In part you are correct. Only boxing has tried in some ways to adapt to UFC’s successful formula. But recent attempts to connect with fans have failed, i.e. The Contender, The Next Great Champ.
I’ve been following UFC, but it has gotten old for me as of late too. It seems to have devolved into a BJJ competition, I don’t think its fair to call it MMA anymore. Again I think this stems from fear of violence and injury, which is a bizzare idea to have in combat sports. Banning certain strikes and making the fighters cover their knuckles tips the sport so far in favor of wrestlers that a whole host of great fighting styles have effectively been banned from UFC. A lot of this isn’t the fault of UFC, but rather people like John McCain who have no problem letting boxers brain damage one another over the course of twelve rounds of concussioning, but somehow aren’t cool with a swift strike to the nuts that ends a fight right there.
I really don’t see how you can see it this way. Striking plays a much larger role in fighting in the UFC these days than it used to. Just going in with a good submission game is not even remotely adequate anymore.
Yeah, the light heavyweight champion, and most visible face of the UFC, Chuck Liddell, is a fearsome striker. I assume he has ground skills as well (I know he does,) but he hardly ever needs to use them.
Harry Greb at #13? He was great at putting his thumb in your eye - that makes him a great boxer? Harry Greb was like Ty Cobb, without Cobb’s overwhelming love for his fellow man.
I don’t think boxing is in trouble. . .like as if it’s going to die out or something.
It’s just a much smaller sport than it used to be, like horse racing.
This weekend, Larry Merchant suggested that boxing needs to get back to offense. . .smaller rings, and lighter gloves.
They had the Taylor fight this weekend, but really seemed to be promoting the undercard fight between Kelly Pavlik and Edison Miranda. That was a great fight, and if all fights were like that --especially in the heavyweight division-- boxing would have more fans.
They were also ripping on Taylor-Spinks for not fighting like that early fight.
But, HBO is essentially a promoter now. They paid Gatti-Ward a few million bucks (in sum) to keep going at it. It wasn’t for belts. It was because they put on a great show. When fighters start figuring out that HBO will give them money to go into the ring, and slug it out, maybe we’ll start seeing better fights.
You wanna see a fight. . .tune into Ricky Hatton vs. Jose Luis Castillo on June 23rd. I’ll be surprise if there are fewer than 1500 punches through.
Once we had Ali. Now we have Klitchko. A lack in charisma and another huge guy. 240 lbs is small now. It will be harder for lt heavy and cruiser wts to move up now.
All sports risk their futures when they supress the accessibility of their fights to the masses. You build a fan base from the ground up. Hook them young and create lifetime fans. There are a lot of nondescript fighters on almost every week . They do not get much attention. When King gets to the scorers as he has so often and the sport allows it, it is asking to become a joke. They have to clean it up.
Have to add my voice to those defending Ali. You can think what you want about him as a person, but his skill and heart as a boxer were beyond reproach. Rocky Maricano was undoubtably one of the all time greats, but his record might not have been so spotless in another era, simply because there weren’t any other fighters of his caliber fighting (notwithstanding his near loss to Jersey Joe Walcott). Boxing commentators of his day likened him to a “rose in a garbage dump.”
Ali, on the other hand, went up against some of the most exciting heavyweights in history and came out on top. Liston was a scary ex-con who could knock you out withjust his jab, which opponents said was like being hit with a telephone pole. Frazier was one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Foreman, sheesh…we think of Forman nowadays as the nice guy who sells the grills, but at the time Foreman was considered the hardest hitter in the history of boxing, just absolute bonecrushing power. He wasn’t so much a boxer as a force of nature, like getting into a fight with a tornado or earthquake. Foreman was the kind of guy that would make most men wet themselves to look across a ring at, and Ali not only fought him, he shocked the whole world and beat him. Ali has every right to be considered one of the greats.
Changing gears for a sec, as far as UFC rules favoring grapplers nowadays, most people see it exactly the opposite, especially grapplers. When rounds were untimed, grapplers could use it to their favor in a war of attrition; every second you spent on the ground struggling against a grappler in bad positioning made you that much weaker and gave the grappler that much more time to work against you. That con’t happen in modern timed rounds, you only have so long to get a submission. Worse, if it doesn’t appear that you’re close to the submission after a minute or two, the referee can stand the fighters back up, a rule which heavily favors strikers. The rule changes favoring strikers over grapplers were one of the reasons that Rorion and Royce Gracie left the UFC early on.
