How does high competition in boxing stack up with ufc?

If you're a low level professional boxer you're actually one of the best boxers in the world. The gym/club level, regional circuits, extensive amateur system weeds out there guys that can't make it to the top well before they even get a chance to make it at the top.

MMA isn't like that. You got guys fighting for world titles 8 or 10 fights into their career. (See Cain and Weidman) You have prospects fighting in the best organization in the world (Yair, Zambit, Bektic) while nameworthy guys can't get a pot to piss in from the UFC (Mousasi, Askren, Rory).
 
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Sure you can. Boxing has an infinitely deeper talent pool and MMA is a very very very shallow field of fighters. You can compare it pretty easily.

Boxing has tons of depth in competition across the world. MMA does not.

I have been saying this for years and always get shit on for it. It’s why I roll my eyes when Joe Rogan talks about how high level someone like say, Joe Schilling is. Top Glory kickboxers are participating in a sport that is globally speaking, very very small, truly a niche sport. It’s why every K1 tournament had like 11 Dutch guys and maybe like one or two Brazilian, Japanese or American guys. Reaching the elite level of pro boxing is infinitely more impressive and takes much more skill and athletic ability than reaching the top of a sport like Kickboxing. Guys like Lomanchenko and Errol Spence have been weeded out and tested against global competition from the time they were literally children.

It’s just a product of the fact that boxing is much older and much more global. Today in any random ass country you will find boxing Trainers and gyms that know what the fuck they are doing, I don’t think you can say the same about mma, JJ, or kickboxing. It took boxing generations of trial and error in certain countries to develop.

MMA is getting there, look at Russia for example, they have just recently gotten to a place, for whatever reason, where they have learned to produce top mma fighters, but it took years. This is why we have seen the U.S and Brazil dominate mma for years. Could you imagine if Mexico ever came around to MMA? They would dominate the lower weight classes like they do in boxing.
 
This is an excellent and straight up article.

It's just that and as it probably always will be; the American money machine skews the whole thing.
There is an unreal amount of tough, excellent fighters with boxing and wrestling/judo backgrounds in Russia, especially the Caucas region but they will never get any recognition. Especially with a broad absurd cuck level of journalism that mounts the front page about Chechnya and politics/war crimes. These guys will probably never get handed a decent shot at it over in the "West".


Karim Zidan is the one who spouts garbage after garbage. I wouldn't even be surprised if he's under some sort of "extra" payroll. He gets away with it because there's some relevant news in-between and because people naturally have a skewed look towards "the other"... This guy even wrote an article a year or two back saying UFC shouldn't do an event in Russia because Russians won't be able to afford it and started throwing stats about the economy... The thing is, literally all of that applies to Brazil as well. Yet, UFC does multiple events there every year. It's because its not the average person attending those events, its the upper and upper-middle class who are able to afford it. The same applies for Russia.

Zidan has an obsession with Russia that's completely skewed, but people will never call him out because we already live in a fearmongering world. I mean, how often do these people on Reddit, and sometimes here, talk about dictators and terrorism and gay-persecution as a way to lambaste Russian MMA? But when have those same people ever mentioned the fact that UFC's own parent WME-IMG is co owned by (Ari Emanuel) the son of an Irgun terrorist Benjamin Emanuel who engaged in ethnic cleansing in Palestine? Or the fact that the UAE (Flash Entertainment) pumped tens of millions into the UFC, at its most crucial point solidifying its position as the dominant MMA org, the same UAE who engages in human-rights abuses against laborers, and has been bombing Yemen to the ground killing civilians, and operating secret prisons torturing and illegally detaining Yemenis?

It's a complete double standard. How many articles have Zidan written about the Emanuel family? Or the UAE's abuse of human rights while also funding the UFC?
 
Yeah, i got you. It is as close as anyone in gonna get with that many fights, especially since he avenged his loss multiple times.

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Sure you can. Boxing has an infinitely deeper talent pool and MMA is a very very very shallow field of fighters. You can compare it pretty easily.

Boxing has tons of depth in competition across the world. MMA does not.

