Boxing vs. MMA/Toney vs. Couture/Etc.

[GordonBrown]

In 5 years time, a new heavyweight boxer will start knocking everyone out and all of a sudden boxing is back.

 

[isaacboxer]

UFC took him when boxing wouldn't. What does that say about UFC?

 

[Sharkey]

Really? other than the Maia fight I thought it was a pretty solid card, other than watching B.J. forget he is a mixed martial artist for 4 rounds which was pretty frustrating I enjoyed myself.
Also the Diaz fight was sloppy but fun to watch and then ended with a nice choke, and then you add mike goldberg calling everyone at the fights eliteists instead of elites, and you have yourself a good night of fights in my oppinion

Yeah, really.

Diaz-Davis was a good enough fight as far as activity and effort went from the two. But the three fights after that on PPV portion of the card basically sucked ass in my opinion. Maynard-Florian, Maia-Miranda, Couture-Toney...The first two named there had me bored to tears, with the other one ending up being the one-sided farce most of us thought it'd be. Edgar was impressive enough with his performance. Penn, not so much. Not a horrible fight to end the night, in my opinion. But not really that entertaining either. Pretty average fight.

 

[Sharkey]

Yeah, because you get your moneys worth when you buy a boxing PPV... 55$ to see a bunch of journeymen and a main event snooze fest. Definitely worth the 55$.

Sucked into buying a Mayweather PPV in recent years, have ya?

 

[RichardSwingslo]

Yeah, really.

Diaz-Davis was a good enough fight as far as activity and effort went from the two. But the three fights after that on PPV portion of the card basically sucked ass in my opinion. Maynard-Florian, Maia-Miranda, Couture-Toney...The first two named there had me bored to tears, with the other one ending up being the one-sided farce most of us thought it'd be. Edgar was impressive enough with his performance. Penn, not so much. Not a horrible fight to end the night, in my opinion. But not really that entertaining either. Pretty average fight.

Ahhh I did forget about the maynard florian fight, yes I agree that was also boring, I did like the couture toney idea, just wish it would have happened when they were both in their primes, I was a little torn in that fight, I love james toney but couture is also one of my favorites, I wanted couture to win but I wish it was a little more competitive, but I liked the fight. and like I said about the penn fight, I liked it but just got frustrated by penn not taking him down. Penn is my favorite mma fighter and I still did enjoy that fight although it was frustrating.
but I understand where you are coming from, different strokes for different folks I guess

 

[Paradigm]

said dude proceded to beat the shit out of me and i lost consciousness somewhere along the process. Next thing i know people had disappear, police

 

[LetUrHandsGo***]

Hey, but at least the consensus fight of the year from 2009 was on PPV...

Hey... wait... it wasn't was it?

Oh ok, how about a close second place, Dunn vs Cordoba? Wait... that was free as well...

Seriously, you had to pay for Yonnhy Perez vs Joseph Agbeko right? Oh... no you didn't.

Paul Williams vs Sergio Martinez: Free

Ryan Rhodes vs Jamie Moore: Free

Andre Berto vs Luis Collazo: Free

Marcos Maidana vs Victor Ortiz: Free

Froch vs Taylor: Free

Giovanni Segura vs Cecar Canchila II: Free

Marvin Sonsona vs Jose Lopez: Free

Carlos Abregu vs Irving Garcia: Free

Jean Pascal vs Adrian Diaconu I: Free

I can only really think of Cotto/Pac and Brian Viloria/Ulises Solis that you had to pay for.

Now, that does say something for the quality of boxing PPV's... and many are bad. I'm still scarred fromthe Rahman/Maskaev rematch. But that's a lot of damn good boxing avaliable for free.

Now, MMA had just as many of its contenders for fight of the year 2009 be on free tv... between Fight Nights, Strikeforce, WEC and Dream/SRC there's a lot of great MMA you can watch... on some lists none of those suggested involved you spending a dime.

So what does that say about the quality of MMA (or, as it is,UFC) PPVs?

All those fights you listed are for free for the same reason UFC fight nights are free and most WEC are/were free. They would do horrible numbers on PPV.

So if you are trying to say boxing offers good fights for free, it's not because they want to, it's because they have to.

If boxers fought the top comp available all the time and there was no ducking/promotion disputes/etc there would be PPV worthy fights every month in boxing and everyone would love it.

 

[consortium11]

All those fights you listed are for free for the same reason UFC fight nights are free and most WEC are/were free. They would do horrible numbers on PPV.

Agreed... although I should point out that the Diaz/Marquez rematch did about as many PPV buys as the WEC PPV, so it's not like they're all fights no-one would watch.

So if you are trying to say boxing offers good fights for free, it's not because they want to, it's because they have to.

And MMA is any different?

Going by MMA websites consensus for fights of the year 2009:

Kampmann vs Condit: Free

Torres vs. Mizugaki: Free

Kanehara vs Jung: Free

Tokoro vs Cullum: Free

Brown vs. Faber II: Free

Sanchez vs. Guida: Free

Couture vs. Nogueira: PPV

Cerrone vs. Henderson: Free

Fedor vs. Rogers: Free

Melendez vs Thomson: Free

Torres vs Bowles: Free

Machida vs Rua: PPV

Fernandes vs Takaya: Free

Nate Quarry vs. Tim Credeur: Free

Scott Jorgensen vs. Takeya Mizugaki: Free

Scott Smith vs. Benji Radach: Free

Scott Smith vs. Cung Le: Free

And on and on and on.

