Obviously in this hypothetical scenario the boxer gets some years of extensive grappling training. Which one of the current top boxers would have the best chance to dominate his division? Personally I think Povetkin. HW division in the UFC is shallow as hell and Povetkin has legitimate kickboxing experience, having won some European and world titles in the late 90s. Povetkin also has that brawler style which is probably the most suited for MMA. He has that stocky build and would be hard to takedown, he seems like a natural grappling talent, to be honest he looks more like a wrestler than a boxer. Then there's also GGG who supposedly has some wrestling training. Maidana has show to have legit muay thai and even scored a takedown on Floyd Marco Huck has kickboxing background Stylistically I think short stocky fighters with no neck have the best chances to develop good defensive grappling (hard to take down, hard to submit), a bit like Vovchanchyn back in the days. Provodnikov for example.
In the past, I'd say George Foreman....I remember hearing about how Lucas Matthysse was interested in MMA.
Joshua wouldn't be able to protect those long chicken legs against wrestlers. This is what would happen to him if he fought Cormier: http://45.media.tumblr.com/6379bd917fd461d2211634f3c553cf1d/tumblr_nsreac8XQH1upwz95o1_400.gif Andre Ward is a good call, he would be able to utilize dirty boxing in the clinch in MMA.
Any top boxer would do well in MMA. Guys like Brendan Shaub and Travis Browne have done well in MMA within a short period of time despite being average athletes and having little or no combat sport experience prior to taking up the sport in their mid 20's. MMA is not a top level sport like boxing is in terms of talent required for success. The natural athletic talent of top boxers is lightyears ahead of their MMA counterparts. It's like comparing the PGA tour to guys who are good at crazy golf.
The latest HW champ won the belt after picking up Boxing when he was nearly 30. The current UFC LHW champion owned him. Try again.
To be honest back then he was a bum beginner at MMA/boxing and Cormier is just a beast of a fighter. A total mismatch. It was quite a humbling experience being schooled by a wrestler like that, Browne said. He split me across the eyebrow with an elbow and I needed 13 stitches. Obviously, they called the fight off.Id done cage fighting for two years. I trained for three months and had my first MMA fight. Two weeks after that I had a kickboxing fight. The weekend after that I had a boxing fight. After the Cormier cage fight, I decided boxing was the way to go. Cormier beat him so badly he had to find another sport! I wonder if a rematch could be arranged now to unify the WBA HW and UFC LHW belts
The thread is about top boxers. Lucas Browne may be able to pick up a meaningless alphabet trinket in a terrible heavyweight division, but he is not a top boxer or athlete. Do you really think guys like Joshua, Wlad, Kovalev, Ward, GGG etc wouldn't do well in MMA after 12 to 18 months training?
I disagree I think that the MMA guys are better natural athletes. I do not think that that many boxers are great athletes
Length is a disadvantage if you're bad at grappling. Wrestlers in the HW division would pick his long legs up and dump him on his head easily. Werdum snatches one of his long limbs like nothing and makes him tap.