An Early MMA fighter Could Defeat a Boxer

If they couldn't win fights when the UFC was still a freakshow with a tiny talent pool, I doubt they'd dominate now.

Also, they fought for a lot of different reasons. My point was that they didn't do very well unless they had lots of cross-training...and often didn't do well even then.

The overwhelming majority of skills in boxing, wrestling, kickboxing, submission grappling, etc. are directly transferable to MMA. The skills taught in basketball are not directly transferable to football or swimming.

There have been elite wrestlers, judoka, karateka (kyokushin, shotokan, etc.), and kickboxers competing in MMA. Many were in, or close to, their primes.

Leaving BJJ aside, do you consider any of those combat sports illegitimate?

There are lots of ways to lose, yeah. Are you saying that the difference between MMA contenders and MMA journeymen basically comes down to luck, though?

What do you mean by saying that the money should go back to the sport?

I don't think we'll ever see MMA in the Olympics, if you're referring to funding amateur programs.

 

It just sounded funny to me when you wrote that they tried to "dominate" "MMA", that's all. For example Art Jimmerson was paid much more than other UFC 1 participants, it was a nice cash grab for him. They badly needed someone to represent boxing. The entire event was created to promote Gracie Jiu Jitsu, to be honest I don't understand why people take Royce Gracie and his wins so seriously, or the Gracie family in general for the matter. 90% of what they say is pure propaganda and has nothing to do with facts.

By this logic skills from kickboxing are directly transferable to boxing too yet you don't see elite kickboxers going back and forth from their sport to boxing. All those golden era K1 kickboxers like Cro Cop would have gone to boxing immediately and earn big money yet it was pretty obvious they never had a chance to crack into elite. Mark Hunt tried and has 1 pro boxing loss against some no name journeyman.

Also, what you're writting only goes only one way. Past their prime olympic wrestlers like Cormier and Romero do well in MMA yet MMA fighters not even those with "great MMA wrestling" like Jon Jones and GSP would never be able to win medals wrestling in the olympics.

You also have successful MMA fighters with no combat sports background before their 20s like Travis Browne (didn't train anything before he was 26, became a contender in the UFC very soon) and Junior Dos Santos (started training at 22 years of age, became UFC HW champ 6 years or so later).

Contrary to popular opinion MMA takes the least skills to dominate. People think that because there's so much of everything it's harder to become "elite" in MMA yet it's exactly the opposite because it's ok if you're average at many aspects of MMA. You can get by with mediocre boxing or some half-assed Muay Thai and even in the grappling area you only need to develop certain aspects of wrestling and BJJ. BJJ with punches involved and no gi is different from what those Brazilians mastered (that's why some random American wrestlers from Oklahoma can hang on the ground with elite Brazilian BJJ black belts) and wrestling with punches and submissions allowed is extremely different from olympic wrestling, either Greco-Roman or freestyle. It's easy to neutralize great skills and expertise in MMA and in the end fighters just meet somewhere in the middle - subpar (kick)boxing with some rolling around, stalling against the cage and lay and pray.

That's why people from other sports can go to MMA and dominate while it's never the other way around, even if the skills are transferable.

It should be noted that UFC hasn't really recruited much top talent from other sports. Those kickboxers came to Pride when MMA was a big thing in Japan and there was enough money. Olympic gold medal winning judokas also came to Pride and not to UFC. Olympic silver medalist Cormier was recruited by Strikeforce, the organization which had 4 of the current UFC champions (Werdum, Cormier, Rockhold, Lawler). Ronda was at Stikeforce too.

After UFC got the monopoly there hasn't been much talent coming in the MMA and the situation will only get worse in the future if things don't change. The money UFC pays its athletes is **** and you're literally better of finding some regular job. Elite wrestlers (at least outside USA) are much better paid by their countries if they go to olympics and can get easy jobs by the government after their career is over, that's why they have no motive to go to MMA (UFC). There's not much to recruit from kickboxing, the golden years of K-1 are gone and the elite fighters from that age (Cro Cop, Schilt, Aerts...) wouldn't go to the UFC for that ****ty money anyway. Other than BJJ I don't see MMA getting elite athletes from any sport at the moment, and those top BJJ guys are often completely non-athletic like Ryan Hall.

What the UFC does is recruit some ****ty fighters, mostly Americans with some Brazilians and maybe some scrubs from Europe where in most countries MMA is obscure. They don't need to attract the real talent because they have the monopoly and a great hype machine. UFC can hype pretty much anything and people will buy it because most MMA fans are fans of UFC the company. I mean, they recently signed CM Punk, a pro wrestler with no combat sports background whatsoever. He's going to fight someone who's top 50 in that sport (MMA). Imagine some 30+ year old who just got into boxing fighting some top 50 fighter from any division, people will **** on that promotor like crazy yet UFC can do anything because there's no pressure from MMA community, it's too small and insignificant. UFC also signs fighters based on their looks and hype them, especially women.