I agree boxing has a deeper talent pool as does most sports but the point I was making is that mma is much much much more diverse than boxing. The thread was about the high level fighters of the two sports and they just aren't very comparable, in my opinion, you can use expertise from a sport like wrestling or jiu jitsu to reach a high level in mma or you could just be very well rounded but I do get where you're coming from
 
To be fair most boxers fight 10-20 nobodies/low level fighters in becoming pro in order to gather experience and make a name for themselves. You can see that most world ranked boxers started fighting high level opponents toward the end of their career, which is why going undefeated as a boxer with 20+ fights is so common until it gets to the championship level. Otherwise, I agree with you that they are more experienced, especially in regard to amateur competition.

I agree, some guys are more talented at one aspect of the fight game than others. Some guys have poor TDD, poor KO power for their weight class etc.

I don't see MMA achieving the international presence of boxing in our lifetime though.

Yeah but the guys you refer to as "nobodies" or "low level fighters" are still much higher up the totem pole in relative talent than their MMA counterparts. It is an absolute fact without question that boxing holds a far greater general talent depth than MMA. In fact, if we're realistic it will likely be at least 7 or 8 decades until MMA is able to compete with boxing in terms of talent depth within the sport.

When you throw the realm of amateur boxing into the equation there is literally no comparison. The average skill level in amateur MMA has literally nothing on that of amateur boxing. Any fan of combat sports knows this.

Haven't u seen Conor vs Floyd?The so called best boxer ever in mma got humiliated like a little girl against a retired, untrained, 41 yr old dude that was trying his hardest not to finish him too quick...

Careful with your opinions there man, a lot of people seem to think Mayweather was actually trying in that fight! Deluded I know.
 
Re-visit this board in 100 years. Or not.

"boxing is dying" were the shouts of some MMA coke heads, only a few years back and now look, the same shout comes to MMA.

All sports "combat particularly" have peaks and troughs to some extent but MMA is a BABY sport.

I don't have the links to hand (would need serious digging) but I came across some newspaper articles from the 1920's. Very derogotary and demeaning. Incredibly patronising. Not dissimilar to how MMA was seen 15 or more years ago (even more recent perhaps).

No. There is no comparison and it's not close on any scale. MMA to Boxing is like Earth to Jupiter.
When you have 100 million kids around the world practicing from pre-teen until maturity, every level from amateur to regional circuit has higher quality, better skilled, disciplined, conditioned and more. And boxing skills have reached an almost scientific peak of excellence, way beyond its formative years. With innovators like Ali setting a HW standard, to genius fighters like Mayweather and Lomachenko. You need 100 years of foundation and shared knowledge for MMA fighters to become anything like that. Silva. Jones. GSP. These guys are the early pioneers of excellence and genial approach but they will become the norm in another 50 years from now. You might not believe that because of how good they are, but indeed they are just stepping stones for other people to learn from in the future.

Firstly... of course we're not going to revisit this board in a hundred years... none of us are going to be alive in a hundred years. And if we are we'll be popping viagra before jerking off dust into a crusty flannel to the image of Dianne Sawyer... not surfing some message board.

Having said that... I agree with your last point. MMA and Boxing are two totally different sports at two totally different stages in their very separate evolution. The talent level at boxing will always be higher simply because it's the infinitely more established/more popular/more well-known sport. The fan base of MMA is like a puddle of piss in the ocean that is boxing. Do you get my piss-related analogy?
 
I think there is a big difference especially in the HW divisions. I think even K-1 in the early 2000's had more talent in the HW division than the UFC does.
 
One thing we can all agree on: they both have crappy heavyweights.
 
To be fair most boxers fight 10-20 nobodies/low level fighters in becoming pro in order to gather experience and make a name for themselves. You can see that most world ranked boxers started fighting high level opponents toward the end of their career, which is why going undefeated as a boxer with 20+ fights is so common until it gets to the championship level. Otherwise, I agree with you that they are more experienced, especially in regard to amateur competition.

I agree, some guys are more talented at one aspect of the fight game than others. Some guys have poor TDD, poor KO power for their weight class etc.

