Is it harder to be an elite boxer than elite mma fighter

[Ultra O’Dia]

So you are just low intelligence but it doesn’t hinder your ability to communicate or write?

precisely!

 

[D 1 Wrestler]

Becoming an Elite MMA fighter is easier than becoming an Elite boxer.
You have a better chance at becoming the next Conor McGregor than the next Floyd Mayweather.

Not at heavyweight

 

[MoreKane]

Boxer you just can't train four years and make it to the top in boxing nobody has done it. Mma guys like francis Ngannou Mike perry trained like 4 years and are making an impact on a high level of comp

thats..... a good point

 

[deucesarewild]

Lol fighting only 2x a year at the top and being able to largely cherry pick in boxing compared to the whole body as a weapon and on the regular being matched by your promoter who also promotes your competition for ratings. MMA is easily as hard and they get paid way less.

 

[MoreKane]

Lol fighting only 2x a year at the top and being able to largely cherry pick in boxing compared to the whole body as a weapon and on the regular being matched by your promoter who also promotes your competition for ratings. MMA is easily as hard and they get paid way less.

Francis Ngannou is considered elite, and he didn't start training until he was 22, and is now the number one contender.

That could never happen in boxing, that someone starts at 22 years old and becomes elite, even his trainer said do MMA since it was easier to get into

 

[hillelslovak87]

Boxer, limited toolset makes it harder to win.

And an inability to change the state of play, like getting knocked down and working your ground game to defend. Can't do that shit. Get up and fight.

 

[TidWell]

And an inability to change the state of play, like getting knocked down and working your ground game to defend. Can't do that shit. Get up and fight.

yeah Randy Couture even said this years ago that boxing is much harder than MMA mainly because of the limited tool set, he said in MMA if you are tired you can hold on to the guy and grind him on the cage and dirty box to buy recovering time and score points or take him down when rocked to avoid.

 

[wolfss]

Easily harder to be an elite boxer.
Conor is a failed boxer who became an elite MMA fighter. You will never see it the other way around.

Conor went ten rounds with the so called goat and landed clean shots. I would bet both my balls that connor would choke Floyd in the first couple rounds. Conor wasn’t that good in mma, he hit a lucky streak, did you see him fight middle of the road Nate Diaz?? In mma Khabib would strangle any boxer including heavyweights. It’s a completely different game. A big welterweight could go into the Boxing ring with canelo and maybe big brother him, that’s why they didn’t take the bait with Jorge Masvidal.

 

[Hagler]

Conor went ten rounds with the so called goat and landed clean shots. I would bet both my balls that connor would choke Floyd in the first couple rounds. Conor wasn’t that good in mma, he hit a lucky streak, did you see him fight middle of the road Nate Diaz?? In mma Khabib would strangle any boxer including heavyweights. It’s a completely different game. A big welterweight could go into the Boxing ring with canelo and maybe big brother him, that’s why they didn’t take the bait with Jorge Masvidal.

Let's be serious for half a second here. In a boxing ring it would take Canelo little time to piñata Masvidal beyond repair.

 

[Sir Punchalot]

Conor went ten rounds with the so called goat and landed clean shots. I would bet both my balls that connor would choke Floyd in the first couple rounds. Conor wasn’t that good in mma, he hit a lucky streak, did you see him fight middle of the road Nate Diaz?? In mma Khabib would strangle any boxer including heavyweights. It’s a completely different game. A big welterweight could go into the Boxing ring with canelo and maybe big brother him, that’s why they didn’t take the bait with Jorge Masvidal.

I don't understand why people engage in these absolutely ridiculous and meaningless arguments. Are you 12 years old? Who do you think would win in a ping pong match, the ping pong champion or the tennis champion?

 

[Hagler]

I don't understand why people engage in these absolutely ridiculous and meaningless arguments. Are you 12 years old? Who do you think would win in a ping pong match, the ping pong champion or the tennis champion?

But you use your whole body in tennis !!11

 

[svmVR2097]

Easily harder to be an elite boxer.
Conor is a failed boxer who became an elite MMA fighter. You will never see it the other way around.

Vitali Klitschko wasn't the greatest kickboxer, good and won a championship but became a elite hw boxer.

 

[svmVR2097]

Conor went ten rounds with the so called goat and landed clean shots. I would bet both my balls that connor would choke Floyd in the first couple rounds. Conor wasn’t that good in mma, he hit a lucky streak, did you see him fight middle of the road Nate Diaz?? In mma Khabib would strangle any boxer including heavyweights. It’s a completely different game. A big welterweight could go into the Boxing ring with canelo and maybe big brother him, that’s why they didn’t take the bait with Jorge Masvidal.

Conor went 10 rounds with a retired 40 year old who didn't train and after the 3rd round when Floyd started throwing punches didn't do anything at all and became the 1st KO for Floyd above 147lbs and just his 2nd in 11 years

 

[wolfss]

Easily harder to be an elite boxer.
Conor is a failed boxer who became an elite MMA fighter. You will never see it the other way around.

Complete different sports. Conor went ten rounds with the best evah. Do you think canelo could go 4 rounds with Khabib??

 

[cuban23]

Yes

It's also harder to be an elite jiu-jitsu practitioner or an elite wrestler than it is to be an elite MMA fighter.

