Boxing VS MMA; Tyson Fury comments on MMA being of a lower quality

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am a life-long boxing fan and always have been, so I guess I am not exactly impartial on the "which is better boxing or MMA debate?", but I did want to create this thread to give my opinion as well as hear what others have to say about this issue. Some questions I would like to ask is: Which sport do you prefer? Which sport do you think requires more skill? And which sport is better from the perspective of White Athletes?

I've seen a lot in recent months about this guy - Conor McGregor (Irish White fighter in the UFC) and I have to say I'm not impressed and if he was to compete in boxing he'd make it absolutely nowhere before getting knocked out by a journeyman. The fact that he has taken up the sport late (he has only been pratising MMA for 5 or so years and is already a "world champion"), and managed to be so successful really proves the fact that MMA has a relatively lower skill set associated within it than boxing. In boxing, that would be almost impossible because literally almost every single world champion in boxing has a lengthy amateur background and have usually been practising the sport since childhood. Compare someone like Vasyl Lomachenko (400 amateur fights), Gennady Golovkin (350 amateur fights), Wlad Klitschko (300 amateur fights) to McGregor who had essentially no amateur experience and tell me which sport requires more skill and experience?

Tyson Fury, has also voiced an opinion similar to my own when he said that Brock Lesnar, a guy who competed in Vince McMahon's WWE (pretend fighting) who became a UFC champion, was essentially a circus show who became a champ. Almost no prior amateur fighting experience whatsoever to speak of. Brock did have a wrestling background but it was hardly noteworthy. Once again, this is something that would never happen in boxing because in boxing the talent pool is larger and the associated skill set much higher. Here's Fury's comments which I agree with 100%; (Source; http://www.mmamania.com/2015/3/31/8...an-win-ufc-title-it-doesnt-say-much-about-mma)

"We all know WWE is pretend. And if a pretend fighter can come in and win the heavyweight championship of the world in what is supposed to be the ultimate fighting competition, it doesn't say a lot, does it? I haven't changed my mind, anytime, any place, anywhere, tell Dana White to bring Velasquez to me and I'll knock him into next week. As I said before, they are not on my level, they are bums compared to me. Anyone one of them. To be honest, he is just a six foot fat podding. Alright, he's a wrestler. He wrestles about and grapples on the floor a bit. But there is no match for the power and size of me. When I connect on him, finished. Listen, he's never been punched proper before. Getting slapped from the inside of the gloves is not like getting punched with straight with knuckles to the jaw."

Then there's the Negro Anderson Silva, who was MMA's #1 pound for pound fighter for several years, and the truth about Silva is that he is a failed boxer who had a 1-1 record and was knocked unconscious by a club fighter. So, Silva was an absolute failure in boxing, then turned to MMA and became their pound for pound #1 fighter and one of their alltime greats. This again shows the world of difference between the two sports in terms of skill and experience.

Racially speaking, I put UFC on the same level as other mainstream American sports such as NFL, NBA, MLB, and so on. The fanbase in UFC is probably the same fanbase that exists in the NFL, with DWF (Drunk White Fans) forming the majority. The truth is all of the fighters in the UFC would never make it in boxing because boxing requires more skill and is more competitive.
 
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seattlefan

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Mostly agree. The truth is that boxing is the most difficult, dangerous and skilled range of fighting. MMA is well on its way to resembling other American caste sports demographically. The problem with the UFC is the problem with all 'controlled' sports, they can pump up certain races over others. Boxing is unique in that it does not have any central authority. Whites can rise in a way they can't in other sports, although there is a lot of resistance from certain promoters, writers, networks etc.
 

werewolf

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Good post. BoxSpec. I agree. I very rarely watch UFC, but I just happened to watch two fights yesterday, the Werdun-"Brown Power" Velasquez heavyweight fight and the McGregor flyweight or whatever it was fight. I posted links to those two on the UFC board here that I rarely if ever visit. One problem with boxing being wide open to White guys is the absence of boxing training facilities for young white guys in the USSA. At least when I was messing with boxing in NYC there were still a couple of real boxing gyms in more or less white neighborhoods where a young white guy could feel OK, but I don't know if there are still any, aside from maybe some yuppy boxing exercise places. There are no boxing programs in any USSA high school, and only one single college, West Point, has one, or had one. Do they still? They used to send competitors to the NY Golden Gloves, but it's been a lot of years since I saw the Golden Gloves.

