[King Kabuki]

Alright, so I wanted to highlight this post because as much as I've defended the current state of the Sport, one of our fellow beloved literary Historians pwned even me with such an effort. This thread will be stuck here in the Boxing forum, and any of you guys who venture into the MMA forums, in seeing a thread about this subject, feel free to post the link. But here it is...

Compliments of the Kid McCoy:

How about just one more Boxing/MMA post ?

Boxing is dead…..Oh, Noooo!

The first highly critical death sentence for professional boxing as we know it today came in 1750 from the Anglican church and was supported by the Duke of Cumberland, and there have been many attempts to kill the sport and/or proclaim it’s demise since, yet it just keeps on rolling along.

Sportswriters who cannot absorb such a rough sport today carry on the sophomoric tradition of ringing the death knoll for Boxing, but the public simply isn’t buying.

Featured on the cover of ESPN magazine for the May 7 issue, it’s just like old times again.

Before last weekend, De La Hoya's 17 fights on HBO PPV had generated 10.4 million buys and $492 million in revenue.
In recent years Tyson and Holyfield did even better with 12 fights/12.4 million buys/545 million and 14 fights/12.6 million buys/534 million respectively.

This of course doesn’t even include HBO/Showtime non-PPV revenue, which is large, nor rebroadcast revenue, nor does it take into account live gate, which also adds up; 19 million for last week’s fight, for example.

This is the work of just 3 fighters.
And De La Hoya…. He’s a star, and he’s proof that Boxing can produce a star any time it wants, including now, and tomorrow.
Ali, then Leonard, Duran, Hearns, Hagler, Tyson, Holyfield, De La Hoya, and the next guy always just around the next corner.

For this fight, big sponsorship advertising money came in, and international buys outside the U.S. were staggering.

Couple that with the incredible geographical range and frequency of live fight cards on the world’s seven continents, and you’ve got a sport that dwarfs any other ‘combat sport’, by far.

I am amazed, always and forever, at the power of PR, and the gullibility of the public, an idea alive & well as you look at Sherdog and the other top MMA sites and listen to how the kids perceive the information they receive.

If you want to know what’s happening outside the PC monitor in your bedroom, think about this:

Boxing’s current pulse is measured by it’s big event of the season, and for that, Oscar and Floyd provided the attraction of this year.


MMA’s pulse, likewise is measured in it’s big event of the season, and that, as we all know, was not an event featuring 1993 stars Gracie or Shamrock, but was the addition of superstar Mirko Cro Cop to the ranks of UFC.

Comparing these events side by side is simple, and cuts through all the smokescreen, opinion and hype, and gets right down to the brass tacks of payroll.

Mirko, for his long awaited 2nd fight debut in Zuffa’s UFC, now the only promotional company putting on major shows left in MMA, received a gross payday of $350,000.00.
(Gonzaga got just 60,000.00)

There were no bonuses registered with the athletic commission for Mirko.
After federal and state taxes, training expenses, payroll deductions, transportation and lodging costs and other assorted tips, fees and gratuities, Mirko would be lucky to have actually pocketed $190,000 for his Knockout loss.



Oscar, for his part in the big fight last weekend, received a guaranteed purse of 24.4 million, plus a percentage of PPV, a piece of the promotional rights, and residuals, which will net him approximately 32.3 million dollars U.S., at a minimum.

$32,300,000.00 to be a star in Boxing.
Vs.
$190,000.00 to be a star in MMA.

Oscar gets 170 times what Mirko gets !

That’s where it stands today, and everything else is the bullshit spin.

What’s a stellar natural fighting machine to do here ? Which skills should he choose to work on ? What direction should he develop himself in ?

From a knowing Boxing fan’s perspective, the beauty of MMA’s recent emergence, and something entirely overlooked in print to date, is the fact that MMA is perceived by those who don’t understand it or want to understand it, which is most people, as "ultra violent".

I don’t think it’s ultra violent because like most sherdoggers, I love fight sports, and furthermore, I like the added facets that MMA brings to pro fight sports in the form of grappling and kick strikes, and all of the layers of strategy that go with that.

But the mainstream, they see it as evil, and what this does, is it takes the heat off of Boxing.

I’ve read Boxing lately being described as “a real sport, graceful, artistic, a sweet science….not like that other thing, that barbaric cage fighting”

Always the bad-boy of sports, to the mainstream, Boxing is now being portrayed as outright dignified in the presence of MMA and it’s growing youth appeal.

For the first time in 257 years of being vilified, the mainstream is cuddling up to Boxing now that there's an even bigger slut in town !

MMA may turn out to be the best thing to happen to Boxing since Television…….Mark my words.


Broughton, by the way, despite his loss to Jack Slack serving as the catalyst for the first big push to ban Boxing 257 years ago, lived a very long life, served as Yeomen of the Guard (head of security for the British monarch), and was interred at Westminster Abbey alongside royalty………so, let history serve here as a lesson, as it always should.

[King Kabuki]

MMA Fighters like Boxing.