I don't see MMA achieving the international presence of boxing in our lifetime though.
Most top ranked boxers and even champs also fight nobodies as well. Which is why you see -5000 favorites in boxing all the fucking time. Boxing is a joke lol.
 
I have been saying this for years and always get shit on for it. It’s why I roll my eyes when Joe Rogan talks about how high level someone like say, Joe Schilling is. Top Glory kickboxers are participating in a sport that is globally speaking, very very small, truly a niche sport. It’s why every K1 tournament had like 11 Dutch guys and maybe like one or two Brazilian, Japanese or American guys. Reaching the elite level of pro boxing is infinitely more impressive and takes much more skill and athletic ability than reaching the top of a sport like Kickboxing. Guys like Lomanchenko and Errol Spence have been weeded out and tested against global competition from the time they were literally children.

It’s just a product of the fact that boxing is much older and much more global. Today in any random ass country you will find boxing Trainers and gyms that know what the fuck they are doing, I don’t think you can say the same about mma, JJ, or kickboxing. It took boxing generations of trial and error in certain countries to develop.

MMA is getting there, look at Russia for example, they have just recently gotten to a place, for whatever reason, where they have learned to produce top mma fighters, but it took years. This is why we have seen the U.S and Brazil dominate mma for years. Could you imagine if Mexico ever came around to MMA? They would dominate the lower weight classes like they do in boxing.

Russia could have dominated earlier if people just signed more fighters from that region. It's only in the late 2000s that M-1 ramped up its events after the fall of PRIDE and Fedor becoming a freelance. Then following M-1's footsteps, in the 2010s we've seen the likes of ACB, FNG and WFCA and smaller promotions (Tech-Krep and ProFC) sprout up organizing regular events. So more of their wrestlers, Sambo and Sanda fighters are making the transition to MMA. But like yesteryear, they're disproportionately underrepresented in worldwide MMA orgs (UFC) whereas the Russian MMA orgs aren't treated as worldwide nor broadcast outside their market.

Boxing witnessed the same thing in terms of Central-Asians but now Western promoters are signing them. They've always had the talent, the amateurs and Olympics is proof. Same thing with Russian MMA, there's always been great Sambo and wrestling guys in Russia. They just never got opportunity. It's one of the reasons why I was a fan of PRIDE, they at least had talent from around the world. The UFC was almost entirely just Americans and Brazilians, there were barely any Japanese either. Okami was like the only Japanese they had (and three Genki Sudo fights), and that was during Japanese MMA's golden era. That alone makes me feel like there's perhaps Japanese fighters who are still good in Japan, they're just not being signed. RINGS was the one who scouted Fedor, Volk Han, Overeem; PRIDE scouted Kharitanov and tens of others; and K-1 organized events around the world discovering talents (bringing us CroCop and Mark Hunt). It takes giving people opportunity before seeing them succeed.
 

Finito's amateur record is hearsay. No possibility for gold medals. No world championships. Just Mexican golden gloves. Multiple sources list his amateur record as 37-1. Not even close to Lomachenko's 396-1 with 2 Olympic golds and 2 world championships.
 
If you're a low level professional boxer you're actually one of the best boxers in the world. The gym/club level, regional circuits, extensive amateur system weeds out there guys that can't make it to the top well before they even get a chance to make it at the top.

MMA isn't like that. You got guys fighting for world titles 8 or 10 fights into their career. (See Cain and Weidman) You have prospects fighting in the best organization in the world (Yair, Zambit, Bektic) while nameworthy guys can't get a pot to piss in from the UFC (Mousasi, Askren, Rory).
with Olympic judo and wrestling and tkd plus boxing. Shouldn't the ufc have a deep talent pool to recruit from. Plus muay thai fighters and other martial artists. Does the ufc have a development system were they can take a world karate champion and throw him in for two years to train in boxing muay thai ji jitsu and wrestling?? an then have them enter ufc. even with ncaa div 1 athletes who were drafted but didn't make the nfl or nba??
 