When I was in college I wanted to go into boxing, but the closest thing they had was a wrestling program. I remember going to the wrestling tryouts in the gym, even tho I knew nothing about wrestling except goofing off with the other kids on the ground, but when I got there I felt out of place because everyone was a phys ed major - or whatever it was called - and they all knew each other including the coaches, and I was just an English major and knew no one, so I just left. I didn't really want to learn wrestling anyway. It would have been fun to whup all those stuck up phys ed majors, tho! :)
 

white is right

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am a life-long boxing fan and always have been, so I guess I am not exactly impartial on the "which is better boxing or MMA debate?", but I did want to create this thread to give my opinion as well as hear what others have to say about this issue. Some questions I would like to ask is: Which sport do you prefer? Which sport do you think requires more skill? And which sport is better from the perspective of White Athletes?

I've seen a lot in recent months about this guy - Conor McGregor (Irish White fighter in the UFC) and I have to say I'm not impressed and if he was to compete in boxing he'd make it absolutely nowhere before getting knocked out by a journeyman. The fact that he has taken up the sport late (he has only been pratising MMA for 5 or so years and is already a "world champion"), and managed to be so successful really proves the fact that MMA has a relatively lower skill set associated within it than boxing. In boxing, that would be almost impossible because literally almost every single world champion in boxing has a lengthy amateur background and have usually been practising the sport since childhood. Compare someone like Vasyl Lomachenko (400 amateur fights), Gennady Golovkin (350 amateur fights), Wlad Klitschko (300 amateur fights) to McGregor who had essentially no amateur experience and tell me which sport requires more skill and experience?

Tyson Fury, has also voiced an opinion similar to my own when he said that Brock Lesnar, a guy who competed in Vince McMahon's WWE (pretend fighting) who became a UFC champion, was essentially a circus show who became a champ. Almost no prior amateur fighting experience whatsoever to speak of. Brock did have a wrestling background but it was hardly noteworthy. Once again, this is something that would never happen in boxing because in boxing the talent pool is larger and the associated skill set much higher. Here's Fury's comments which I agree with 100%; (Source; http://www.mmamania.com/2015/3/31/8...an-win-ufc-title-it-doesnt-say-much-about-mma)

"We all know WWE is pretend. And if a pretend fighter can come in and win the heavyweight championship of the world in what is supposed to be the ultimate fighting competition, it doesn't say a lot, does it? I haven't changed my mind, anytime, any place, anywhere, tell Dana White to bring Velasquez to me and I'll knock him into next week. As I said before, they are not on my level, they are bums compared to me. Anyone one of them. To be honest, he is just a six foot fat podding. Alright, he's a wrestler. He wrestles about and grapples on the floor a bit. But there is no match for the power and size of me. When I connect on him, finished. Listen, he's never been punched proper before. Getting slapped from the inside of the gloves is not like getting punched with straight with knuckles to the jaw."

Then there's the Negro Anderson Silva, who was MMA's #1 pound for pound fighter for several years, and the truth about Silva is that he is a failed boxer who had a 1-1 record and was knocked unconscious by a club fighter. So, Silva was an absolute failure in boxing, then turned to MMA and became their pound for pound #1 fighter and one of their alltime greats. This again shows the world of difference between the two sports in terms of skill and experience.

Racially speaking, I put UFC on the same level as other mainstream American sports such as NFL, NBA, MLB, and so on. The fanbase in UFC is probably the same fanbase that exists in the NFL, with DWF (Drunk White Fans) forming the majority. The truth is all of the fighters in the UFC would never make it in boxing because boxing requires more skill and is more competitive.
The depth in MMA is virtually non existent. So you tend to see recycled fighters being fed to up and coming fighters much more often than in boxing. Seeing Shannon Briggs parading around and begging for a major bout, wouldn't happen in the UFC because he would get a shot and lose badly.

Ps If you think MMA has no depth now watch the early tournaments and super fights from the early 90's that truly was a carnival with the few skilled fighters against the equivalent of bar room brawlers. In fact a bar room brawler was nearly champion (Tank Abbot).
 

NWsoccerfan

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I also agree with the above sentiments. Chris algeiri was a world champion kick boxer and got picked apart by Pacquiao. Boxing is so specific and takes years to develop the muscle memory and reflexes. MMA is a great sport but you can compensate for weaknesses because there are multiple facets to it. The fact that MMA is (mostly)controlled by the UFC is what keeps the caste system in place. In boxing the eastern euros have been dominating blacks and there's nothing boxing can do about it. This is the reason you don't see much boxing coverage on tv unless it's a black or latino.
 

Old Scratch

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I also agree with the above sentiments. Chris algeiri was a world champion kick boxer and got picked apart by Pacquiao. Boxing is so specific and takes years to develop the muscle memory and reflexes. MMA is a great sport but you can compensate for weaknesses because there are multiple facets to it. The fact that MMA is (mostly)controlled by the UFC is what keeps the caste system in place. In boxing the eastern euros have been dominating blacks and there's nothing boxing can do about it. This is the reason you don't see much boxing coverage on tv unless it's a black or latino.