Even a guy like Teddy Atlas admits that the UFC is doing a fantastic job with market share,and that they are doing everything right, while boxing seems to be doing everything wrong. Say what you like about the UFC and similar events- they are marketed extremely well and are growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.
I agree. Don’t get me wrong, I love the UFC and MMA, and I think the rule changes have ultimately (heh) been good for MMA as a whole. I do think those rule changes have diluted the ground aspect of the game somewhat, though.
I agree that Ali was a magnificent boxer, perhaps the best, but I do cringe every time he’s carted out these days. The man has dementia that was induced by him getting his head bashed in fight after fight. His style, while clever and graceful, also got him hit. A lot. It seems we gloss over the fact that he’s become a walking vegtable because of boxing.
Nitpick: Ali doesn’t have pugilistic dementia, but rather pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome. His motor skills are deteriorating, but his mind is more or less intact.
Chuck’s skills are on on his feet and STAYING THERE. He has very good take down defense, though from what I’ve seen his ground game is underwhelming.
His lack of a ground game is what got him in trouble against Jackson last time. We’ll see how he holds up this Saturday. The Pride fight was in a ring. This time it’s in Chuck’s territory.
To which rules would you be referring? Knees to the head? Soccer kicks?
IMHO, bring on the knees (downed opponents need to be more defensive), and outlaw the elbows. Elbows are only good for a cheap cut and ref stoppage. I don’t care either way about soccer kicks. Never seen it end a fight anyway.
I would say pretty much the opposite - bareknuckle would shift the advantage back to the grapplers.
You can’t punch very much to the head with a bare fist - you tend (as was common in the early UFC) to break your hand instead of the other guy’s head.
I would say the major change was that people are training to attack the guard much more now. Back when the UFC got started, Royce could drop to guard and no one knew what to do about it. Then he’d get their backs and choke them out.
And this old grappling specialist would cheer his fool head off.
I still like boxing, but too much money at the top and the increased opportunities for poor people have shut down the development pool. If Tyson hadn’t self-destructed, boxing would be in better shape, but a heavyweight champion rapist tends to drag down the marquee value of the whole sport, and nobody colorful has emerged to take his place.
Ali was (imo) the second best heavyweight of all time (second to Joe Louis). But right now, what we have is a heavyweight division full of Larry Holmes’s - average fighters expecting Tyson-sized purses. And criminals like Don King and Bob Arum and the blatantly corrupt alphabet boys of the WBC/WBA/IBF/PTA/BYOB are doing their best to make everyone who is remotely interested in the sport sick to their stomach.
I read thru this list, but come on - Sam Langford ahead of Jimmy Wilde? Oscar de la Hoya before Carlos Monzon?
Nude women’s boxing probably can’t save it now. I don’t watch any of these sports, but it seems to me that UFC/MMA have blown past boxing in the space of a very few years. Really, the speed of the takeover has been astonishing. I have a feeling boxing is going to have to go away for a decade or two, clean up its act, and try to re-invent itself as a classic sport, with the emphasis on fitness, technical skill, etc., rather than blood lust. It’s certainly doable. Lots of popular entertainment – books, magazines, radio, television, film – have been consigned to the scrap heap over the years as the next great thing came along. But they’ve all managed to maintain some market share.
It seems unlikely, however, that boxing will ever receive the same attention it used to get.
I bow to your greater knowledge, and I retract my hyperbole. Nonetheless, when I listen to sports shows, everyone just groans about boxing; it’s treated almost as a joke, whereas UFC, at which most sports journalists turned up their nose just two years ago, now gets serious discussion time. I don’t follow the sport, but I definitely know the names you mentioned above, plus a few others.
Supposedly, HBO is in talks with UFC to get fights on HBO.
I know they’re already on Spike, and all of the PPV they do, but for me, it’s always been hard to follow. I know with boxing there’s too many weight classes and belts, but I can always tell you who the champs are in the major weight classes, and 3 or 4 guys that would make a good fight with them (or each other).
As much as I like UFC fighting, I think it does need a little more structure, but maybe that’s my problem.
There’s still a lot to like about boxing. It has personalities who don’t give a shit about how their public personae (as opposed to any other major sport where every athelete seems to have a PR man on retainer). We still get a few great fights every year. Even though it’s a hassle, the right fights do eventually get made. I love HBO’s package. . .some Saturday night sports, some beer drinking.
