[Rambamatic]

Saku, you're absolutely right. You have to understand that Boxing has been around forever and MMA is brand new. Guys like Lampley (who are old and have the entirety of their careers invested in boxing) are witnessing Boxing's decline and the rise of MMA. As Boxing goes down, so does their careers, and so they have a political and economic reason to try to defame MMA.

However, there is a deeper issue there as well, and it goes to the heart of many problems in MMA today: So many people only understand boxing (in terms of combat sports), that Boxing is the only standard they have to compare MMA to, or discuss MMA through. You see it all the time in the bonehead decisions that ringside judges (who have spent 30 years judging boxing, and know nothing about kickboxing, wrestling, BJJ, etc.) deliver. How many times have we seen fighter A decisively win a match using grappling, but because Fighter B scored better on the feet during 1 round or score a knockdown at some point, get awarded the fight because the judges are looking at it as a boxing match?

In another thread, the poster pointed out Dana White's response to one boxing commentator's comment that MMA fighters' "footwork was wrong". It's not "wrong"...it's different, because in Boxing you don't have to worry about knees, kicks, the clinch, the takedown, elbows, leg attacks, the shoot, etc.

So, it's not that MMA fighters don't have the defensive artistry that boxers do; it's that in MMA at any given time you have so many ways that your opponent can attack you or switch up their attack that you can only cover 2 or 3 out of 12 bases at a time, and that means that yes, you're going to get hit more in MMA than in boxing, but the reason for that is far different than the one that Lampley, or others, suggest.

On the other side, if you put an MMA fighter into the ring with a good pro- boxer under BOXING rules, even the best are going down. Boxing is a very powerful and beautiful art form and fighting style in its own right, and can survive and thrive in its own arena without belittling MMA. Just because MMA is so hot, does that mean that its the end of Greco-Roman Wrestling or Kickboxing or Karate? Of course not!!

Most of the wounds that boxing has suffered over the last 20 years have been self-inflicted. You have corrupt promoters, judges, and decisions that sour people on the results of the fights, you have 8,000 different sanctioning bodies (I think it's like 8 or 9, but that's WAY too many), you have fighters who are brain dead, street thugs, or criminals, and cannot be good ambassadors for the sport or role models for kids, artificial champions, etc. Boxing may yet pull itself out the slump, and it'll never go away totally, but the "boxing insiders" themselves are the ones who have destroyed the credibility of boxing.