Has there ever been an MMA fighter who cross over to boxing?

I doubt it'll happen. I doubt a top boxer will ever become a top MMA fighter, and I doubt a top MMA fighter will ever become a top boxer. What the rank and file turds on here fail to appreciate is just how different the two sports are. If a guy spends his formative years til his mid-20s or so training to be an MMA fighter, it would be an almighty transition and a huge waste of skills to then move to boxing. If a guy spends his formative years til his mid-20s or so training to be a boxer, it would be an almighty transition and a huge waste of skills to then move to MMA. Both sports are so nuanced, you're losing a lot moving between them, and forcing yourself to spend a long time and a hell of a lot of work learning how to make the transition. An MMA fighter needs to have a much stronger core than a boxer, for grappling, TDD, etc. This would be useless in boxing, so a top-heavy MMA fighter would automatically normally be in a weight class where he'd be short and squat in boxing, meaning he'd be open to getting outreached, outjabbed, outboxed and outmoved. By the same token, a boxer (in addition to not knowing the techniques of defensive wrestling) does not possess this big core strength, so would be prime to get outbulked and outmuscled onto the ground at every opportunity. And this is just one of the inherent problems about such a move, there are many others.

I really wish every thread concerning both sports at the same time was just outlawed forever. The answer is always, always the same. They're two different specialisms. Next.

 

Good post and I get what your saying. :good

But to guys like me your limiting the term MMA fighter to some one who understands and trains in grappling plus additional disciplines. Would you regard guys like Samart Payakaroon and Somluck Khamsing as MMA fighters as I do? They both came out of an MT background to compete to elite standards in the Boxing world. If thy're not mixed martial artists what are they?

 

Samart and Somluck are indeed great fighters, but it all depends on the context of the discussion. Technically, anyone that competes in more than one discipline is a mixed martial artist. However, Mixed Martial Arts has become the term to describe a specific sport. It was once Vale Tudo in Brazil, it became No Holds Barred when it came to the US, and is currently being called MMA world wide.

So if you are talking about the sport of MMA, then no, Samart and Somluck are not mixed martial artists. If you are being literal, then yes; they competed in, and excelled at, more than one art.

 

Fair enough, I appreciate that. However, consider in Asia over the lsat 20 years and still K-1 is considered a mixed martial art competition. That's was the whole purpose of it's inception in the first place and the secret to it's success.

 

I'm not going to tell you that it was incorrect for them to do so because it isn't. I think that the description, MMA, may not be the best suited for the sport it is describing. MMA is very broad.

Sport Fighting could work, but it is also rather broad.

 

Not saying you're totally wrong, but Anderson is now in his late 30s and looking pretty much as dominant as ever. In fact, all of his best fights have come past the age of 30. I don't really see him as a Roy Jones type who relies almost totally on his athleticism, and once he loses 5% of it he can't beat anybody.

Silva just strikes me as one of those ATG athletes whose greatest gift is that he sees, understands and reacts to the play a split second before it happens, instead of reacting as it happens. Like some ATG footballers, ice hockey players, basketballers etc just seem to instinctively know where the ball is going to end up, and they arrive at that spot before anyone else does because they were anticipating rather than simply reacting. :good

:hat

 

Any suburban white boy can join a gym one day and train for a few months and calls himself a ufc mma fighter. But he can't do the same thing with boxing because he will get checked and scrutinize.

You see the reality shows where they have all these goofy mofos learning mma and grappling and some of them will be bragging how they are bad ass mma fighters but they can't do that **** in boxing because boxing takes dedication and real talent and skill and to be succesful at it, gotta start at an early age and most top boxers came from poverty.

You see a middle class suburban middle age white boy try boxing and he won't even make it as a ama or pro level. But they can try mma and still do decent with wrestling.

 

:think

Tell us more.

:hat

 

God, this is such an ignorant comment man. You don't understand boxing at all. :dead

 

He never had the greatest chin, but his reflexes and timing were almost superhuman. So he grew to rely on them, even though he spent his life in the gym. His technique wasn't at all suitable for an ageing RJJ whose reactions were just a touch slower. All of a sudden he was getting tagged and stopped.

