http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qp2vWfb7Smk Watch it again. Williams suckers Lewis the first time, just throws him to the floor for no reason. But then Lewis clearly tries to get revenge by grappling with Williams and trying to do it back to him, but Williams just trips him again with ease.
Not true. Any decent grappler can take down a strike who knows no grappling like it´s nothing. You can not use boxing movements to avoid takedowns so easily. Watch some of the early ufc fights to see what I´m talking about. You´d see the grapplers blitz in on the strikers and either tie them up quickly or just take them down immediately. Watch some of the double leg takedowns by Royce Gracie, Mark Coleman etc and you´ll see what I´m talking about. If you could do well in the UFC on pure boxing skills, it would have been done already.
Not true. They may never try for submissions and focus on striking but they are trained in takedown defense and in the ground game. If they had no training in it, they would be brutalized in mma.
The think is that pure wrestling and submission skills will take you further in MMA than pure striking skills. Usually you need both though. Even if you are not able to win a match with grappling or if your striking is not good enough to KO anyone, you at least need to be able to defend yourself from both to a degree. The difference is, you can somewhat defend yourself against strikes by grappling, but it´s hard to defend yourself agains grapples by striking (watch any John Ruiz fight to see what I mean).
The streetfight thing is a tough thing to call because of the variable and unpredictable circumstances that could hold. There can be many fighters, weapons, walls/pillars/chairs/pavement/windows/slippery ground in the way and an attack can be started without warning. Let´s say David Haye walks up to Brock Lesnar and out of the blue sucker punches him, following up with a flurry of punches. That would probably do Lesnar in. If David Haye is on an empty street and would call Lesnar to fight him, I see Lesnar blitzing in and taking Haye down and that being the end of it. If you´d want to be the best possible street fighter, you´d train MMA (bjj, wrestling, muay-thai, boxing) along with weapons and dirty tricks, like Krav Maga techniques. Still, in the street, it´s so unpredictable that you could never be so good that you couldn´t be maimed or killed without a chance to save yourself. Situations like multiple armed attackers, guns etc. are usually ones where you really just need luck to get away or you´re done. The best self defence is usually to just stay out of trouble. There is a good article on street vs sport right here: http://www.bullshido.net/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=5
I'd say boxers vs MMA fighters in a BOXING match would win...99% of the time. Of course fighting there same weight divisions. I'd say MMA fighters vs boxers in a MMA fight would win...70% of the time. The reason I gave the MMA a lower percentage is because having good hands will win you a lot of fights. Most MMA fighters aren't going to have great hands, and thus they wouldn't beat many boxers in BOXING. In MMA hands are still a major weapon, and just like boxing with 8 oz gloves they are superior with MMA gloves. Besides, it's obvious if you watch MMA that there's hardly any fighter that ever trained solely for boxing (for a while) because they couldn't be pro. If you look on the other side of the coin it's hard to tell what these boxers have done. These boxers are in excellent shape, some have came from martial arts backgrounds, etc. It's hard to tell what some of them can actually do. As for the boxer being a weak grappler...A good boxer doesn't let a guy come in without him taking MASSIVE punishment. If couture were to step inside of somebody like Lennox Lewis and he gave him a vicious jab, uppercut, hook combo I'd bet couture would hit the mat! Of course likewise if Couture got ahold of lewis, and put him down, it's over. BTW: I also seen a HW boxer vs a HW judo guy one time. The boxer amazingly didn't even throw a punch. The judo guy grabbed him, the boxer ducked down, and THREW him over his back!! Grappling is of course a lot of knowing what your doing, but if you got power (which a lot of boxers do have from there workout regimen) it's not going to be a walk in the park.
This has proven not to be the case over and over. It´s not difficult at all for a grappler to duck in low and trip or slam a striker with no takedown defense. There were so many double leg takedowns in the early UFCs it wasn´t even funny. Try throwing a punch at someone who comes in like that and you are just more off balance. A good MMA fighter like couture can also tie up the upper body really quickly. Roy Jones would have minimal chances against Royce Gracie. All Royce has to do is blitz in for a double leg takedown and it´s done. RJJ has no way of defending against RG grappling. RG does at least have experience in defending against strikes and throwing some himself. Also, RG best defense against strikes it to grab. RJJ stands little chance at all. On streetfighting, being able to grapple is often very valuable as you can sometimes disable your opponent and dominate him quickly that way. Get a dominant position if it´s agains one guy and he´s out. I´m also talking about grappling on your feet. Grappling also has legal advantages. If you can just grab somone and tie them up, you don´t have to dish out damage and perhaps face grave legal consequences. It´s true that you often want to keep streetfights standing, because you´d be able to run away or defend against multiple attackers. Now for the quality of fighters in boxing, mma and k-1, it´s quite simple. The quality athletes tend to go where the money is. Hence, the top boxers are usually better athletes than the mma fighters and the k-1 fighters. Some mma athletes are olympians or world champions from other sports like freestyle or greco roman wrestling, bjj, judo, sambo etc. which demands proper respect. The same goes for other sports, where the top NBA players are usually better athletes than the top boxer. I´m sorry but that´s just how it is. As for boxers having superior stamina, I ask you what kind of stamina? It´s not all the same. You general aerobic and anaerobic stamina, but there is also specialized stamina. That is your muscles and nervous system adapts to certain movements you do over and over. A boxer would hence tire much faster while wrestling than a wrestler - even if he knew what he was doing. Add the fact how you tire even faster if you don´t know what you´re doing and how to pace yourself at it. I respect boxing, mma and other fighting sports. I don´t like ill informed people who ignorantly disrespect them when they don´t know what they´re talking about. Boxing is certainly as skill that is very useful in MMA, but if you could be a great MMA fighter purely on boxing skills, it would have been done already.
Two more comments. 1) The boxer getting his legs kicked from under him is fighting a kickboxer in K-1, not an MMA fighter. But I agree that it shows how a fighter only skilled in one area can be taken advantage of by a more complete fighter. 2) It´s probably true about the Japanese and fixing fights. The line is kinda blurry on that in Japan. Pro wrestlers learn how to shoot-wrestle and it´s common for athletes to do both mma and pro wrestling. A lot of pro-wrestling matches there also have a lot of holds an fighting techniques in them and look more like real fights than US pro wrestling. The people in Japan also don´t seem to care that much and will often have the same respect for a pro wrestler as a real fighter. Hence, it´s easy to just cross that line and fix fights. Sad really.
Thats a good point. MMA fighters tend to go down after the first flush shot they take in a fight. Of course this sometimes takes a while, even if they're standing up as they don't throw accurate punches. I read an article in a MMA magazine the other day talking about a guy training to improve his 'stand up'. His trainers were talking about how they are trying to get him to learn how to throw straight punches, because it would give him an advantage over his opponents - they get said flat out 'MMA fighters don't generally know how to throw punches properly'. When the fighter was asked about the idea.. he said "They've showed me how to do it, but in a fight who has time to sit there and think about how to throw a punch. You just throw." I paraphrased both quotes btw, but the next quote was the worst. If an MMA fighter hit the scene with the ability to throw straight punches, throw hooks properly, slip punches properly, and throw GOOD combinations (not just left and right hooks back and forth), they'd have a tremendous advantage standing up over their opponents! They don't know how to generate leverage properly either. Some have power because they throw huge haymakers, but they don't know how to use their entire body to throw a good, accurate, straight punch! It boggles my mind too, because its NOT hard to learn how to throw a good punch. Most people who start learning boxing learn how to throw punches properly their FIRST day in the gym, and most of the time can get the hang of it on that first day too.