Only Nog vs Randy and Shogun vs Lyoto (which I thought was great but not necessarily a FOTY contender... much like Fedor/Cro Cop) regularly come out as a PPV fights that people thought was a fight of the year. There are other ones suggested such as Barry vs Hardonk (which isn't exactly a PPV attraction on its own) and Franklin vs Silva, but they get little regular support. Hell, if I listed all the free fights that got individual mentions I'd be here all day.

So does MMA only put good fights for free because they have to, not because they want to.

If boxers fought the top comp available all the time and there was no ducking/promotion disputes/etc there would be PPV worthy fights every month in boxing and everyone would love it.

*Sigh*

Once again, can you list all the PPV worthy fights that are in any way realistic that aren't being made due to ducking/promotion disputes/etc? There's 5 (slightly more if you include all the combinations who could fight) big ones I can think of... and it's questionable whether three of them are PPV attractions (outside of a minor Pinoy Power/Latin Fury type card).

Pac/Mayweather (obviously)
Vitali or Wlad vs Haye
Caballero vs Gamboa vs Lopez (and Lopez/Gamboa looks like it might be coming)
Bradley vs Alexander
Darchinyan vs Donaire 2.

That's about it... and for a sport that was once truly plagued by big fights never happening that's not that bad.

Oh... and I disagree. Boxing (and MMA) are putting on PPV worthy fights nearly every month... but I'm perfectly happy to watch them on free TV thank you very much.

 

[carpediem]

Em... if I'd have been talking about the time they started I'd have said "both starting at the same time...". I didn't... I said both started at the same "point". Both started as underground sports that changed their rules to be more acceptable to the general public



I'm not disagreeing with this... but it also has no relevance to my post...




Oh, I am honoured...



And here we get to the heart of the matter.

MMA as we know it has been around in a significant way since at least 1985 when the first shoot-wrestling event occured. If you want to push it slightly further back it would be 1989 and the first full Shooto events. Even that's slightly unfair to previous MMA events... as Rickson faced Zulu for the first time in 1980 in front of a rabid crowd and Helio vs Kimura has 20,000 fans... although the fight was far more submission grappling than MMA. Though you could look to the Vale Tudo matches Helio and Kimura had with Santana in the late 50's as MMA... their "rules" and the "rules" of UFC 1 are remarkably similar.

But, for the sake of argument let's ignore MMA's long history and agree with you that MMA started with UFC 1 (so ignoring Shooto, Brazilian Vale Tudo etc etc) in late 1993. Here we are just under 17 years later.

Boxing as we knew it organically evolved out of bare knuckle competition at around the turn of the 19th Century. It's hard to point to a single moment where "modern" boxing started due to how it came about... both bareknuckle and gloved bouts were held at the same time. Perhaps one turning point was the outlawing of bareknuckle fighting in Britain due to the case of R v Coney in 1882... but this itself still didn't kill of bareknuckle fighting with the Sullivan/Kilrain fight taking place under those rules in 1989. Considering the vagaries of time, let us put 1900 as the start of boxing "as we know it". In 1910, 10 years after we've said boxing "as we know it" first truly started, boxing had the "Fight of the Century" between Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries in a fight that's impact and cultural significance MMA has still to reach.

If we're more exacting with our dates and have Rickson vs Zulu in 1980 as our first modern MMA bout (and again, that would ignore Santana, Helio and Kimura's efforts) then MMA as we know it is 30 years old. Within 30 years of boxing arriving as a modern sport, boxing had produced Jack Dempsey who was fighting in front of huge crowds to mass popular acclaim... in a way Brock Lesnar, Kimbo and Yoshida (the biggest draws MMA has ever produced) have never come close to.

Boxing became mainstream far quicker than MMA has... and certainly left a bigger imprint on the world's psyche. Since then it's both risen and fallen in popularity with pretty much each decade... you're right to say that boxing today is arguably less popular than it has been in the past.

I don't buy your take on the history of MMA. Shoot wrestling in Japan doesn't make it mainstream, 20,000 people watching a fight in Brazil doesn't make it mainstream. By this logic bull fighting is mainstream. It very popoular with (most) people in Spaine, but nobody else really gives a crap and in fact many condemn it.

Like it or not, and it pains me to say this as a brit, America is what matters. Even though many people know there was MMA before the UFC for all intents and purposes the UFC was the dawn of the current era of MMA.

Also there is still a hell of a lot of negativity an uninformed comments with regard to MMA. In the Mail on Sunday at the weekend some guy was moaning about boxing dying (something else I don't buy, in US and UK maybe less popular than it was but worldwide its still huge, its not exactly dead in the US IMO!). He makes some half decent points, then ruins it all by saying boxing is struggling because of cage fighting which is a glorified street brawl.

I agree about the similarity with the rules thing. I read a very good book once about bear knuckle boxing, and was surprised to find throws were allowed. Also bizarrly the same guy who talked with such passion about a now banned sport (Bob Mee I think his name was) seemed to be totally ignorant of the UFC. The difference really is not that great.