To be fair most boxers fight 10-20 nobodies/low level fighters in becoming pro in order to gather experience and make a name for themselves. You can see that most world ranked boxers started fighting high level opponents toward the end of their career, which is why going undefeated as a boxer with 20+ fights is so common until it gets to the championship level.
This. Boxing fanbois will try and tell you this is not the case, but boxing has way more cans and padded records than MMA.
 
This. Boxing fanbois will try and tell you this is not the case, but boxing has way more cans and padded records than MMA.

At the beginning

Look at 20 of Floyd, Oscar or Manny's last opponents.

The top guys normally fight top competition

Imo MMA is a fair bit behind boxing with talent/athletes.

Though with the growth in the sport, I imagine they will soon overtake boxing in talent.
 
Cm punk was 0-0 before turning "pro" let that sink in.
 
no wonder they are all punch-drunk and broke early in life. Safety first, for fuck's sake.

Over the next couple decades we may see even more punch drunk boxers with shorter careers.

This is because amateur boxing changed scoring to the 10 point must system and therefore emphasizes pro-style power punching over technical punching where power was irrelevant due to the old scoring system.
 
MMA is superior to Boxing.
Boxers only fight cans many "high-level" boxers are still fighting cans.
While in MMA you have top guys/mid-tier guys who have fought each other before even fighting in the UFC.
 
I watch both sports, and although I do have issues with boxing I still accept that there's a relative opportunity for all competitors from all corners of the word to have a shot at a world title. It's not completely equal/fair, as boxers from the US/UK/Mexico have an advantage in terms of titleshots and repeated titleshots which the foreigners usually don't. But the mere fact that there's four titles which are seen in equal light gives people multiple routes, and you're not stuck with a situation with one champ colluding or hogging "the" belt.

But in MMA, it's completely skewed. In MMA, the UFC is seen as king, while Bellator is seen as the second guy. In the UFC, everything is geared towards Americans and Brazilians. There's roughly 66 male Brazilian fighters signed to the UFC, compared to only 23 Russian fighters. And most of those Russians fight once a year. Brazil is great at BJJ, but Russia is great at wrestling, Sambo, judo, Sanda and boxing. They have hundreds of Olympic medals in wrestling and boxing. Brazil has 0 medals in wrestling, and only 3 in boxing (their first Gold won in 2016). So why are there so few Russians, but 3x as many Brazilians?

Then there's Bellator, which has an outright blacklist on North Caucasian fighters. The Russian Olympic wrestling team is entirely North Caucasian. They dominate Combat Sambo and MMA in Russia as well. Bellator having Russians but barring North-Caucasians is like someone allowing American boxers but barring Blacks/Hispanics. How do you bar the dominant contingent?

Boxing is changing its ways, there's more Eastern European and Central-Asian fighters being signed by Western promoters. GGG and Shumenov opened a lot of doors, and promoters are signing Kazakh and Uzbek Olympians and amateur aces. It's only in the last 2 years that Uzbeks have started going pro. Even though they dominated the amateurs for decades. I would appreciate if the UFC would sign more CIS fighters, particularly Russians who dominate grappling and who currently have one of the largest MMA scenes in the world with 4 major orgs and a dozen smaller orgs.

They are grossly underrepresented in the UFC. In fact, from what I gather the UFC doesn't even sign them. It's usually Ali AbdelAziz who signs them, then brings them to the UFC or PFL, whichever of the two takes them. One man can't handle it all, it also means Ali only signs athletes from gyms he's personally acquainted with. There's an ethnic dimension to this as well, which ends up where most of the guys he signs are from Northern Dagestan. Fighters from Southern Dagestan, Circassia and Chechnya have an even less chance of getting in. I mean, a few years ago most of the guys signed were teammates/friends of Khabib alone.
Why doesn t Bellator sign Caucasians?,

But anyways just look at the comments on this forum.

MMA consumers are not about fighting skills as much as they are into personalities and drama.

They will always prefer the loudmouth tattoed up thug to the ice cold quiet Caucasian who can't speak English.

MMA is just a business and a trashy show.
 
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