New Fight Question

[BCPVP]

I haven't seen this mentioned recently. The mma fighter will be able to keep his hands fully around his face till he gets close enough to clinch, shoot, or kick. A boxer is not used to having to defend against not only a punch, but a kick and takedown. Usually, you see mma fighters have to keep their hands slightly lower than boxers because they may have to defend against a shot by getting underhooks and sprawling.

Now, a boxer clearly has the advantage under boxing rules with a lot of rounds. But the boxer probably won't be able to accumulate damage like he would in a boxing match.

Another thing is the boxer's stance. Their lead leg is sticking out pretty far and there's not much reason to suspect that their legs are conditioned to take Thai kicks to the knee. It's also much closer to the mma fighter to grab for a single leg.

[Blarg]

Ali didn't lose, and his wrestler looked about as bad as Ali did. If someone did that in a real fight, he would get his crotch stomped. The man led with his testicles. This was a shining moment for neither fighter.

The Gene LeBell thing is the pitting of a judo legend vs. a single boxer. He won fair and square. I wouldn't expect much different; he was one of the greats.

The latter I'll count as a fight and give credit to. But this is ONE fight. Think about it -- if it went the other way, would that make boxing the uberstyle? Nah. Judo's a great style, and so is boxing. The best man won, as he should. But let's not take one good bout as the measure of all things.

I think there is such a huge tendency to make definitive statements about these things, when that can't really be supported. At the top level, it often becomes about the man, not the art, anyway. And one, or even a handful, of fights don't constitute a decent sample size.

Common sense and my personal experience tells me that it can be very easy to defeat someone with greater skill than your own by doing something he's not used to. That's one reason that streetfighters sometimes beat someone of much higher skill -- nobody knows what the heck they're going to do or why they're moving that weird way until they get smacked.

However, people who are very, very good at one thing may well have it so highly refined that it's not just they who are limited -- their abilities also limit those of their opponents. As a jiu-jitsu man, my hand skills were very inferior compared to wing chun men, and while I could land the occasional strike, blocking one or dealing with someone trapping was well beyond me. But later, as my hand abilities increased, I surprised them by being able to get them in arm bars, chicken wings, and full nelsons. But that came only AFTER being training intensively to match THEIR skills.

It's always the case that somebody very, very good can take a lot of your skills away from you. While an MMA guy can certainly do that to a boxer, a boxer can do the very same thing back, if he's skilled enough. Boxing has inherent weaknesses, but so does not having a boxer's speed, power, and coordination. Whoever imposes his will and skill first, wins. I think it's a big mistake to think that anyone is going to win just because of his style. Some guys are just freaky good, even if their style isn't ideal. And sometimes the man matters more than the style.

[arahant]

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With that level of vagueness, no. I'd concede that if the fight STARTED on the ground, that the skilled MMA fighter would almost certainly be a heavy favorite.

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I'm by no means world class in anything. That said, I have no doubt that I could take down almost any boxer, of any size, very quickly. Admittedly, one ungloved, perfectly-distanced punch from a pro boxer would lay me out immediately, but it's hard to deliver a solid punch at a guy who is going for your ankles or stepping to your shoulder.

I think you vastly underestimate the ability of grapplers (and most martial artists, for that matter) to close distance, minimize damage from a single blow, and take someone down. It's just not even close.

[Blarg]

I think that's understimating a punch's ability to do all kinds of things to you without knocking you out, such as stop your momentum, mess up your timing, make your coordination go screwy, make you lose your legs for a moment or two, make you confused or dizzy, or simply slow you down. It can also do something disastrous: set you up for a follow-up punch.

There are many different types of boxers. One who plods straight ahead, doesn't have good footwork or balance, and only punches from limited angles and with primarily one hand -- say Pacquiao as of last year -- would be much easier to take down than, say, an Ali or Mayweather, who can hit from all angles and are very mobile. And anyone facing the reflexes of prime Roy Jones is going to be heavily outclassed in a prime fighting attribute, and may well find himself not able to get away with near what he could with someone, even a champion, with lesser reflexes.

[blackize]

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Ali didn't lose, and his wrestler looked about as bad as Ali did. If someone did that in a real fight, he would get his crotch stomped. The man led with his testicles. This was a shining moment for neither fighter.

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Ali didn't lose but he was highly ineffective. The wrestler managed to get the fight to the ground at which point if it weren't for the inadvertant elbow the match would have been over.

Also Ali was kicking him just not very well. You seem to underestimate how easy a stomp to the groin is to avoid. If I'm the MMAer I want the boxer to try to stomp me. That gives me the opportunity to grab his leg and get the easy takedown.

[Blarg]

Pretty high risk, leading with the groin, it seems to me. There are plenty of people I've known who kick extremely fast and hard, though I have to admit none of them were boxers. I wouldn't want those guys peppering my legs with kicks while waiting for the stomp. It doubtless helped the wrestler that Ali's kicking prowess was non-existent.

[BCPVP]

The only thing I'm taking away from the Ali-Inoki fight is that when faced with a person who fights much differently, both sides will be very cautious. If the fight is between a boxer and an mma fighter (and they know what each other are), the boxer will probably be spending a lot of time trying to evade while the mma fighter will be protecting his head as much as he can.

I think it also matters whether each fighter is using his normal fight "gear". If so, I think the boxer has better gear. Bigger gloves will probably protect against head kicks, while the small mma gloves won't protect a lot. Also, the shoes will be familiar to the boxer and may give him a bit more traction. Both would have cups on, so a groin shot by either won't be as effective (though it will have some effect depending on how well hit).

