You;re seriously nuts.. Lennox Lewis fought some kick ass fights.. Look Tyson was done after prison.. Lewis carried the freaking sport for seveal years.. His fights against Evander.. Razor Ruddick.. Hasim Rahman.. was kick ass.. and his brutal beatdown of Tyson was something that people who had a clue saw coming a mile away..
As for your Klitcho take.. I would humbly sit down…
It has lost its way and much of the sheen has gone to the UFC. Frankly I find boxing boring and prefer MMA.
Not sure I buy the notion that MMA is more brutal. Typically fights are only three rounds of 5 minutes and once a fighter goes down the fight tends to end rather quickly. Moreover, given the take downs and wrestling aspect of MMA they probably get hit in the head a lot less than boxers do. That’s just an observation I’m making but I would be curious to see if anyone has looked into it.
Whether he is sane or not, I cannot speak to. But he has a point. Lewis was a very good fighter, but he didn’t spark interest the way Tyson did. I followed boxing and I forgot about Lewis until reading your post. And that’s a shame. But a lot what made Tyson so memorable was that he was a brutal champion, and his career was documented ad nauseum. Lewis was just a great boxer, and not very controversial if my memory serves.
I think MMA is more brutal for this reason… You can kick or knee someone in the head. I dont care how hard you punch someone, your legs pack more power and a well placed kick to the head can scramble anyones brain. Then you can jump on your opponent and beat him to a bloody stump until he taps out or the ref stops it.
You go to the mat in boxing, and you get a break to find yourself.
I don’t know how old you are, but MMA appeals to a younger generation of fan, who has rarely if ever saw a good boxing match live, unless they were willing to pony up the money for PPV. I don’t remember the last heavyweight fight that was even on regular TV.
You can certainly kick people in the head in MMA but not whilst they are on the ground. Absent Cro Kop in his prime and Anderson Silva, kicks to the head are usually more for show.
Knees are also somewhat rare as the fighter has to make a mistake to get pulled into a knee strike. Good points though.
I have seen a lot of boxing and some very good fights. I find it boring compared to MMA and frankly more brutal.
Are you saying that when a guy gets knocked to the canvas, the opponent cant get on top of him and start whaling away at his skull? Maybe not a kick, but I didn’t mean that someone would stand on top of a guy and stomp his head into the ground. Perhaps I worded my reply poorly. I meant that once he was down on the ground, he could jump on top of him and continue to punch him in the head.
Is that not correct>?
Funny you mention knees.. Alstair Overeem just sent Brock Lesnar back into the arms of Vince McMahon with a couple of well placed knee strikes and a nasty kick to the liver.
You can generally catch any MMA PPV the next morning on one of the pirate sites…(Work nights..also goin to a pub to watch MMA is a nightmare)
IMO MMA use to be a closet we know something cool that everyone else knows nothing about.. But now that Dana has struck gold on Fox teevee it’s totally out their. What’s also funny is how ESPN damn near called it cockfighting and mocked the shit out of it.. then looked at the demo’s and changed their tune!!
As for boxing.. their are some fighters worth watching.. but the hispanic community drives the cards.. hence sorry ass fighters like Antonio “Plaster hands” Margarito are given fight after fight.. And I absolutely loathe Floyd Mayweather..
Yeah I can see that - no one goes to the fights (except for the sellout crowds), no money to be made from TV (except the tens of millions that the fighters receive)…count it out now.
I don’t watch MMA regularly, but the sport seemed a lot more brutal ten years ago than it did today. There seemed to be fewer rules and no weight classes but these days they’ve corrected those problems. It probably isn’t as dangerous as boxing because people aren’t getting hit in the head as often.
It’s pretty much accepted that MMA is a lot less dangerous than boxing - boxing has thick padded gloves, shoes (to plant yourself when throwing a punch), 12 x 3 min rounds with a min break, fighters with durable chins and good stamina - you can deliver a highly sustained, energetic beating to someone’s head under those circumstances. MMA has none of those things so you don’t get the prolonged punishments to the grey matter in the same way. I think the casualty list from both sports would bear this out, at least in terms of serious head injuries (ie not broken limbs and so forth).
Boxing used to be one of the most popular and relevant sports on planet earth. The fact it no longer occupies pole position hardly makes it irrelevant - it’s just now one of many sports competing for our interest. It’s still a major player as a global sport, just not one where your grandma will recognise who the top men are.
