Vitali Volodymyrovych Klitschko Originally Klitschko was an amateur kickboxer. In 1992 he was knocked out in the final of the European Kickboxing Championships +89*kg light contact division by Englishman Pelé Reid. In 1993 he defeated Ryushi Yanagisawa in the Japanese mixed martial arts promotion Pancrase under WKA Special Rules (no low kicks) via R5 decision. In 1994 he defeated Richard Vince by second round KO to retain his ISKA World Super Heavyweight title.[3] In 1996 he turned professional and compiled a record of 34–1 with 22 knockouts. He was a world champion six times (professional and amateur). ^Courtesy of Wiki
The level of boxing in MMA is a big fat joke. If there was a single MMA fighter that actually has good enough boxing to compete at a high level, he probably wouldn't even be involved in MMA at the first place.
There have been plenty of MMA stars that have dabbled in boxing. I remember Jens Pulver was on Friday Night Fights once.
Well as MMA is still a relatively new sport we are just seeing the first generation of guys who are trained mixed martial artists. Before now they have mostly been wrestlers/karate/judo/tkd/boxers etc. guys who turn to MMA. people like belfort/lytle/silva were boxers (among other things) who moved to MMA
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Sure , but your remark is as stupid as saying. "the level of wrestling in boxing is a big fat joke". MMA fighters aren't boxers. They're not even kickboxers. Even Judokas are rather rare. There's also very few kickboxers who fight in mma. (Hunt , Congo , Schilt ) and a bunch of others...) but the point is that pure strikers are not very common.... Maybe you can count Anderson Silva (who has a muay thai background)... But a majority of them mostly concentrate on wrestling , juijitsu....Then striking. (basics in boxing & kickboxing). You're obviously never gonna find a top striker who's the equivalent of a top boxer because they have to focus on several aspects of fighting.
Lil nog did some boxing he got 3rd place in the pan american games and a former golden gloves champ and was the Brazilian champ. Maybe he not a world class boxer like the klitschkos but he could probably hold his own