[John Kilduff]

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I didn't say we had proof either. But neither do we have so much as hard evidence. Someone being a "professional" boxer and leaving boxing argues strongly against him being a good one. Why would he want to make markedly less money? Him leaving a profession because he was not good at it makes a lot more sense. And regardless, that yet one more dude makes one more assertion isn't evidence of anything no matter what it is that he says. It's only an anecdote.

This is all going to remain speculation until we get at least a few noted boxers in their prime to fight noted MMA'ers in their prime. I can't foresee that happening anytime soon.

Meanwhile, this is all pretty much mental masturbation.


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Come on now. See the light. We have found 2 examples of good boxers losing to a grappler.

The first was Ali, the greatest of all time. While you and Smash would likely say this doesn't prove anything as it's guaranteed money and an exhibition, and while that is true, it isn't the point. The point is that Ali's boxing style looked terribly ineffective against a grappler. The grappler had the fight all but ended on the ground.

Then we have the above judo v boxer fight. It was a RANKED boxer. He clearly isn't a boxer who wasn't very good and went looking for greener pastures. The boxer even had some judo training and was much better suited to defend himself than if he had just used the boxing style only and the boxer still lost.

Not once in the limited history we have of boxers fighting MMAers or grapplers do we have a boxer dominating the match or even winning. This is hard evidence and proof.

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That's neither hard evidence nor proof. The Ali-Inoki "fight" was a publicity stunt to make a predetermined amount of money for each contestant, and neither contestant took ANY serious risks nor fought in the least bit assertively during the bout. Just count that as a PT Barnum act, with the paying spectators playing their usual role as suckers a bit more prominently than usual.

The other example cited occurred many decades ago and is but one example and therefore statistically insignificant. Heck I generally favor grappling too, but those two examples cannot realistically be claimed as any sort of meaningful evidence.

[John Kilduff]

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With that level of vagueness, no. I'd concede that if the fight STARTED on the ground, that the skilled MMA fighter would almost certainly be a heavy favorite.

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I'm by no means world class in anything. That said, I have no doubt that I could take down almost any boxer, of any size, very quickly. Admittedly, one ungloved, perfectly-distanced punch from a pro boxer would lay me out immediately, but it's hard to deliver a solid punch at a guy who is going for your ankles or stepping to your shoulder.

I think you vastly underestimate the ability of grapplers (and most martial artists, for that matter) to close distance, minimize damage from a single blow, and take someone down. It's just not even close.

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I agree that a skilled wrestler can be very good at leg-shooting for takedowns and could often get inside like thatr on a boxer. But a boxer could quickly learn the minimum to counter (splay legs back and drop weight on the shooter if the shooter gets inside) and combine that with rabbit punching. The shooter might avoid getting hit by regular punches but that doesn't mean he would avoid getting rabbit punched, perhaps with the weight of the boxer adding to the force. That could potentially be very bad for the shooter.

[Viscant]

This thread has gotten more intelligent as it's gone on but there are still a few people talking about traditional martial artists and putting them above MMA fighters. For the record, almost all the top MMA fighters these days have a traditional martial arts background and are/were elite at what they studied before crosstraining for MMA.

Fedor--Sambo champion.
Crocop--Taekwondo. Was a K-1 level kickboxer before moving to PRIDE.
Liddell--Blackbelt in kenpo karate.
St.Pierre--Blackbelt in kyokushin karate.

All of these men (and others that I won't mention for the sake of brevity) were well respected in those disciplines, even before cross-training in the big 4 arts of modern MMA (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, muay thai in that order). Putting a non crosstrained traditional martial artist above any of these men would be foolish.

Also as for the debate on the later pages about boxing and why UFC/PRIDE/K-1 strikers seem to display such lousy boxing.
I personally hold a black belt in traditional karate. I have a brown belt in judo and trained boxing for 2 years sporadically. The day I stepped into a gym to crosstrain in MMA was the day I had to basically unlearn 4/5 of everything I knew about standup striking.
Striking in MMA is not as technical as striking in K-1 or professional boxing because you have to change your stance and your hip level to avoid non-setup basic takedowns. You have to change your followthrough on punches/kicks to avoid a countertakedown. You also have to move your pivot point. Any type of jab that involves shifting your weight forward must be eliminated because of leg kicks and single leg takedowns. Any type of hook that involves pivoting on the ball of the foot or turning the knee is also an easy takedown. The bobbing/weaving that boxers utilize becomes useless due to the thai clinch, standing knees and the ultra advanced front body lock. This isn't to say that boxing is unimportant to MMA because it is arguably THE most important art for an MMA fighter to crosstrain in. Just saying that a lot of an expert boxer's advantages and training would be rendered useless quickly.
You take a high level MMA striker such as Chuck Liddell and compare his punching stance/style to an average boxer and it's almost comical how silly Liddell looks. His stance is far too wide and he doesn't fully rotate his hips/legs for power in his punches. He throws long, looping punches. However, Liddell's style is much better suited to this style of combat than the boxer's. He can strike without being vulnerable to a takedown and his hips are low enough that he can sprawl even in the middle of throwing an overhand punch. Since his weight is balanced, he can also kick with either leg at any time off of any opening. This isn't a flaw of boxing in and of itself. It's useless as a boxer to prepare your legs to kick since it's never available. It's just an example of how a boxer is not equipped to fight this fight.


One thing to look for if you want to see elite boxers getting into MMA is a situation where the rules are bent more to their liking. Showtime is looking to start a new MMA organization called Elite XC. One of their proposed rule changes is limiting the time on the ground to 15 seconds. If this league takes off, this rule could start drawing more boxing talent to the world of MMA. Again, this will look much like K-1, which pays comparable to non-heavyweight, non-De La Hoya boxing payouts. Very few traditional boxers catch on there either.