I like your posts Paul, and you seem a knowledgeable boxing fan but i disagree here.
MMA started like a colission of styles to ascertain which ones where more suitable in a cage under minimum rules. And while the new generations train a mix of specific techniques already proven - what we could call "mma fighting style" - i believe any top martial artist, whetever the style, has "de facto" a right to enter the cage. Toney is/was a top martial artist (boxing).
As for the "earning the spot" im not an expert in boxing but i think there have been instances of old, washed up legends earning a tittle shot in boxing (Hollyfield, Foreman et alia) just out of prestige - and sometimes they even won. I respect your opinion but dont see anything wrong with this match. They found him a suitable opponent - its not like they squared him against Bones Or Shogun - and he has a chance to win. It may be small one , like 1 to 5, but thats a gamble any warrior spirit would blindly take on any given day if victory means sending shocking waves all over the world, any given day...
Paul’s one of my favorite posters here too as well as an e-friend of mine, and I understand the validity of what he’s putting across in his prior post, but I agree with you on this.
I’m not so sure that success in MMA amongst strictly MMA fighters is ever going to be the only road to a headline show.
The reason being, quite simply, is that this is about fighting, so any adjacent skills or accomplishments are qualifiers for entering the top level, and none are as well qualifying as success in the larger, older, more globally widespread world of No-grapple/No kicking MMA….Boxing, where just as in MMA you can bring any style you like so long as you don’t break the rules.
Gone are the days, after just 16+ years mind you, where MMA talk included “Clint Eastwood vs. Charles Bronson”, but this is still a sport where 8 fights can qualify you as the top contender (Velasquez), and a 2 and 1 record gets you a title shot against a future hall of famer (Couture had never lost his UFC title in the cage when Lesnar, fresh off a quick-tap loss to Mir and a beating of used up Herring in his final fight, got a shot at him without ever having won against a ranked fighter in MMA).
Tony’s done a lot more to deserve his fight against Randy that Brock ever did, a very good (but not great) amateue wrestling career notwithstanding.
Sure, MMA isn’t Boxing, but it’s as close to it as it is amateur wrestling, for sure.
You can have a real “fight” without any grappling but you can’t have a real “fight” without any punching, and since the best way to make money and gain fame punching remains in Boxing, and MMA is all about “real fights”, it stands to reason that any boxer who was ever ranked in the top 10 has earned a shot at the top in MMA, more so than any commensurately pedigreed kicker or grappler.
……even if his his more than a decade past it, as Ray Mercer pointed out fast.
And of course, if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, and while MMA loves to advertise itself as the “ultimate” in combat sports, their efforts to beat the boxers have thus far proven disastrous for them.
Toney defeating/lasting with Couture would be a victory for boxing the way Tiger Woods defeating/lasting against Andre Agasi in a tennis match would be a victory for Golf. They are two different sports with similar play-mechanics (I wanted to use baseball and cricket, but I figured no one watches cricket).
Can he win? Sure. But none of us have seen him fight in an MMA bout, so it's hard to speculate one way or the other.
There is a closer kinship with Boxing and MMA.
Since UFC I the selling of MMA has been as a “replacement” for Boxing, which had long established itself (for centuries) the world over as the agreed upon formal way to hold a prizefight in spite of the parallel existence of non-pro grade Wrestling, Judo, Karate and all the components that play out in Mixed martial Arts, or theoretically could play out under the broader rules there (Mostly MMA turns out to be boxing, submission grappling and a few simple kicks).
Woods is not making a living playing Tennis with expanded rules, and Andre did not master a revised version of Golf.
Mercer and Sylvia and Toney and Couture are all professional fighters; one group uses grappling and kicking and the other does not, but both are vying to be regarded as the best professional fighters in the world.
These are precisely the same sport, simply presented with different parameters as to what’s clean and what’s dirty fighting.
So far, the dirty fighters have been shown up as grossly inferior, and it took just 9 seconds to make all the “multi-dimensional fighter” know-it-all’s look like complete assholes who live in a fantasy buddle.
.
The UFC has invested here hoping to even up the score because that’s not good for a business trying to sell superman to kids.
Once Toney batters Captain America into submission in about 40 seconds, the UFC will have the larger and younger Nogueira, Mir, Carwin, Dos Santos, Velasquez and Brock waiting in the wings to even the score through the multi-fight contract they have with James, and the rainmakers there will be manning the ticket booth 24/7 with a smile as big as all outdoors, ready to take your money in exchange for finding out what it takes to beat a middle aged pug in MMA rules, like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