99% of MMA fans don't know about anything outside of UFC, it's just one big promotion doing whatever it wants even if it doesn't have any clear rules that a real sport should have.

It speaks volumes about UFC that a lot of guys from the past decade are still legit contenders or even champions, many of them guys who came from other promotions when there was still competition.

Olympic wrestling and judo are ok but those sports are severely underpaid and not as global. Kickboxing used to be a fad like MMA is now but currently it's in extremely bad state.

Boxing is the only true legitimate combat sport there is. It's a global olympic sport with rich history and tradition, big money fights and great amateur infrastructure. It's the only combat sport that can compare to big sports like football.

Half of the world doesn't even know what MMA is or can't name a single wrestler or judoka, yet everyone knows about Muhammad Ali, Tyson, boxing...

There are some that are better and some that aren't that good, but there are a lot more chances for a fluke victory.

And the fights are just too short anyway, you have 1st round KOs in boxing but it's extremely rare, MMA fights on the other hand very often end in 1st round.

UFC should pay its athletes more and invest into talent.

 

:thumbsup

 

Fair enough. I meant it differently, which I see you picked up on, so I'll accept your revision and say that journeymen boxers' attempts to fight in MMA have generally been unsuccessful.

The Gracies are very, very flexible with the truth, but Royce still had to actually beat those guys.

Yes, because boxing is a smaller part of kickboxing training than vice-versa, just as kickboxing/judo/wrestling/whatever are a smaller part of MMA.

That being said, Skelton got the British title, and Vitali Klitschko is considered one of the best heavyweights in history. Both were kickboxers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ1mSWTStKY

I'm sure there are more than I'm not thinking of at the moment.

That's true, because MMA has more dimensions that they have to be good (or at least passable) at.

Ultra-specialized guys can do well in MMA because they do one or two things better than everybody else. Generally, though, the best fighters have a blend of qualities that aren't world-class in and of themselves, but work better in combination.

Think about it in boxing terms: the champions aren't necessarily the guys with the absolute best jabs in the division, or the absolute best lateral footwork, or the absolute best anything. Instead, the champion is usually the guy who blends the skills that he does have most effectively and imposes that style on his opponents. Same with MMA.

This is a valid criticism.

True, but not the entire picture. Several top MMA competitors have relied more upon specialized skills. I think it's more accurate to say that it doesn't always take the best skills to dominate.

If the bolded part is true, then we shouldn't expect an elite boxer to dominate MMA.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. On one hand, you say that fighters from specialized sports can dominate MMA because they have the skills that MMA guys lack. On the other hand, you say that MMA guys lack those skills because the nature of MMA makes it easy to neutralize elite skills.

I assume I'm missing something in your argument. What is it?

I haven't paid as much attention to MMA since the UFC monopoly, so you may be right. If so, it's unfortunate that they've given up on talent acquisition and development.

Still, I would assume that the smaller promotions would still develop talent if they see a marketing advantage to it. And then the UFC will eventually recruit those guys, so it's still part of the same talent pool. Strikeforce was doing that before it folded.

We'll see what happens with the UFC monopoly long term. I got the impression that promotional deals, sponsorships, and other perks made the fighters a lot more money than their regular salaries. It would be harder to get the visibility to do that if you didn't have a single monopolistic league for MMA.

But I'm not interested in apologetics for the UFC generally, so perhaps I'm wrong.

I think you only need a certain threshold before your athletes are high quality. Olympic wrestling and judo have solid cores of support in developed countries with the amateur infrastructure to support them.

Even kickboxing, while declining, is big enough to generate good fighters.

Are you referring to American or European football?

In any case, I don't think that boxing is as popular globally as you do. Yeah, it's reasonably popular and has a good amateur infrastructure, but even Olympic-style tae kwon do (the red headed stepchild of combat sports) is more widely practiced.

The total number of professional fights is still only about the same level as it was in the Roaring 20s, when boxing was mostly confined to the Anglosphere.

I'd agree that luck plays a bigger role than in boxing. I don't think that it's a roll of the dice, though; some fighters still win more consistently than others.

Yep.

 

Why is it that you have to start fighting at 10 years old, have 20 years experience, have 50 fights over 20 years?

It's a completely outdated way of thinking.

Look at Mayweather: Been a pro for TWENTY YEARS, over three different decades and he's only had 49 fights.

There's the apprenticeship aspect of it, and that argument used to hold weight, but guys like Sergio Martinez who was a freaking CYCLIST became THE BEST Middleweight ON EARTH. As did Bernard Hopkins, and guess where he learned the "Sweet science"? IN PRISON!

Even two legendary Boxers like that picked up the sport either late or in an unusual place.

So don't come with the "MMA'ers start when they're 26 and have no combat by experience" because it goes both ways.

 

The art of mma is neutralizing the other fighter's best assets to make them fight where you are the best at.

 

Good discussion gentlemen :thumbsup