MMA requires a broad knowledge in multiple disciplines. But to master one discipline is way more demanding both physically and mentally.

 

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

Boxing was found to be the most difficult sport to excel in years ago. A bunch of sports scientists (PhDs) from ESPN got together and rated 60 different sports and concluded that boxing had the highest degree of difficulty. While MMA wasn't included because it wasn't mainstream yet at the time (early 2000s) - wrestling (#5) and martial arts (#6) were listed separately.

But don't take our word for it. Take the word of our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail.

Spoiler: Panelists

Degree of Difficulty panel
Page 2

Peter Davis, Ph.D.

Peter Davis is the Director of the Coaching and Sport Sciences Division at the United States Olympic Committee and oversees one of the world's premier sport science departments. Under his leadership, practical and applied support systems are developed for elite athletes and coaches in the areas of biomechanics, psychology, physiology and performance technologies. Before joining the USOC, Davis was Manager of Sport Science/Sports Medicine for the Olympic Athlete Program at the Australian Institute of Sport, where he was previously an exercise physiologist. A former assistant volleyball coach at the University of Oregon (1979-80), he has also coached middle/long distance running and junior basketball.

Brian Jordan

A rare two-sport star, Jordan is in his 12th season in Major League Baseball and spent three years in the National Football League. Currently an outfielder with the Texas Rangers after earlier stints with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jordan brings a .287 career batting average into the 2004 season. He played in both the All-Star Game and the World Series in 1999. From 1989-91, Jordan was a defensive back for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and was named as an alternate to the Pro Bowl after the 1991 season.

Chris McKendry

Chris McKendry joined ESPN as a SportsCenter anchor in July 1996. Currently, she primarily serves as co-anchor of the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter. She also served as co-host of ESPN's coverage of the Winter X Games and served as late-night host for the X Games in 1997 and 1998, as well as the sideline reporter for ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC Sports' telecasts of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. McKendry graduated from Drexel University in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in humanities. A dean's list scholar for three years, McKendry attended Drexel on a tennis scholarship.

Jim Page

Jim Page is the Managing Director, Sports Performance Services, at the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, and is responsible for the following USOC Divisions: Coaching and Sports Science, Sports Medicine, Olympic Training Centers and Athlete Development Programs. Page was a three-time All-American skier at Dartmouth College and claimed a trio of NCAA skiing titles. Prior to joining the USOC, he was the Nordic Program Director for the U.S. Ski Team, responsible for guiding the U.S. cross country, ski jumping and Nordic combined programs.

Janet Starkes, Ph.D.

Dr. Starkes' primary area of research is on the perceptual-cognitive components of motor skill and she has studied movement experts for over 25 years. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, and has authored over 145 peer-reviewed publications and two books: Starkes, J.L., & Ericsson, K.A. (2003) Expert performance in sport: Recent advances in research on sport expertise Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics and Starkes, J.L. & Allard, F. (1993) Cognitive issues in motor expertise, Amsterdam, Elsevier.

Bruce Watkins, Ph.D.

Bruce Watkins is an Associate Professor of Sport Management at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As a developmental psychologist (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 1979), he has conducted research on children's beliefs about what it takes to excel at sports. Watkins currently teaches courses in sport and the media and sport and public policy at Michigan. In 2000, he and his partner captured the doubles championship at the Clark Hatch Tennis Tournament in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Jim Caple

As one of Page 2's lead columnists, Jim Caple touches every base in the world of sports -- including coverage at one time of the U.S. Curling Championships. Before he joined the Worldwide Leader, he covered baseball and college football and basketball as a beat writer in Minnesota for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press and in Seattle for the Post-Intelligencer. Caple's sports writing career has also taken him to five Olympic Games, winter and summer.

Michael Knisley

Michael Knisley is the Senior Editor for Page 2 at ESPN.com, and can be heard regularly on sports business issues on Marketplace Morning Report, the nationally syndicated public radio program. In a previous incarnation, he was a Senior Writer at The Sporting News, where for 10 years he covered Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the Olympic Games and sports business. His three decades in sports media also include stints as the Senior Editor for professional football and boxing at The National Sports Daily, and 13 years as a staff writer at the Denver Post.

ESPN.com: Page 2 - Sport Skills Difficulty Rankings

 

[Jonny Ninja]

Complete different sports. Conor went ten rounds with the best evah. Do you think canelo could go 4 rounds with Khabib??

floy most definitely isn’t the best ever. He was also retired, middle aged, and about 4 weight classes smaller than mcgregor. Canelo is actually mcgregors size.

Neither mcgregor or khabib would last around against canelo. they literally can not win! Canelo would still have a punchers chance in MMA, especially against Conor

 

[patos]

I mean, the world is large, you have to have an excess amount of talent, hard work and good fortune to get to the top of anything remotely popular. I bet it's no easier to be an elite chef or chess player than it is to be an elite fighter, just hard in different ways. I'd argue it's not the activity itself that makes anything hard, so much as it is the level of competition. The better you try to get, the more demanding is the grind.

 

[Old Cat]

I would say yes mainly due to a larger talent pool.

the correct answer

 

[KAZSoliloquy]

Neither mcgregor or khabib would last around against canelo. they literally can not win! Canelo would still have a punchers chance in MMA, especially against Conor

we’ve seen stranger