortunately I have met some of my old sparring partners from my old boxing club and they also come out with this type of bul!****. Out of the way boxing, MMA is coming thru.

cowzerp

most the lads in my boxing club dont know what mma is and dont really have any opinion on it, if people dont understand it then i would not worry about there opinion anyway-there different sports like gaa and soccer..both can and will thrive, even with the haters from both sides.

mikeruurds

The way some people talk about MMA, you'd swear it was a feckin Fran Dux kumite with 100 men fighting to teh d34th until only one remains.

Vince135792003

Heres a better article:

Boxing vs. MMA? Everyone can win
By Dave Meltzer, Special to The Times


The prevailing news story in this week of Oscar De La Hoya vs. Mayweather, is that this is boxing's last stand, and that MMA, and more particularly, the UFC, is taking over.

Some decry it as savagery replacing sport. Some grudgingly admit it is a more organized promotion serving its fan base better while taking advantage of an industry that has screwed itself up. Some see it as a reality that a real fight entails more than just punching, and once UFC got television, more and more people would figure it out. Some welcome the change. Some refuse to understand anything new. Some hate that a sport that has been a significant part of our culture for more than a century has competition from something that a few years ago wasn't considered a sport, and one that has barely a decade of history, much of it being underground.

But the real story of combat sports over the next year, and the next decade, isn't nearly so simple.

If you attend live boxing and live MMA, they have separate fan bases. Both will live and die based on an ability to produce good television, constantly create new stars, and by presenting the matches people want to see with those stars. But both can thrive, and both can falter, simultaneously. The test if they were truly eating the audience of the other was already proven back on Nov. 18, when both groups presented a major PPV event head-to-head. When Manny Pacquoia vs. Erik Morales and Matt Hughes vs. Georges St. Pierre took place on the same date, both events did the numbers expected.

Boxing, to its detriment, has an older fan base, and aside from the blowout night this week where boxing gets back on the front pages, it has for years been carried by the Latino community in the Southwest. At the grassroots level, when you attend boxing, the characters in the crowd make you feel like you are taking a trip back to the 70s. UFC is stronger with younger viewers, and has made it easier to see bigger name current fighters on television with endless weekly hours of taped fights on Spike TV. It has taken major media strides in the last year, but it has many more to go. Most newspapers won't cover the next UFC even though Chuck Liddell vs. Quinton Jackson will do probably one of the five biggest PPV numbers of 2007 in any genre. Most television stations won't be talking about it the next day in their sportscasts. But things move slowly, as 18 months ago, almost no newspapers or TV stations would get anywhere near it, and slowly, coverage has increased where you can expect the results that night on ESPN.

MMA also has a lot of hurdles. In a perfect world in both sports, there would be true world champions and all the top contenders would be in line. Among MMA's secrets is it's as fractured as boxing. There are countless organizations with countless championships. The UFC titles are the best known, because they have the strongest television coverage and a monopoly on the biggest names known in North America. But not only are there other champions, but the UFC power base of Lorenzo & Frank Fertitta and Dana White are presiding over two other organizations, the Pride Fighting Championships and World Extreme Cagefighting, with separate rosters and their own champions. They have the power to put the champions against each other, and when the other groups are established to the public, Super Bowl-like matches have been talked about.

One of the biggest hurdles is the sport itself. It can be a blessing at times, like when Randy Couture beat Tim Sylvia, or a curse, like when Gabriel Gonzaga beat Mirko Cro Cop, that upsets are going to be more prevalent in this sport than boxing. When you get to the top level, everyone has some aspect of his game better than his opponent, whether it be his wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, submissions, experience or conditioning. As the depth of the talent pool increases, so do the number of upsets. And it's not just imposing your strength. The nature of the beast allows for things to happen that don't in boxing.

In the Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra match on April 7 in Houston, where Serra, an 8-to-1 underdog, won the welterweight championship from someone who many tabbed the perfect modern fighter, he simply connected with a hard punch with small gloves. In a boxing match when St. Pierre went down, he'd have had an eight count to recover. It's not unusual to see an underdog floor a champion early as a wake-up call, and the more skilled champion regains his bearings to win. That can also happen in MMA. But in this instance, there was no recovery time after the knockdown, as Serra continued to hit him and St. Pierre was done in the first round.

But now what on paper figured to be UFC's three biggest money matches of 2007, St. Pierre vs. Matt Hughes, Couture vs. Cro Cop and the winner of that match possibly against Chuck Liddell (provided he were to get past Quinton Jackson, which like every big fight, is hardly a lock) are out the window. For a fan of the sport of MMA, it makes it more exciting. For a fan who waits to see only big matches, the wait just got a lot longer.

