Has the Heavyweight Championship lost its prestige?

[DeJulez]

And yet without knowing who DC was you already knew he'd get crushed by Joshua? Busted!

I know who DC is you idiot. I just dont know who the champ is.
And Joshua would crush anyone in the UFC.

 

[Ilk]

The UFC heavy weight is so fun right now that most top 10 ranked boxers would walk through it with knock outs in less than a minute.

You can even line the.top 10 in UFC in for 10 rounds against any of Joshua, Wilder and Fury and they will all lose. Yep MMA rules

 

[Marc A]

Ever worry that the Heavyweight Championship of the World has lost some of its prestige? It used to be THE most prized title in all of sports, but now it's an afterthought.

Remember when everyone knew who the heavyweight champion was? Now you'd be lucky if a random
person on the street knew who it was.

Is this because of boxing's decline in popularity, or are there other factors?

Anthony Joshua is bigger than Soccer

 

[aries]

The UFC heavy weight is so fun right now that most top 10 ranked boxers would walk through it with knock outs in less than a minute.

You can even line the.top 10 in UFC in for 10 rounds against any of Joshua, Wilder and Fury and they will all lose. Yep MMA rules

LOL yep you're dreaming. The only way a boxer wins is if any of the MMA fighters are stupid enough to elect to stand with them. Like Sylvia did with Mercer. BUT if they have half a brain then they will just take the boxer down (without much resistance) and beat him on the ground in under a minute. Just like we saw with Couture and Toney.

 

[Ilk]

LOL yep you're dreaming. The only way a boxer wins is if any of the MMA fighters are stupid enough to elect to stand with them. Like Sylvia did with Mercer. BUT if they have half a brain then they will just take the boxer down (without much resistance) and beat him on the ground in under a minute. Just like we saw with Couture and Toney.

We are speaking for prime athletes here, not wasted boxers who want to cash in some easy money

 

[Monte Moku]

We are speaking for prime athletes here, not wasted boxers who want to cash in some easy money

MMA striking ≠ Boxing striking. Any Boxer trying to go against a top 10 MMA fighter under MMA rules would get picked apart and then finished on the ground. If somehow the Boxer can manage on the feet, again, the ground is home to many MMA fighters. I don't know how you can see any way a Boxer would win against an MMA fighter in this context without getting a lucky punch.

 

[aries]

We are speaking for prime athletes here, not wasted boxers who want to cash in some easy money

Boxers don't win against kickboxers. They are even less likely to win against MMA fighters. You know what a boxer is going to do and unlike boxing there is no rule against keeping the head below waist height. So all a MMA'er has to do is keep low and shoot in for the takedown. The boxer has no chance of defending a takedown unless they've had a lot TDD training but then they are no longer just a boxer. If we are talking about a strict boxer they go down and they don't get up again. I can't believe we are still having this type of discussion in 2018. I thought people had got over this sort of nonsense years ago?

 

[Ilk]

Dudes we are talking about the current ufc heavy weight rooster where Ngonu or something his name is was considered a legit contender and the best boxer in the division. Also the.division who has a weight lighter fighter as a champ... are you guys for real?

I am not theory crafting a boxer vs mma fighter under MMA rules. I am speaking about legit prime boxers steam rolling a laughable division the.UFC heavy weight is.

 

[aries]

Dudes we are talking about the current ufc heavy weight rooster where Ngonu or something his name is was considered a legit contender and the best boxer in the division. Also the.division who has a weight lighter fighter as a champ... are you guys for real?

I am not theory crafting a boxer vs mma fighter under MMA rules. I am speaking about legit prime boxers steam rolling a laughable division the.UFC heavy weight is.

No current boxing HW would be able to stop Cormier taking them down. And yeah he was a LHW but Tyson was a small heavy, smaller than Cormier and he managed to dominate. I bet you Usyk beats all the HW's up until the true elite boxers. Even then I've give him a good shot at beating the top HW's. And Ngannou is more than just a boxer, if he was just a boxer he'd of got no where. No pure boxer is going to come into the UFC and do shit against a MMA HW.

 

[mozfonky]

i don't really see how any basic boxer, no matter how good they are could stop an elite grappler from taking them down, it's just so easy to do and it happens so fast. I'm biased towards boxing if anything but I never could see it. Duran actually had some nice moves in that exhibition in japan, but duran was a different case, he always claimed he was a horrible boxer and that he was really a streetfighter, it seemed to have some truth to it in that he was good at anticipating takedowns, it wasn't a serious fight but it was a good example of what a good boxer could do if he had a strategy and some experience. Honestly, it's a lot easier to learn to neutralize a grappling opponent than it is to master grappling itself and that has happened a few times in the history of the ufc. Easy but you can't count on a bonehead like Toney to bother learning anything new.