The top kickboxing organizations are K1 and Glory. He wasn't on that level.

There's way more depth in the USA in MMA than there is in boxing because practically every HS has a wrestling program. There are hundreds of thousands of HS wrestlers in the USA. There are probably more jiu jitsu gyms now than there are boxing gyms which are mostly in the inner cities.
 

Old Scratch

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I've seen a lot in recent months about this guy - Conor McGregor (Irish White fighter in the UFC) and I have to say I'm not impressed and if he was to compete in boxing he'd make it absolutely nowhere before getting knocked out by a journeyman. The fact that he has taken up the sport late (he has only been pratising MMA for 5 or so years and is already a "world champion"), and managed to be so successful really proves the fact that MMA has a relatively lower skill set associated within it than boxing. In boxing, that would be almost impossible because literally almost every single world champion in boxing has a lengthy amateur background and have usually been practising the sport since childhood. Compare someone like Vasyl Lomachenko (400 amateur fights), Gennady Golovkin (350 amateur fights), Wlad Klitschko (300 amateur fights) to McGregor who had essentially no amateur experience and tell me which sport requires more skill and experience?

Conor McGregor was an amateur boxer before picking up BJJ about 10 years ago. He didn't just start 5 years ago, where did you even get that. He has been training wrestling longer than 5 years as well. So there's three different facets of the sport boxing, jiu jitsu and wrestling that he has trained much longer than 5 years.

Stop cherry picking and exaggerating.
 
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Conor McGregor was an amateur boxer before picking up BJJ about 10 years ago. He didn't just start 5 years ago, where did you even get that. He has been training wrestling longer than 5 years as well. So there's three different facets of the sport boxing, jiu jitsu and wrestling that he has trained much longer than 5 years.

Stop cherry picking and exaggerating.

I don't know why people still bother to try and compare the two. Really they're different sports completely.

Boxing is deeper in terms of talent because it has been around longer - and it still pays more. Very specific "activity" is boxing.

However, in terms of all around athleticism, I don't think boxing has any edge. Boxers have incredibly refined boxing skills in comparison to MMA fighters. They are training specifically for a single manner of combat sport. The competition is deep, very deep in many ways. However, line up a top 10 boxer from a given weight division against a top 10 MMA fighter of the same weight in a free for all and it's no contest. The boxer will look spastic as he's taken down and beaten to a pulp. It's Couture vs Toney again but worse. This is nothing against boxers, but they train for one sport. Of course if the fight is limited to boxing, then the boxer will walk through the MMA fighter. People will argue this all they want, but it's likely 99 times out of 100 - maybe even better than that - that in an NHB situation, the boxer will have little chance. Their training is very specific.

On the old "Superstars" shows back in the day, boxers were generally horrible at everything. Not all the time, but most of the time. The only athletes who seemed to be as bad were the bulk of NBA players that had the nerve to try competing - even though they are the world's greatest affletes.

Comparing the two is apples and oranges in a way. One group of athletes is training purely for "boxing", the MMA guys are training for a variety of skills. No matter how talented the MMA guy is in boxing, he won't match a top boxer. If he trains that much at boxing and has the talent, he'll be woefully deficient in his ground game, kicking, all around defense, etc.

I do agree that boxing is deeper, but it's been around a lot longer as an "event" sport in comparison to MMA which is still in its infancy.

People always argue the boxer vs MMA guy in a free for all. Yes, a lot of boxers will state they can get a jab in or whatever before being taken down. But it won't happen. Anyone who's done both sports knows this is true. It doesn't work that way. Again, boxing is very specific in terms of what fighters look for, train for, look to defend against.

I don't think the two can honestly be compared. Tyson Fury would be massacred by a top MMA heavyweight - and I like Fury. Pure boxing, he'd destroy the top UFC heavyweights. NHB contest against any decent UFC heavyweight and Fury is drowning quickly, even with his size and reach.

There probably are guys in the UFC who have the talent to be top boxers. They likely have never had any interest in just being a boxer per se. This is happening more and more as time goes on. MMA is appealing because of how spectacular it can be on occasion, especially to younger guys, while boxing can get boring, especially with "defensive" fighters - which is what a lot of younger guys have said to me. Sure, that can come down to fans being uneducated, but the way fans swoon over some of the over-promoted melanin enhanced, and totally exaggerated (in terms of talent) champs we've seen over the decades, I tend to think the majority of boxing fans right now are a bunch of brainwashed, dwf types, as is the norm with most sports in the US. Just look at the average (and very popular) boxing websites. They are a reflection of the overall public in the US at the moment.

Let the arguments roll on. :bigsmile:
 
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