DANA WHITE TRASHES THE BOXING INDUSTRY HERE IS MY RESPONSE

Yeah I also remember all the "boxing will die, MMA will take over" BS espoused by Joe Rogan and the like in the mid/late 00s when MMA was starting to gain steam, it was ridiculous even back then to anyone who had a clue.

As far as the Japan MMA thing, to be fair, Rizin hasnt done too badly, and I quite enjoyed the days of Dream and Sengoku in the years following Prides demise, and promotions like Deep and Pancrase are still around too. So theres still a decent scene. I dont think the conditions are ever gonna be there for them to have a Pride level situation again though, the MMA world is just very different now to what it was back then.

 

That`s not true boxing may be simple, but learning to slip and counter and feint well takes years, no UFC fighter is as skilled or as gaceful as Ray Robinson however most UFC fighters can excecute more effective moves than boxers.

 

I think one aspect of the sport of boxing that is suffocating it are the so called promotors who actually do the opposite by preventing quality fights

 

"Graceful" is subjective but (and I hate to say this because it instinctively feels like blasphemy, but its true) basically EVERY UFC fighter is objectively, in a literal sense, MORE skilled than Ray Robinson. Like, they quite literally have more fighting skills in their toolset than him, if they didnt they wouldnt be able to compete in MMA at that level because they'd be lacking all of the necessary MMA specific skills and have tons of holes in their game.

I think what you're trying to say is boxers, for the most part, have REFINED their skillset more so than MMA fighters have refined theirs, which is true, but they have far less skills to learn.

 

As to current JMMA, that's why I said "by past standards" as I know its not completely dead

But my larger point here is that a lot of Boxing fans only look at the upside of the MMA model but not the downsides, probably because they aren't even aware of how big MMA used to be in Japan at one point. As someone who started watching combat sports through MMA but switched to Boxing later on, I am more aware of both sides

The upside of the MMA model is that big fights are easier to make & top guys fight each other consistently. The downside is that it is heavily dependent on the promoter doing well & if the promoter fails then the sport itself could undergo a dramatic collapse in interest like MMA did in Japan with Pride's demise

If tomorrow UFC suddenly goes under, will Bellator or One FC be immediately able to fill the vacuum left by UFC? I doubt it because to so many casual fans MMA = UFC, when was the last time you heard a casual Boxing fan announce that they are gonna watch "Top Rank", never. Most of them don't even know the Boxing promotional company promoting the event nor the names of the top Boxing promoters where as Dana White is often the front & center, often ahead of even the fighters

Boxing has a model (much more centered around the fighters) which has sustained it over a 100 years through some very dark periods (like when the Mob ran Boxing) & there is no reason to abandon that for a promoter centric model like that of MMA. It doesn't mean Boxing promoters have nothing to learn about putting out a good product consistently or the need to make content available through apps (e. g. how One FC was able to do that to capture Asian MMA) but I don't want to see a day where Bob Arum is a bigger personality than Canelo or where Boxing's survival is tied to Top Rank's survival

Also discussions of Boxing's imminent demise come from people in US & Canada. They fail to realize how much talent was kept out of the sport when the communist bloc existed, how much more global the sport is now, & never consider the state of Boxing abroad like say in Japan (where it is reaching high's thanks to Inoue etc) or Australia (Tim, Jai Opetaia, Kambosos, Moloney brothers etc)

 

Most of the circumstances that have allowed the UFC to be successful with its model arent even recreatable with boxing anyway. The "UFC has stacked cards" thing for example, its easy to stack cards when the fighters are getting paid peanuts in comparison. And back in the day (when the cards were more stacked than they are now on average) they were running like 10-20 events a year with a small roster so you were seeing the same faces over and over which made it feel "stacked".

Not to mention how unthinkable it would be for one boxing promotion to be able to sign like a quarter of the sports entire ****ing talent pool which is pretty much where the UFC is at nowadays.

 

While they technically might know more skills, that doesn’t mean they are proficient at those skills. A boxer masters one discipline. MMA fighters aren’t masters at all the different disciplines.

 

Yeah I get that. But theres is a massive difference in the depth of the skillset between boxing and MMA. Its just bizarre to say someone like Jon Jones is less "skilled" than a boxer who doesnt do 75% of the stuff Jones can do and would lose to him in a fight for that exact reason.