 

[actjac]

Absolutely the heavyweight boxing title lost its prestige. . . .It actually stared with Don King and his band of no name misfits like Tony Tubbs, Tony Tucker, Trevor Berbick, Bonecrusher Smith, Bruce Seldon, Hasim Rahman, Oliver McCall, Greg Page and others. . . .What only kept it alive was George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis. . . .Once the Klitschkos took over and added their line of snooze fest title defenses did the train finally stop at the station.. . . . .Wilder, Fury, Joshua and maybe Usyk can maybe restore it if they will fight round robin matches and add good and credible contender defenses like Whyte, Rivas, Kownacki, Miller, Zhilei, Kabayel.

 

[aries]

Against Aj the boxer with no experience? No chance, DC wins easily ala randy/toney.

even though Ray ko’d timmeg with a punch people over look the fact he had to be manhandled by kimbo in the clinch first. And those 2 kickboxing matches he was embaressed in.
So yeah, Ray the MMA fighter won that one.

Floyd was a retired broken old man, but conor was not a boxer before that fight happened.

Michael Jordan would dunk over messi all night long.
Every physics lecturer in harvard now would lose 10 times in a row against whoever’s the world champ in chess is now.

Nikki holzken got easily jab-fisted all night against Smith. Even though he’s considered one of the Living ATGs of muay thai

I hate to be that guy but Holzkien was never an ATG of Muay Thai, he was a very good dutch style kickboxer though who did compete in a few Muay Thai matches but no where close to be an ATG.

 

[aries]

i don't really see how any basic boxer, no matter how good they are could stop an elite grappler from taking them down, it's just so easy to do and it happens so fast. I'm biased towards boxing if anything but I never could see it. Duran actually had some nice moves in that exhibition in japan, but duran was a different case, he always claimed he was a horrible boxer and that he was really a streetfighter, it seemed to have some truth to it in that he was good at anticipating takedowns, it wasn't a serious fight but it was a good example of what a good boxer could do if he had a strategy and some experience. Honestly, it's a lot easier to learn to neutralize a grappling opponent than it is to master grappling itself and that has happened a few times in the history of the ufc. Easy but you can't count on a bonehead like Toney to bother learning anything new.

Some people get really offended when someone dares to suggest that a grappler could out grapple a boxer and avoid the KO punch whilst doing so but it's the truth.

 

[Badr Hari]

Haha this thread quickly became a DC thread. There is never a competition actually MMA and boxing help each other in popularity because they are both combat. Floyd made Conor from star to superstar. Floyd and Conor together with their fight made Canelo/GGG bigger etc etc.

Anyway, boxing's heavyweight champion will never lose its prestige. Never. Everyone who is the champ will have the names of Louis, Marciano, Ali, Tyson etc etc in the background. Everyone knows Klitschko over there. Even people that have never watched a whole fight in their life. Now Joshua is super popular as well. Still not as big of a star as Klitschko but definitely has the potential to become.

 

[aries]

Haha this thread quickly became a DC thread. There is never a competition actually MMA and boxing help each other in popularity because they are both combat. Floyd made Conor from star to superstar. Floyd and Conor together with their fight made Canelo/GGG bigger etc etc.

Anyway, boxing's heavyweight champion will never lose its prestige. Never. Everyone who is the champ will have the names of Louis, Marciano, Ali, Tyson etc etc in the background. Everyone knows Klitschko over there. Even people that have never watched a whole fight in their life. Now Joshua is super popular as well. Still not as big of a star as Klitschko but definitely has the potential to become.

I love boxing and MMA fairly equally but I can't see MMA ever being as popular as boxing simply because to watch it and enjoy it fully you need to know about grappling. With boxing, you don't need to know anything about boxing but you can still understand and enjoy what is going on. My GF doesn't follow combat sports but occasionally she'll watch a boxing match with me. She'd never watch an MMA fight though because she wouldn't have a clue what's going on when they enter a clinch or go to the ground.

 

[Congo66]

My GF doesn't follow combat sports but occasionally she'll watch a boxing match with me. She'd never watch an MMA fight though because she wouldn't have a clue what's going on when they enter a clinch or go to the ground.

Well you should take her through some grappling, a body triangle and RNC would be easier to demonstrate on her than a right hook to the face would be.

Clearly the HW World title isn't what it once was but AJ is still very well known in the UK anyway (as has been mentioned above) , he's got a few tv ads showing atm for crap I'd never buy.



