Any succesfull fighters who have competed in other combat sports? MMA/kickboxing or any other? I know Vitali Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin had succesfull kickboxing career before moving to boxing. Lucas Browne did MMA before he took boxing.
Matt Skelton and Alexander Ustinov a lot of people will know. Fairly long and established K-1 careers... Stepped in with a lot of well known fighters Chris Algieri too. Manuel Charr and Huck have kickboxing/Muay Thai backgrounds as well.
Samart Payakaroon is considered by some to be the greatest Muay Thai fighter ever, and he won a WBC belt. There are plenty of Muay Thai fighters out of Thailand who have also boxed and found success, and several others who've won world titles I'm sure. I suppose they might be raised with both sports to an extent. Dillian Whyte also won some kickboxing titles before he became an amateur boxer.
Remembered another: Kyotaro Fujimoto. K-1 heavyweight champion, fought lots of the top guys in the world in that circuit, now he's 15-1 as a professional heavyweight boxer and the Japanese champion. He beat Nobuhiro Ishida a couple times and his loss was to Solomon Haumono.
Tyrone Spong. He competed in Kickboxing, MMA and has now switched over to boxing full-time after a bad leg fracture.
Nigel Benn competed in full contact kickboxing before starting boxing training This content is protected