The De La Hoya vs. Mayweather dynamic is based partly on the fact that De La Hoya has been on top for years and is facing an ultimate challenge from an unbeaten fighter. You are unlikely to ever get a 37-0 fighter in MMA, and you never will in UFC, where fighters at the main-event level are usually matched up with people who have the ability to beat them. Parity isn't great when you want to do 1,000,000 buys on PPV. But with so many ways to win, and so many ways to lose, parity at the top level is seemingly inevitable. But you can only do those numbers only with superstars and grudge matches.

Whether the audience is willing to accept that St. Pierre or Cro Cop, or Liddell if he gets beat, are still big stars after first-round stoppage losses is, in the long run, one of its biggest long-term tests. Another is whether too much product on television will entice more fans, or burn out the audience. Last year was filled with constant talk of shockingly high numbers when it came to ratings and PPV. This year, with far more hours of programming, plus countless new companies trying to jump on a hot trend, there is no such talk. A major UFC event still can beat the NBA playoffs or NASCAR in Males 18-34, but it's not going to be beating the World Series in October, like it did last year.

If we look at UFC's biggest money players, the conclusion you come to is that its long-term is based on its ability to create a new generation of stars as popular as the one currently on top. For the stars of 2006, Couture is almost 44, and has popularity from his consistent ability to rebound after losses, but he can't be expected to be a factor much longer. Liddell is 37, but his drawing power is based on his knockout power and that the new fan base knows he has lost, but has never actually seen it. Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie, who drew huge numbers last year, will likely never be back in a UFC main event. Tito Ortiz, St. Pierre, Forrest Griffin, Matt Hughes, Rich Franklin, Diego Sanchez and B.J. Penn, the other stars of last year, are all trying to rebound to reclaim their spot after major losses. Mirko Cro Cop, Japan's human highlight reel, had the style and charisma to make him the best shot to rapidly jump to the head of the class. But now he's best known by U.S. fans as being on the wrong end of someone else's highlight reel. The turnover at the top is quicker than sports fans are used to.

On paper, you can say Matt Serra is a great talker who can be pushed as an overachiever. Josh Koscheck is a brilliant wrestler, but has to overcome a mentality from wrestling based on winning by points as opposed to being entertaining. Gabriel Gonzaga may be the biggest test of all. He just beat Cro Cop and will be favored against Couture when they meet on Aug. 25. If he becomes champion, the public takes to him as a star, and his title matches prove to be big draws, then UFC can survive and thrive in a world where upsets will become a regular thing.

It doesn't matter what happens to boxing on Saturday, or after Saturday, and whether boxing or pro wrestling (which is probably more legitimate competition with UFC due to their similar target audience) have banner years or terrible years. UFC's role in a changing sports world will live or die based on the company's ability to market new stars, and the public's willingness to accept new stars, and that big stars are going to lose, and not write them off.

Dave Meltzer is the creator and author of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, a leading publication covering pro wrestling and MMA. For more information: www.wrestlingobserver.com

mikeruurds

Much better article there.

Nothingcompares

It's funny how most anti-mma articles from boxing sources often site the "groin strikes" that are supposedly permitted in mma. Just watching the boxing today, how many guys have been warned about low blows? both formally and informally. plenty more groin strikes in boxing then mma

Pride Fighter

MMA gives out brain damage? Whats this guy on!! Cocaine if I were to guess. I have said this in other threads, one of the greatest MMAists Dan Severn fought a similar number of fights to a similar age to one of the greatest boxers of all time Mohammed Ali. Which can say his name properly? You all know. Boxing is the most barbaric sport in existence and in comparison MMA is relatively tame in terms of comparative injury. Boxing doles out horrific skull trauma MMA does not as there are so many avenues to victory.

irish fighter

boxing is boreing mma is the future i hope you all agree????

Valmont

ah here now, I'm no fan of these MMA is dangerous articles but boxing is great entertainment and I enjoy both.

irish fighter

how good does a fighter need to be to move on to the next stage
i mean if a fighter has very good stand up and is just ok on the ground but do ok in submissions and has two years in the league behind him and doing well in it should he hold on for another year or two or move up two semi pro ??? now

ShaneT

Not sure anyone here can answer that "generically". The only person that can really answer the question is your coach. Most people would say that a solid all round game needed rather that a strong single range with a back up second range. That said, there are some "one dimensional" fighters that do really well since that single range is something special.

My advice; ask your coach.

Nothingcompares

irish fighter wrote:

how good does a fighter need to be to move on to the next stage
i mean if a fighter has very good stand up and is just ok on the ground but do ok in submissions and has two years in the league behind him and doing well in it should he hold on for another year or two or move up two semi pro ??? now

consider doing the pcc semi-pro league for semi-pro experience in the league environment