Lynx is aimed at teens and 20's.

 

[Badr Hari]

I love boxing and MMA fairly equally but I can't see MMA ever being as popular as boxing simply because to watch it and enjoy it fully you need to know about grappling. With boxing, you don't need to know anything about boxing but you can still understand and enjoy what is going on. My GF doesn't follow combat sports but occasionally she'll watch a boxing match with me. She'd never watch an MMA fight though because she wouldn't have a clue what's going on when they enter a clinch or go to the ground.

I agree. I don't see MMA becoming as big as boxing in the near future. But look how it has reached and probably surpassed kickboxing in many countries. Kickboxing is more simple and fun to watch as you say but lack of promotion and TV coverage has put it in the shadow a little bit. Wrestling is not so popular nowadays over there but it used to be a thing everywhere in the past. It's probably one of the oldest legitimate forms of showing your strengths without killing or seriously hurting your opponent. It could very well be as old as human mankind is. Judo became super popular in my country after a young girl won olympic gold. Many judo gyms have opened and so many girls are into it. I like boxing more than anything but grappling is not something to underrate and I believe basic knowledge of it isn't that hard to gain just by watching some fights. One of my friends never heard about MMA two years ago and now talks about kimuras and guillotines when we watch a fight. For us fight fans I guess good news is that the best fights are being made in both sports. Combat sports in general kicked ass in 2017 and 2018 and are the most paid ones among all sports.

 

[aries]

I agree. I don't see MMA becoming as big as boxing in the near future. But look how it has reached and probably surpassed kickboxing in many countries. Kickboxing is more simple and fun to watch as you say but lack of promotion and TV coverage has put it in the shadow a little bit. Wrestling is not so popular nowadays over there but it used to be a thing everywhere in the past. It's probably one of the oldest legitimate forms of showing your strengths without killing or seriously hurting your opponent. It could very well be as old as human mankind is. Judo became super popular in my country after a young girl won olympic gold. Many judo gyms have opened and so many girls are into it. I like boxing more than anything but grappling is not something to underrate and I believe basic knowledge of it isn't that hard to gain just by watching some fights. One of my friends never heard about MMA two years ago and now talks about kimuras and guillotines when we watch a fight. For us fight fans I guess good news is that the best fights are being made in both sports. Combat sports in general kicked ass in 2017 and 2018 and are the most paid ones among all sports.

What you say about wrestling is true, it used to be pretty popular. And even boxing matches had a bit of grappling in them back in history. I suppose watching MMA can mean that viewers pick up stuff from watching it. That's how I learned in the early days anyway, a long time before I ever took any grappling lessons. I suppose watching Boxing vs MMA is similar to how it's easy to watch a soccer match without knowing much more than the basic rules but American Football takes a bit of time to learn what the rules are and what's going on.

 

[DeJulez]

What you say about wrestling is true, it used to be pretty popular. And even boxing matches had a bit of grappling in them back in history. I suppose watching MMA can mean that viewers pick up stuff from watching it. That's how I learned in the early days anyway, a long time before I ever took any grappling lessons. I suppose watching Boxing vs MMA is similar to how it's easy to watch a soccer match without knowing much more than the basic rules but American Football takes a bit of time to learn what the rules are and what's going on.

I always thought a casual fan could understand MMA easier, because it seems easier to tell who is winning.
The guy who gets the takedown has the dominant position on so on, even though you can get submitted by someone on their back, but for the most part the guy on top is winning.
In boxing you can have someone winging punches like a madman while getting boxed up and then have a controversial decision and have fans only noticing his aggression while not noticing the other parts of the sport.

 

[aries]

I always thought a casual fan could understand MMA easier, because it seems easier to tell who is winning.
The guy who gets the takedown has the dominant position on so on, even though you can get submitted by someone on their back, but for the most part the guy on top is winning.
In boxing you can have someone winging punches like a madman while getting boxed up and then have a controversial decision and have fans only noticing his aggression while not noticing the other parts of the sport.

Yeah I suppose bits of MMA are just common sense. The guy on top on the ground raining down blows on the guy underneath is pretty self-explanatory but do people new to the sport pick up the guard pass from double butterflies? Or the sub attempt from bottom where the guy climbs to a high guard? How about the guy who gets underhooks up against the fence or who manages to stuff the single leg by controlling the head? These more subtle elements I'd imagine would get missed and sometimes there is little in the way of proper action like punches or elbows but the guys are fighting for position in the clinch or on the ground. But I see your point, there are subtle elements to boxing that might get missed by the average viewer.