I have a collection of moments in a year that has been a roller coaster ride for many fans of the greatest sport in the world, but before I get to that, which I'll try to get out tomorrow, I want to give you guys something fun to celebrate the New Year.
A friend of mine linked me this post I made before thanksgiving and I realized I hadn't put it up on the blog for you guys.
To put it in context, this is a bit I did after Jeff Lacy came out with his outburst against MMA. I enjoyed writing this alot, and I hope you guys like it as much as I did. Happy New Year.
Are you f*cking kidding me? Jeff Lacy is a credible source on boxing?
First, the guy's an idiot. Second, all of his comments are only aggravating an argument that could be made so much better.
Any boxer that wants to bring up Maywether vs. De La Hoya as an example of why MMA is an inferior sport is an idiot. I watched the fight, and usually I can appreciate boxers for their hands and head movement, but both of them proved to be complete p*ssies in that fight. Great competition comes from having two guys who want to win, who want to finish and who want to really show how great they are, not who want to line their pockets.
Boxing is a better sport because there's more money in it? No!
The international boxing market has fallen apart, while international MMA continues to grow at a speed no other sport in the world can keep up with. Boxing continues to be a waste of time and talent because guys with lots of potential would rather make money than actually fight.
Then there are all of these ridiculous boxing contracts. De La Hoya gets to pick the color of Floyd Maywether's shorts and gloves? That's a disgrace not just to the sport of boxing, but to anyone who associates themself with being a "fight fan."
Then you have guys like Valuev who continue to put on raucous displays against opponents that are hand selected by Don f*cking King. At least for Hong Man Choi to get a title, he's got to fight real opponents (and I'm not just talking about Fedor, I'm also talking about Jerome LeBanner, Semmy Schilt and some of the other great guys he fought in K-1).
Honestly, I wish I could say boxing was dead, so that I could ignore it, but instead it's just flopping around like a fish out of water, gasping for air. It can't die quickly enough. It makes me sad to say that some of the great eastern European fighters I grew up watching, like the Klitchko's, are part of a sport that is falling apart, and I have as must respect for the guys that realy fight in boxing as I do for the guys in K-1, but the vast majority of boxers are killing this sport. It can't even just be blamed on the promoters and shady managers any more.
I've done enough talking about boxers as inferior athletes, because they are. They don't condition themselves to perform as wide a variety of tasks or endure as much punishment as an MMA fighter. If you want to see what I have to say about that, here's a quote from one of my old posts:
"Obviously, your new, so I'll be gentle.
None of the guys you have seen in MMA punch for sh*t? What about:
Fedor Emelianenko
Mirko "CroCop" Filipovic
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Mark Hunt
Andrei Arlovski
Tim Sylvia (in his younger days)
Aleks Emelianenko
Sergei Kharitonov
Igor Vovchanchyn
Randy Couture
Chuck Liddell
Mauricio "Shogun" Rua
Wanderlei Silva
Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
Rich Franklin
Anderson Silva
Denis Kang
Georges St. Pierre
BJ Penn
Takanori Gomi
Joachim Hansen
Hayato Sakurai
That's just off the top of my head. A handful of those guys are, or were, professional boxers. If you don't think they can punch, you obviously have no idea what a punch looks like.
You see, the difference between these guys and boxers is that they can do other things. Bas Rutten even proved that a boxing stance was useless in MMA (and, thus, a streetfight) when he had Duane Ludwig pound on Jens Pulver's more traditional boxing style.
Boxers have come over, but they rarely make it up the top ranks. If you want to know what I mean watch PRIDE's Butterbean v Ikuhisa Minowa. You have to know submissions and wrestling, and that's not just something you can pick up over night. It's much easier for a wrestler (who can control the pace of the fight and where it goes) to transition to MMA than a boxer, because a wrestler has much more applicable skills in MMA.
Even if you're a boxer in MMA, you can't win a fight with just boxing. There's more than just hands in boxing. You have to deal with the added dimensions of leg-kicks and clinches that your opponent can hit you in, in addition to the constant threat of being taken down.
I've been saying this for a long time:
Show me a boxer who can take leg-kicks from Mirko CroCop...
Show me a boxer who can hurt Mark Hunt standing up...
Show me a boxer who can avoid a takedown from Mark Coleman...
Show me a boxer who can defend a submission from Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira...
Show me a boxer who can get off of his back with Fedor Emelianenko pounding his face in...
... and that guy'll be great in MMA. He, however, has not shown up and does not, in the real world, exist.
Simply put, Jeff Lacy is a dumbass, as so is anyone who doesn't give MMA fighters the respect they deserve as athletes and as warriors."
To finish, I'd like to add:
F*ck boxers... I'm going to eat some Turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving.
See you all in January.
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