Tyson did but he's a lot faster than Mo, again that's just what Botha said, either way getting hit by either Tyson or Mo wouldn't be great! Also Botha did throw kicks every now and then, he could take kicks much better than the average boxer too.
I think old school fancy pants kickboxing actually was quite popular in the 80s. As for the more modern style kickboxing, theres a parallel universe where K-1 actually made that Sapp/Tyson fight, ran tons of shows in the US and found multiple viable American stars, and ended up occupying the position the UFC would go on to occupy.
Kickboxing mostly appeals to suburban white males. In America, this demographic is taken up by MMA instead of kickboxing. Kickboxing lacks a natural demographic in the US.
The United States wasn't colonized by the Netherlands fully and because of the overall British Colony status that the United States was in Bareknuckle boxing was the immigrated sport from Britain. As the United States was formed, the remaining of that Bare knuckle era stayed throughout the culture of America, especially through "organized ship boxing bouts" popularized by the Navy. (People be bored at sea lol). Boxing became apart of American culture. Now if it was the DUTCH that succeeded and got that Kickboxing hype going here in the US early and not sell out New Amsterdam, then replace boxing with Kickboxing in the United States, and thrust us til now and we have the new cash cow focus. *my theory* lol
Was Botha shot here? Disappointing to see him lose to that kind of punching technique. Mo just threw the same wide ass haymaker every time. I guess the awkwardness of it made it hard for Botha in some way like Maidana was a little difficult for Floyd (although Floyd wasn’t getting hit like that). Just weird to see Botha do so terrible against the same poorly thrown punch.
I also think it's cultural. Boxing is seen as a very American and European sport, while kickboxing with its roots in karate,etc is seen as much more Asian.
It has a strong Dutch influence though, and most of the biggest names in K-1 back in the day were Euros.
I know I'm late to the party, but Kickboxing is more of a Asian and European thing, like Soccer. Even with great kickboxing stars from the 80s like Chuck Norris and Superfoot Wallace, the general American population never seen their matches. Even I had never seen their matches and I was in Tae kwon Do and a martial art lover. I think Boxing and MMA just have strong roots in the US. Boxing is just became part of the culture, and MMA is more of an entertainment like the WWE.
Boxing is an Anglo pasttime that America inherited from England. Wrestling is that plus all of the other European immigrant styles that integrated into American wrestling in the 19th century. Meanwhile, fake wrestling fills the sports entertainment niche. There's not much room for another combat sport (as opposed to a middle class character-forming daycare sport like Mall Karate.) Kickboxing had a brief renaissance when it tried to take over the entirety of the "exotic foreign martial arts" competitive niche, but never consolidated, and didn't absorb the various karate/TKD/whatever substyles. Martial arts thrived too much on style vs style mysticism and uniqueness until MMA came along. And once MMA came along, that was it. No more need for kickboxing.
The ground game of MMA fighters is usually better than the stand up game that they have but is really boring if the majority of the fight is on the ground.