And if I don't understand boxing at all, I must be a genius of a better to get a return of 100/1. :nono

:hat

 

:thumbsup

 

To say that Jones relied "

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" on athleticism and couldn't beat "

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" if he lost five percent of this is absolute dog****, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of Roy Jones as a boxer, and of boxing in general. I mean, there is so much wrong with this statement it's difficult to know where to start...


- Jones should have been the Olympic gold medal winner in '88, so he had the pedigree of a good boxer. Silver should have been gold, he had obviously learned his trade in the amateurs, and had a good grounding in the fundamentals

- You don't soundly defeat guys of the skill level of Hopkins and Toney simply by being fast. Those guys beat fighters faster than them in their careers. Many exceptionally fast fighters have flopped at the top level. Amir Khan is like lightning, but he'll never get anywhere near Jones' level because he doesn't have the skills and technique that Jones did. Same with Zab Judah. There are countless examples of this, too many to mention really. You need the boxing skills and punching technique to go with the athleticism, otherwise you'll get worked out, timed, picked apart, and outclassed. That never happened with Jones, because he was a very shrewd, tricky fighter, and had excellent technique in that he could punch with power and accuracy to the head or body with equal ease. That isn't just speed. It's technique, which is learned, not natural.

- Jones could fight with his back on the ropes, and frequently did so. It is not possible to do this if you don't grasp the fundamentals of defence, counterpunching, and inside fighting. This is not athleticism. This is knowing the game, and having the skills to pull it off.

Two of your points are what I'd consider direct "fails":

Roy Jones deserved the decision over Antonio Tarver in their first fight, so that shoots down that theory.

Burning off the muscle to get back down to 175 after weighing in at 193 against Ruiz ****ed Jones up physically, for the long-term. The Tarver fight was the first time we saw Jones a shadow of his former self in a physical sense, in that fight he just didn't have the strength in his legs to dance round Tarver, and spent large portions of the fight on the ropes or gutting it out in centre-ring. Antonio Tarver was a tall, long, smart, determined, powerful, top-class opponent, and a physically deplered Jones still outfought him over 12 rounds. He was way more than 5% below his previous physical best, and because his punch resilience was not tested by a huge clean shot as it was in the subsequent Tarver and Johnson fights, he won. Your point is wrong.

'Timing' is not a physical quality. You can't attribute someone having great timing down to athleticism, it ain't that. Reflexes, speed, power, these are physical qualities. Timing isn't. Timing is a skill. You can have the most physically awesome fighter in history, but if he doesn't understand the nuances of striking, he won't be able to work his opponent's attack out, time him, and choose the right moment to strike back with the right punch. A slow fighter can have great timing. A featherfisted ******* can have great timing. Timing in boxing is skill, not athleticism, so if you say Jones had superhuman timing, you are admitting he has a high-level skill.


I will conclude by quoting an ATG fighter, the great Mike McCallum, who named Roy Jones as the smartest fighter he ever faced (and Mike faced James Toney three times, Donald Curry, Sumbu Kalambay twice, Herol Graham, Michael Watson, Milton McCrory, Julian Jackson, Steve Collins, etc...)

Athleticism does not equal being a more intelligent boxer than Toney, Kalambay or Curry. Jones clearly possessed much more than just that. The collapse in his punch resistance and stamina killed his career, not his lack of skills once he couldn't dance for 12 rounds anymore. :deal

 

Does Vitali Klitchsko count? He was a kickboxer first.

 

I mentioned him and a load of other MT fighters and Kickboxers a page or so ago, but I've been told they don't count. :conf

 

Sorry Boran.

In the strictest sense, Vitaly was a kickboxer. Samart among other Thai legends are nak muay.

Sure they practice martial arts, so that makes them martial artist. Not mixed martial artist.

That's how I understand it.

Plus, MMA has been well-defined now at this point. Guys who compete in MMA competition and has trained for complete skill set (striking, grappling, etc.)

Allow me to add that if Buakaw fights in an MMA fight, he's now a true MMA practitioner, and if he transitions to boxing, he'll make this list as well.