 

But how quality is that other 75% if it’s not mastered? There isn’t enough time to practice all those different disciplines to use them all masterfully.

 

Stop sucking the ufc off. Majority of the card is just the Gabe Rosado equivalents fighting prospects or each other. Most cards are absolute dog shits. I do agree that the champs fight more though and everyone.

 

But can you really call the guy thats mastered a relatively shallow skillset "more skilled" than the guy that ranges from competent to very good (in some cases great) in 4x as many areas and who has to prepare for a much wider range of scenarios and stylistic match ups? I mean in a literal sense the MMA guys have to develop MORE skills. They may not need to master them all but at this point the level of competition is so that you have to either have a very solid all round skillset or you have to be a specialist who can force people into your game.

Also I think an MMA skillset is more than the sum of its parts now. Looking at a guy like Volk as probably the best current example, he might not be able to compete with high level specialists in boxing/kickboxing/muay thai/wrestling/BJJ rules etc but looking at the aggregate of his fighting skills its ****ing crazy how someone can be that complete.

 

You should add the stupid ass fans too. In MMA if you lose no big deal. You fought the best and lost, rebuild to get another shot. In boxing you have the stupid protect that O is more important than fighting someone of note . So they pad that record with nobodies for decades.

 

I'm sure I'm no indicator of a trend but I actually enjoy seeing the deep cut of undercards that create the five-hour broadcast. ~10-15 years ago when HBO and SHO were the only games in town and ESPN was observing a boxing blackout, you'd go weeks or longer with no bouts to watch. US stopped showing Wlad's fights (can't completely blame them) and fights in England or Germany you could only read articles about after the fact.

Now with the specialized apps DAZN, ESPN+, it lets you get immersed in the sport you've chosen to follow and make a day and night of it. I love my Saturdays now when there's an afternoon card kicking off around 2 PM ET from the UK and a stateside broadcast to follow. You get maybe an hour in between for dinner or to kick the dog and kids and then it's back to boxing.

It doesn't solve any long-term problems of the sport. & I'm for sure downhearted to read no more boxing in the Olympics nor on Showtime. But versus the 2006-2010 period - when to me it really felt like boxing was dying - I prefer now.

 

I’ll take a master of their craft over a Jack of all trades for the higher quality.

 

I totally understand. But, in terms of winning new fans, it's difficult to do so when boxing undercards are typically intentional mismatches designed to provide a learning experience for boxers and help them build their records.

If you tune in to another sporting event, it's not five hours of people learning how to "play the sport" before the big game or match actually starts.

You don't turn on an NFL game, and there is three hours of NFL Combine drills before the game starts or some Arena League game on for several hours before the game you turned in to watch.

Sports fans who aren't boxing fans may see boxing on, leave the fight on, only to see bad boxing or hopeless mismatches where guys often put their gloves over their faces and "fall down" in the first round ... and the viewer just turns something else on.

Networks used to understand this, so they'd promote a title fight, and, when the broadcast began, the big fight was about to commence. That's what HBO's World Championship Boxing was. You turned it on to see World Championship Boxing. Not four hours of guys learning to be pros.

I know, as a diehard myself, I'd often wished they showed more fights back in the day, especially if there was a good undercard fight that wasn't being televised. But 90 percent of the time, like now, there wasn't. It was just filler before the big match. Except when Don King would put on his mega cards with four and five title fights. (Which were incredible.)

Now, I find myself turning on a card when it starts, see what the undercards might be, then leaving for several hours. Coming back to when some of the better fights start. But I'm actually INTERESTED in seeing the main fight. If I was just turning it on ... there's usually nothing on the undercard that entices you to sit there for hours waiting to see how the show ends up.

My son-in-law buys MMA cards. And they don't tend to have as much garbage filler at all. Most of the fights are pretty good. I'd actually be kind of embarrassed to watch most boxing cards with him because the premlims, that go one for hours, tend to suck.

So trying to attract people who watch those shows over, you have to either deliver quality fights up and down the card, or just show the good fights and leave off the fights with the 8-0 prospect vs. the guy with the 3-36-2 record who is already looking for a spot to lay down when the bell rings.