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Cintron In MMA, Good for Boxing?
I like Kermit Cintron. Guy is extremely talented and has physical blessings that guys wish for their whole careers.
Sometimes though, no matter how good you are, there's always someone who has your number. I believe Antonio Margarito is that guy for Kermit.
Now, with Kermit's inability to get past Margarito, and with Cotto as the Kingpin of the Welterweight division with Floyd seemingly keeping his career in limbo, 147 is just never going to be where Kermit will be the best guy unless Miguel, Tony, and Floyd all depart and I don't see it happening.
We had a thread discussing his future options, one of which was to go to 154, the other was to enter into MMA.
For those unfamiliar with his backstory, Kermit was one of the best amatuer wrestlers in the state of Pennsylvania while in high school, and even got offers for wrestling scholarships to Ohio State, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota(same school as 2000 NCAA Heavyweight champion/UFC heavyweight Brock Lesnar).
Kermit suffered a knee injury and turned his focus to the other sport he was practicing in high school, boxing. He became a welterweight titlist, and has had a fairly successful career minus the Margarito bouts, but he's never emerged as one of the elite.
Considering three of the best collegiate wrestling schools offered him free rides, the guy's wrestling game is, or at the least was, among the tops in the nation.
Now Kermit would obviously have to learn to defend and possibly incorporate some JJ into his game like any wrestler wanting to make a go of MMA does(take note Lesnar), but who's to say he can't do it?
Now normally you'd have to work your way up the ladder to get big fights in MMA, but with Cintron being a world champion boxer crossing over, the wait list for him would be substantially cut due to the potential revenue he'd bring in, similar to how Brock's first fight in the UFC was against Frank Mir, and Brock wasn't even a professional combat sport athlete.
Quite frankly I think Kermit has the potential for more success as an MMA lightweight than as boxing welter. I think the main problem with the game of a lot of today's fighters, especially in the lighter weight divisions, is their unwillingness, or perhaps lack of capability to stand up and strike.
Kermit can crack, there's no doubt about it. When facing Kermit, most guys are probably going to be intimidated by his reputation and try to take it to the ground, so Kermit's chin won't be tested as it would against guys like Margarito and Cotto.
His wrestling is probably going to be severely underrated since he never wrestled collegiately, even though its quite obvious he was capable of doing so with offers like the ones he got.
But with all that said this could be a big boon for boxing. Kermit was a guy who couldn't make it to the top of the welterweight division, but he's someone I could see doing very well for himself provided he hasn't lost too many steps in his ground game.
It would be a major boost to the boxing business when people see that a guy who couldn't make it to the top of boxing after already coming close to but not getting to the elite level, going into MMA's face, the UFC, and taking their lightweight title within a year of his debut.
Thoughts?
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