Boxing also benefits from a very well-established structure - deep amateur game with significant recognition at the Olympic games. There’s also a lot of activity below the marquee fights at continental and national level - something only the committed fans will care about but provides quite a substantial base for the upper echelons of the sport.
I wonder if the increased success of pro wrestling has also eaten into boxing fandom? It serves somewhat the name niche of combat sports, and while it’s scripted, it in turn offers drama and narrative.
Not since Butterbean moved over to MMA.
Actually, he was my hope for rescuing it.
As a kid, I considered boxing to be heavyweight boxing, and I could name every single champ, with dates, from Sullivan to Ali. Then they started having three different champions, and it became kind of stupid.
Tyson reunified the title, and that might have made it mean something again, but then it went back to being a bunch of different Panamanians or whatever awarding several different titles again. I have no idea who the current heavyweight champ(s) is/are.
I just finished reading The Four Kings by George Kimball about the Hagler-Hearns-Leonard-Durán era. It’s a fantastic book and one of the things I realized (and Kimball alludes to) while reading it is that part of the decline in boxing came from the incredible purses these guys started getting in the 80s. Guys (promoters more than the actual fighters, except maybe Mayweather…) are more afraid to match up against top competition because it could ruin their chances for future purses. You still see great fights in the lighter weight classes but they aren’t household names so they don’t draw the attention of the general public.
The four listed above turned me off of heavyweight boxing. These guys were a lot more exciting than the ponderous lummoxes clinching each other and looking for the big punch. One day, when I was bored on a Sunday, I accidentally tuned into a lightweight fight: Sean O’Grady vs Hilmer Kenty. It was the one where O’Grady took the title, but was stripped of it later due to some contractual thing, IIRC. Holy crap, what a whirlwind of action! I think more punches were thrown in one round than in an entire heavyweight bout.
Lesnar had surgery removing about a foot of his colon. That may have something to do with his crumbling so quickly (or he’s just overrated). MMA is still fringe enough that a death in the ring would cause mayhem for the sport. The refs tend to be better (imo) at stopping fights than boxing refs. Herb Dean is the best ref in UFC and has an uncanny knack for stopping fights before anyone gets seriously hurt.
Boxing isn’t going away but UFC/MMA is definitely a real contender for the crown.
Keep in mind that the ear biting incident came after Holyfield had already clobbered Tyson once. His career death spiral, which began with the rape conviction, was already well under way.
Anyway, I think the problem is that the sport just isn’t attractive, more than anything because of the likelihood of severe lifelong disability. I saw Muhammad Ali at the Olympics, and believe me, his inability for this legend to even stand still without shaking left a very powerful impression. No amount of money is worth that. Never mind that thanks to sleaze like Don King, most fighters don’t even get the big money.
The great contradiction about MMA, and a big reason it so completely ate boxing’s lunch in the past decade, is that it’s safe because it’s vicious: the fight ends before the fighter can suffer serious damage. Even in the unregulated early days, you rarely heard about long-term damage, and there has been a grand total of ONE known fatality (and he was in lousy health to begin with). Heck, Royce Gracie has battled everything from shootfighters to karatekas for decades, and he’s still as lucid as ever. If you’re a young fighter with a lot of star potential and an eye on big paydays, it’s a no-brainer.
As an avid boxing fan, former boxing judge and (for one fight) boxing ref, I’d like to make a few comments.
Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis: Mike Tyson was wildly popular during his reign because of his knockouts. Plan and simple, when people tune in to fights, in general, they want to see someone get KTFO and Mike was doing that. When he started he was an animal, tearing thru people with his right to the body followed by the uppercut. He wasnt a great “boxer”, he was a great fighter…a guy who wasnt afraid to take a punch just so he could land his monster of a punch. He had some head movement, but wasnt a “boxer”…he was a fighter.
Lennox Lewis, on the other hand, for the most part was seen as a boring, safe boxer. Notice the use of the word “boxer”. He took his time, pikced his spots and got the win. He wasnt looking for the K.O. with every punch. Many people find this type of boxing kinda boring. I enjoy both types…I enjoy the animals looking for the K.O. with every punch and the I enjoy the more strategic, chessmatch type of boxers.
The Klitschko’s are more of the Lenox Lewis type of fighters, hence their lack of popularity. Wlad, in my opinion, is the better of the two, despite his early losses where he rn out of steam. They guys got a great left hook, something which is under utilized in the heavyweights.