Boxers who would have done well v. kickboxers or MMA fighters

Yes, that's why I explicitly said that boxers who were accomplished martial artists should be excluded! Also, many Japanese fighters and Korean fighters have at least some martial arts background as well - and quite a few were arguably more accomplished outside boxing (e.g. Jiro Watanabe).

 

Yes, I agree that a boxer would be clueless if taken down. So my question was more boxer v. karateka/kickboxer - and the MMA bit was more as an add-on.

Precisely my argument.

This is a bit of a misunderstanding. There are some "traditional" martial arts schools who still go full contact and have regimens as brutal as Muay Thai. A representative example is kyokushin karate; and Mas Oyama and his students did compete against Muay Thai fighters in Thailand and defeat them at their game. Taekwondo is panned as "touch fighting" these days, and perhaps justifiably; but when I was growing up in Korea, we did full contact with no protective equipment, and I bet there are schools at least in Korea that continue to do so. Also, TKD competitions still allow full power kicks to the head - albeit you do have body armor to cushion body kicks.

 

He did. A bit of a context though. He beat two elite kickboxers in Peter Aerts and Jerome Le Banner, but both were injury stoppages that did not occur from damage from Botha. In Aerts' case, he broke his leg very early, so I cannot really credit this win. In Le Banner's case, Botha did land quite a bit and had Le Banner in deep trouble. But Le Banner was carrying an arm injury into the match, and this limited his ability to throw lefts. More germane, if you watch the fight, Le Banner dominates for most of it, and he got a bit of lazy due to early dominance, and his ego got him into a "boxing match" after he got tagged real hard. This was obviously stupid, but I can empathize, as the same thing has happened to me before. I sparred an amateur boxer once, and I was having an easy time frankly. But he landed a pretty big cross once, and this made me lose my mind and try to get him back with wild swings, rather than maintaining my distance and kicking. It didn't go well...

 

Bob Sapp's exploits in MMA does demonstrate why size and raw power should be still respected though. While his overall career was embarrassing, he did have some notable wins and some losses where he showed up. For someone with virtually no combat training to knock out perhaps the greatest kickboxer ever with a haymaker is something noteworthy.

This is a whole separate topic, but I always tell my friends and students that the claim that "size doesn't matter" is a myth that will get them killed.

 

When Le Banner was primarily kicking and only sprinkling in punches as a "change-up," he dominated Botha. He got in trouble only when ego or survival instinct got him to engage Botha in a boxing match after Botha cracked him with a right cross. Le Banner was also carrying an arm injury. So best on best, I think Le Banner beats Botha 8 or 9 times out of 10. Aerts fight proves nothing as Aerts broke his leg early.

But Botha did show he can at least compete against elite kickboxers. So it wouldn't be outlandish to say a prime Tyson or a prime Lennox would do better against Le Banner and possibly beat him clean. So in a sense, he did open my eyes.

 

I wouldn't disagree "as a general rule." But we can't sweep all exceptions under the rug either!

 

Not really apples and oranges, I am afraid. The fundamental problem is that McDojo" phenomenon in the West has given the traditional martial arts a very bad reputation, and some in the West view it purely through this lens. Yet martial arts practiced in the U.S. or in other Western countries v. in East Asia are radically different. There are enough of hardcore schools left in East Asia for it not be a "once in a blue moon" phenomenon but a significant minority phenomenon. Also, you seem to lump together those martial arts that have no combat component or practice at all (for instance, taichi) and those that still have full contact sparring, albeit in a watered down form now, such as TKD. But even TKD - which is frequently made fun of these days - retains the full contact sparring. Every WTF-affiliated TKD school has full contact sparring as its centerpiece, as I said. This is likely the majority of TKD schools, probably even in the West. And while you do have body guard, it is full contact, and I've seen people break their ribs on a side kick through the body guard - in addition to obviously getting seriously messed up on head kicks. But if your biases are such that all traditional martial arts teach "touch fighting," and none of its students can fight, then I can't help you.

 

Addendum:

Sorry if I come off as a bit short-tempered and even condescending there. But this is a topic I've rehashed many times with other people, and I get rather tired of it arguing against people with minimal real martial arts experience (I do not mean to imply you are among them).