Is boxing/kickboxing/wrestling dead?

[shadowjunkie]

So first I thought:

Boxing .. is dead.

Then I reconsidered.

Well hold on now .. it's just a sport.. like baseball and football right?

So because Baseball was created, it doesn't mean that tennis and soccer are dead. It's just a different game right?

But then I reasoned:

Hold on now those are just games. We walked up and said, "Hey! See if you can kick this ball over there." or "Oh yeah? Try to get that thing by me on ice you little bastard!"

With fighting type sports it didn't happen that way. We saw two dudes trying to kill each other and said "Whoa, let's do this in a way where both of you can avoid death. Here, put these gloves on or better yet, just wrestle!"

So then we keep stripping back these rules and now we've got MMA.

As close to fighting as we can get with some measure of safety and no lasting injuries.

Now I wonder:

Is there some endearing quality or tradition that maintains the old fighting sports? Can the ultra-super boxer's of tomorrow scream "I'm the best in the world!" "Call me super man!" like Tyson and Ali? or is it more likely to sound like, "I'm just a good boxer, please don't beat me up."

Thoughts?

[Twinblades713]

The way I see it... a boxer can't juke and weave while he's on the ground with a dude his weight dropping elbows on top of him.

[KRins]

You realize boxing and the requirements to be good at it are DRASTICALLY different than MMA right? Of course a mixed martial arts will beat up a boxer... a boxer isn't trained to deal with takedowns, the clinch, submissions, kicks, etc. Couture reamed out Toney we can all agree... now make them box. I can pretty much PROMISE you it would be the exact opposite. Boxing isn't dead, wrestling isn't dead. The uneducated in a sport just struggle to grasp the finer nuances of those sports. MMA is more popular now because it is that much more bloody, even someone who has never taken a punch can sense the primal brutality of being locked in a cage with another person who wants to remove your face. The footwork, feints, and mental chess match of wrestling or boxing isn't quite as obvious so it does not appeal to the common man. Not that their isn't equal levels of technicality in MMA... but how often do you hear the crowd start booing when a fight gets bogged down in some clinch action or a takedown/sprawl scenario? It is fairly obvious the people who just like the violence of combat sports have picked the more visual MMA. The real fan, the competitor, the instructor of intermediate boxing and advanced wrestling (yeah I like to give myself a more important title than Kevin) can pick out the sweetness of the sweet science and the tremendous dedication of the wrestler, the kid who wrestles for the love of it... because we all know there isn't Major League Wrestling and more than half the Division 1 varsity wrestling programs either don't exist or have had almost all of their scholarship money die at the hands of Title IX. Florida is a hot bed of college athletics I think we can all agree... yet not a single D1 varsity program in the WHOLE STATE. And yet... UCF won 2 consecutive NCWA (Its like the bridge between club level and varsity for wrestling) national championships. Andre Berto is a personal friend, Winter Haven (maybe an hour from Orlando) resident, and a WBC champion. You just have to look a little harder to find the wrestler or boxer... the same way you have to look beyond the glaringly obvious in a boxing or wrestling match to see the real artistry in it.

In short, come to my gym and tell me boxing or wrestling is dead and I'll show you it never will be.

[f0xx]

Wall of text. Learn to use paragraphs ffs.

[mmajunkie]

Professional boxing's glory days are all but dead. James Toney, if you're familiar with the name, recently tried to fight in the UFC by badmouthing the sport and saying Boxing's elite could beat MMA elite.

Randy Coutre finished him in the first round with nay a scratch.

Boxing purists will always be around and boxing will always live on. It is different...in some ways better, in some ways worse than MMA, but to see who is a better "all around" fighter..MMA is as good as you're gonna find, in a publicized venue anyway.

[Croyvern]

Tyson hospitalized countless trainees. His Punch was considered Lethal in the brutality case his wife won in court that sent him to jail. So it really depends on the boxer facing off against the MMa fighter. James Toney was a tool. I have seen enough "lucky punches" in the MMA to know that a fighter like Tyson would have done better. That said, look at this "new" football concept where they are allowing melee combat for posession of the ball, would John Elway, or Eli Manning stand a chance in such a game? Probably not, thats why they play in the league that they chose. To me this comparison is an age old apples and oranges arguement. It is like saying "yeah you beat me in the 500 meter run, but try beating me in the long jump..... Now if we could create a triathalon of sorts and invite Boxers, Wrestlers, and MMA fighters, make them compete in a series of all three events, we could really know who was really the best.

P.S. When I mention wrestling, I am talking about olympic wrestling, a flat mat with three two minute rounds. Not the "made for entertainment" television wrestling that so many people consider to be wrestling. BTW shadowjunkie wrestling came first.

[Atticus]

The way I see it... a boxer can't juke and weave while he's on the ground with a dude his weight dropping elbows on top of him.

LMAO

I Just think since BJJ was brought out into the light, that the game changed forever.

[shadowjunkie]

Of course a mixed martial arts will beat up a boxer... a boxer isn't trained to deal with takedowns' date=' the clinch, submissions, kicks, etc. Couture reamed out Toney we can all agree... now make them box. I can pretty much PROMISE you it would be the exact opposite.[/quote']

Here is the issue I take with this argument.

Boxing, wrestling, MMA, kickboxing are not game/sports like soccer and baseball. We didn't arbitrarily make the rules up out of thin air and say, "mmkay .. great .. now start scoring."

What we did was we saw two guys fighting and said, "Whoa, let's do this in a way where neither of you have to die today.. here... put on these gloves."

I realize I'm repeating myself but I still got chopped up versions of this argument and I'd like to bury it.

So having pinned that down hopefully we can agree that all fighting sports are .... fighting. moving on.

In this vein, imagine 2 basketball teams play a game; the final score is 200 to 4. Would it make any sense for the losing team to start screaming about how good they are at free throws? Or say, "Oh yeah? If this was a dribbling competition it'd be the other way around!" "I've got LETHAL dribbling skillz."

See what I'm getting at?

To argue that Toney is anywhere near the fighting caliber of Couture is just delusional. It seems crazy to me that anyone would even suggest that if Couture would just saw himself in half and forget 20 years of training... boy would he get schooled. I find it much easier to glance at the 280lb guy with the skinny girl legs and poke a few gaping holes in his fighting game.

Now that I've put that to bed.

The lingering question is, what is left for these boxers/kickboxers? What legacy can the sport cling to? Is it just more interesting to watch guys throw on each other? I have no idea. I didn't like boxing even before MMA was hatched. I had my judo books as a kid and no fight I'd ever been in looked anything like a boxing match.

[Twinblades713]

The lingering question is, what is left for these boxers/kickboxers? What legacy can the sport cling to? Is it just more interesting to watch guys throw on each other? I have no idea. I didn't like boxing even before MMA was hatched. I had my judo books as a kid and no fight I'd ever been in looked anything like a boxing match.

They need to man up and learn to do what they do not yet know how to do.